Latino Music in the United States and Its Enduring Influence

Latinos represent the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, encompassing both recent immigrants and communities whose roots on American soil go back centuries before the nation itself was founded. The musical traditions and practices of Latinos have left a deep, though often insufficiently examined, mark on music throughout the United States. The very term “Latino music” underscores the immense breadth of this category and the challenges of making sweeping claims about it. It can refer to music performed or consumed by native-born or immigrant populations from diverse racial, class, and national origins, or even to stylistic elements that have little to do with Latino participation.

“Latino music” most commonly describes two major areas: the music of the US-Mexican borderlands stretching from Texas to California, which reaches the vast majority of US Latinos of Mexican heritage, and the music of Latinos with primarily Caribbean roots on the East Coast. This second area, often misleadingly called “Latin music,” has had a major impact on mainstream US popular culture. The category can also include Argentine tango, various genres from Brazil, styles introduced by newer Latino immigrant groups, such as Dominicans and Colombians, and even musical traditions from Spain, Portugal, and the Francophone Caribbean.

To define Latino music solely by its Latin American forerunners overlooks the distinct musical practices and stylistic innovations that have occurred within the United States itself. A long record of Latino music-making on US soil extends back to the seventeenth century. This includes the music of Franciscan missions in the Southwest, the intertwined French, Spanish, and Caribbean musical legacy of New Orleans, and Mexican-American corridos that tell the stories of individuals and communities on both sides of the border. These deep histories of interaction have been constantly renewed by new waves of immigration from Latin America and by growing interest from non-Latino musicians, audiences, and the commercial music business.

Latino music has been a driving force in US popular music. The entertainment industry has frequently drawn on it for dance crazes, from the tango craze of the 1910s to the rhumba of the 1930s, samba in the 1940s, mambo and cha cha cha in the 1950s, bossa nova in the 1960s, and Latin pop and reggaetón around the turn of the twenty-first century. Latino influences have also shaped popular genres not usually labeled as Latino. The habanera rhythmic figure, central to 1910s tango, became a staple of US popular music and, especially, of African-American music for most of the twentieth century. The mambo and chachachá of the 1950s left their stamp on early rock and R&B through Afro-Cuban bass lines and piano riffs. Latinos themselves have been among the creators and core audiences for the development of jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, doo-wop, hip hop, disco, punk, and early electronic dance music styles such as Hi-NRG and freestyle. Latino artists have also been leading figures in classical music and film scores within the United States.

Participation in varied musical genres allows Latinos to express different forms of self-imagination in relation to their own local communities, real or imagined Latin American homelands, the American mainstream, and distinct affinity groups. These expressions often go beyond simple narratives of assimilation or diasporic longing. Numerous Latino musical styles have arisen from fusion—sometimes deliberate, sometimes commercial, at times experimental or lucky—between Latin American, Latino, and US genres. Examples include Latin jazz, the pachuco boogies of postwar Los Angeles, Mexican-American Latin rock from the 1950s to the 1970s, and New York Puerto Rican boogaloo. Inter-ethnic exchange, particularly between African-Americans and Afro-Latinos, has often come about through segregated hiring practices that distinguished light-skinned musicians from Afro-Latino players, steering the latter toward African-American bands. Intra-Latino musical exchange has also been widespread, as when 1950s Cuban styles were enthusiastically adopted by Puerto Ricans in New York or Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles.

The inventiveness of US Latinos, often in conversation with African-American and mainstream US genres as well as Latin American styles, has had an impact on music in Latin America itself. The salsa style of the 1970s, for example, used Afro-Cuban musical language, was played by Puerto Ricans in New York, and conveyed a brash, politically aware spirit; it remains widely popular throughout Latin America. The United States’ advanced recording technology (particularly in the early twentieth century), its marketing and distribution systems—as seen in the “Latin Boom” of the 1990s and 2000s—and offers of political freedom compared with places like Haiti under the Duvalier regime have all been decisive in spreading this music across Latin America. Today, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York serve as primary hubs for Latino and Latin American music industries that range from the local to the global.

Latinos and their expressive culture have been central to the musical narratives of both the United States and Latin America. As the US Latino population expands and diversifies, this influence shows no sign of diminishing.