Music from Ibero-America or sung in Spanish or Portuguese
Latin music (Portuguese and ) is a term used by the music industry as a catch-all category for various styles of music from Ibero-America, which encompasses Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the Latino population in Canada and the United States, as well as music that is sung in either Spanish and/or Portuguese. It may also include music from other territories where Spanish- and Portuguese-language music is made.
Terminology and categorization.
Because the majority of Latino immigrants living in New York City in the 1950s were of Puerto Rican or Cuban descent, "Latin music" had been stereotyped as music simply originating from the Spanish Caribbean. The popularization of bossa nova and Herb Alpert's Mexican-influenced sounds in the 1960s did little to change the perceived image of Latin music. In 1969, the first international organization which attempted to define Latin music was the Festival Mundial de la Canción Latina which included Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian-speaking countries across Latin America and Europe. However, the event only lasted for two years. Since then, the music industry classifies all music sung in Spanish or Portuguese as Latin music, including musics from Spain and Portugal.
Following protests from Latinos in New York, a category for Latin music was created by National Recording Academy (NARAS) for the Grammy Awards titled Best Latin Recording in 1975. Enrique Fernandez wrote in "Billboard" that the lone category for Latin music meant that all Latin music genres had to compete with each other despite the distinct sounds of the genre. He also noted that the accolade was usually given to performers of tropical music. Eight years later, the organization debuted three new categories for Latin music: Best Latin Pop Performance, Best Mexican/Mexican-American Performance, and Best Tropical Latin Performance. Latin pop is a catch-all for any pop music sung in Spanish, while Mexican/Mexican-American (also to referred to as Regional Mexican) is defined as any musical style originating from Mexico or influences by its immigrants in the United States including Tejano, and tropical music is any music from the Spanish Caribbean.
In 1997, NARAS established the Latin Recording Academy (LARAS) in an effort to expand its operations in both Latin America and Spain. In September 2000, LARAS launched the Latin Grammy Awards, a separate award ceremony from the Grammy Awards. Its organizers stated that the Latin music universe was too large to fit within the Grammys. Michael Greene, former head of NARAS, said that the process of creating the Latin Grammy Awards was complicated due to the diverse Latin musical styles, noting that the only thing they had in common was language. As a result, the Latin Grammy Awards are presented to records performed in Spanish or Portuguese, while the organization focuses on music from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal.
Since the late 1990s, the United States has seen increasing growth in its population of "Latinos", a term popularized since the 1960s due to confusing the wrong term "Spanish" with the more proper but less popular term "Hispanic". The music industry in the United States began to refer to any kind of music featuring Spanish vocals as "Latin music". Under this definition, Spanish sung in any genre is categorized as "Latin". In turn, this has led to artists from Spain being labelled as "Latin" because they sing in the same language.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and "Billboard" magazine use this definition of Latin music to track sales of Spanish-language records in the United States. "Billboard" however considers an artist to be "Latin" if they perform in Spanish or Portuguese. The RIAA initiated the "Los Premios de Oro y Platino" ("The Gold and Platinum Awards" in Spanish) in 2000 to certify sales of Latin music albums and singles under a different threshold than its standard certifications. "Billboard" divides its Latin music charts into three subcategories: Latin pop, Regional Mexican, and tropical. A fourth subcategory was added in the mid 2000s to address the rise of Latin urban music genres such as Latin hip hop and reggaeton.
History.
1940s–1950s.
The term "Latin music" originated from the United States due to the growing influence of Latino Americans in the American music market, including pioneers Xavier Cugat (1940s) and Tito Puente (1950s) and accelerating in later decades. As one author explained the rising popularity from the 1940s: "Latin America, the one part of the world not engulfed in World War II, became a favorite topic for songs and films for Americans who wanted momentarily to forget about the conflagration." Wartime propaganda for America's "Good Neighbor Policy" further enhanced the cultural impact. Pérez Prado composed such famous pieces as "Mambo No. 5" and "Mambo No. 8". At the height of the mambo movement in 1955, Pérez hit number one on the American charts with a cha-cha-chá version of "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White". “El manisero”, known in English as “The Peanut Vendor”, is a Cuban son-pregón composed by Moisés Simons. Together with "Guantanamera", it is arguably the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician. "The Peanut Vendor" has been recorded more than 160 times, sold over a million copies of sheet music, and was the first million-selling 78 rpm single of Cuban music.
1960s.
The Brazilian bossa nova became widespread in Latin America and later became an international trend, led especially by Antônio Carlos Jobim. Rock en español became popular with the younger generation of Latinos in Latin America, for example the Argentine band Almendra. Mexican-American Latin rock guitarist Carlos Santana began decades of popularity. By the late 60s, the boogaloo boom was coming, and boogaloo musicians such as Pérez Prado, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente released boogaloo singles and albums. Most of the other groups were young musicians such as Pucho &amp; His Latin Soul Brothers and Joe Bataan.
Early examples of boogaloo were 1966 music by Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz. The biggest boogaloo hit of the '60s was "Bang Bang" by the Joe Cuba Sextet in 1966. Hits by other groups included Johnny Colón's "Boogaloo Blues", Pete Rodríguez's "I Like It like That"(1967).
1970s.
Salsa music became the dominant genre of tropical music in the 1970s. Fania Records was credited for popularizing salsa music, with acts such as Rubén Blades, Héctor Lavoe, and Celia Cruz expanding the audience. In the late 1970s, an influx of balladeers from Spain such as Julio Iglesias, Camilo Sesto, and Raphael established their presence on the music charts both in Latin America and the US Latin market. In 1972, OTI Festival was established by the Organización de Telecomunicaciones de Iberoamérica as a songwriting contest to interconnect the Ibero-American countries (Latin America, Spain, and Portugal). Ramiro Burr of "Billboard" remarked that the contest was considered to be the "largest and most prestigious songwriting festival in the Latin music world".
1980s.
In the 1980s, the Latin ballad continued to be the main form of Latin pop music, with Juan Gabriel, José José, Julio Iglesias, Roberto Carlos, and José Luis Rodríguez dominating the charts. Salsa music lost some traction, and its rhythm slowed with more emphasis on romantic lyrics. This became known as the salsa romantica era.
1990s.
In the Regional Mexican field, Tejano music became the most prominent genre and one of the fastest-growing music genres in the United States. On January 10, 1990, EMI Latin bought Bob Grever's Cara Records, beginning the golden age of Tejano music. Tejano music's growth exploded, as journalist Ramiro Burr put it "a stubborn brushfire spread over the horizon", the genre converted radio stations to play Tejano music. This garnered the attention of record labels across the United States who were eager to expand their rosters. In 1991, Warner Nashville created Warner Discos specifically for Tejano artists crossing over into country music while Arista Nashville erected Artista Texas with the same objective. Other labels such as PolyGram Latino and WEA Latina began deliberations to exclusively sign Tejano acts, while Fonovisa began signing Tejano musicians. These incentives helped expand performers' fanbases beyond Texas and the southwest. It also brought the genre to territories unfamiliar with the genre. The golden age is generally considered by journalists to have ended on March 31, 1995, when Selena was shot and killed. Tejano music set five consecutive years of sales and concert attendance records from 1990 to 1995. Mario Tarradell of "The Dallas Morning News" wrote that the singles from "Amor Prohibido" elevated Selena to success on Latin radio whose promoters had not previously taken the singer seriously. By 1994, Tejano acts were effortless selling 100,000 units of their albums, while La Mafia and Selena were the two most commercially successful Tejano artists. Selena's music led the genre's 1990s revival and made it marketable for the first time. Tejano music is believed by Jose Behar to have hit Mexico "like an atomic bomb" by 1994. While Tejano singer Emilio Navaira decided on a crossover into American country music, preparations began for Selena's crossover into American pop music. The singer was fatally wounded after a confrontation with Yolanda Saldivar, a former friend and manager of the singer's fan club and boutiques. Her unfinished crossover album, "Dreaming of You" (1995), became the first mostly-Spanish album to debut and peak at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 chart. Tejano music suffered and its popularity waned following Selena's death, and record labels began abandoning their Tejano artists while radio stations in the United States switched from Tejano to Regional Mexican music.
By the mid-1990s, Tejano music was replaced by Latin pop as the dominant Latin music genre in the United States. Gloria and her husband Emilio Estefan are considered to have "open[ed] the door" to a number of artists throughout the 1990s decade. Their production is believed to have provided Mexican singer Thalía with her first platinum award for "En éxtasis" (1995). Colombian pop rock singer Shakira released her international debut album "Pies Descalzos" (1995). She worked closely with the Estefans for her album "Dónde Están Los Ladrones?" (1998), which topped the US "Billboard" Top Latin Albums chart. The album's success and production by the Estefans, provided Shakira with a lucrative formula that she used for her English-language crossover which was released in 2001. Enrique Iglesias, the son of Spanish singer-songwriter Julio Iglesias, released two albums; his self-titled album released in 1995, and "Vivir" (1997), that concentrated on pop ballads and rhythms. With improvements in his songwriting on "Vivir", Enrique was able to successfully convey "his innermost thoughts and feelings". Critics found "Vivir" to be superior to Enrique's contemporaries and reportedly sold over five million copies in Asia, Europe, and South and Central America within a week of its release, the first Latin album to do so. Ricky Martin's hip-shaking dance moves were compared to those of Elvis Presley among American music critics seeking to find an artist who resembled Martin's dance moves and their effect on the United States pop market. In 1998, music and ticket sales of Martin grossed $106 million, which was the equivalent of the total exports of Puerto Rico to Mexico in 1996. His 1998 album "Vuelve" contained "La Copa de la Vida", which became the official 1998 FIFA World Cup song. This provided Martin with worldwide visibility, though it was his performance of the recording at the 1999 Grammy Awards that brought Martin attention from American audiences. In 1999, he released his self-titled album which contained the English-language number-one song "Livin' la Vida Loca". Following the commercial and critical success of the film "Selena" (1997), Jennifer Lopez catapulted to fame in the title role. Lopez entered the music market following a string of films and released her debut recording "On the 6" (1999), which she described as a Latin soul album.
Bolero music saw a resurgence of popularity with the younger audience. Mexican singer Luis Miguel was credited for the renewed interest with the success of his album, "Romance" (1991), a collection of classics covered by the artist. Around the same time, artists from Italy such as Eros Ramazzotti, Laura Pausini, and Nek successfully crossed over to the Latin music field by recording Spanish-language versions of their songs. In the tropical music field, merengue, which had gained attention in the 1980s, rivaled salsa in popularity.
2000s.
In the mid-2000s, reggaeton became popular in the mainstream market, with Héctor el Father Tego Calderón, Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Wisin &amp; Yandel considered to be the frontiers of the genre. In the tropical music