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Latin Music in NYC

Latin music in NYC is on the streets and in bars, restaurants, clubs and concert halls.

Swing (1935-1946), bebop modern jazz (1940s), Latin jazz (1943), disco (1970), salsa (1970s) and hip-hop (1970s) are musical forms of the City itself. Jazz and reggaeton passed through and were forever changed by New York. House music (1980s) started at the Warehouse Club in Chicago, but it was started by New York DJ Frankie Knuckles.

The music publishers and Tin Pan Alley are New York. It all gets mixed up with Broadway too. As the world media capital, whatever happens in New York gets broadcast to the world.

Latin Music in NYC

Latin Music Archive

Latin Music Festivals in NYC

More Latin Music Festivals

Latin Music is as Diverse as Latins

These are the Latin Grammy categories. There is some controversy about them. Some say the Urban label is discriminatory.

The categories seem to be ranked roughly by popularity. Regional Mexican is the most popular Latin music in the United States, but it’s way down the list.

Urban

“Urban” music isn’t only popular in cities. It’s the music of today’s youth of every heritage around the world. Everybody wants to get down. This is how the kids play today.

Rap

Latin Trap

Latin Alternative

Tropical

Tropical is Caribbean music, and it’s not only from the islands. Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and most of Central America have Caribbean cultures on their coasts too.

The category includes salsa, merengue/bachata (Dominican Republic), cumbia/vallento (Colombia). The calypso and soca music of Trinidad, Guayana, Suriname and French Guiana seem to be left out.

Cumbia/Vallenato

Regional Mexican

Traditional Latin

Folk

Flamenco

Tango

Latin Christian

Portuguese Language

Samba/Pogode

MPB

Sertaneja

Latin Children’s

Latin Music blends many traditions

Classical music and opera have Italian roots. Brazilian music is African and Portuguese. Caribbean music is Creole. It’s African mixed with French or Spanish.

Popular American music is Caribbean through New Orleans. So blues, jazz, gospel, country, swing, rock, salsa, hip hop, reggaeton and trap have African roots through the Caribbean. We also have French, English, and Irish traditions mixed in.

Latin music in New York City is mostly Urban and Tropical from the Caribbean, but the most popular Latin music across the United States is Regional Mexican.

We are taught to see places through the eyes of the last colonizer, but something unspoken ties the entire Caribbean together. Our common Indigenous (Taíno and Carib), then Spanish, African and French roots are still there underneath British and Dutch colonial influences. New Orleans is a Caribbean city.

The African influence on the music of the Americas is much bigger than we are led to believe. In the times of human enslavement and Jim Crow (institutional racism in the United States), promoters repackaged Black culture as White culture for marketing purposes. Even country music of the United States has African roots.

Urban: Hip-Hop, House, Reggaeton, Latin Trap

Tropical:

  • Cuban: Rumba, Son, Salsa, Timba
  • Dominican: Merengue, Bachata, Salsa
  • Puerto Rican: Bomba, Plena, Salsa
  • Colombian: Cumbia, Vallenato, Currulao, Salsa
  • Venezuelan: Tambor, Salsa

Mexican: Regional (Banda, Norteño, Corridos, Mexican Cumbia), Ranchera/Mariachi

Brazilian: Choro, Samba, Bossa Nova, MPB, Forró, Sertaneja, Funk Carioca

American (U.S.): Blues, Jazz, Country, Rock, Alternative

European: Classical, Flamenco, Fado

Asian: Flamenco (Romani are from northern India), Soca (Calypso with East Indian influences)

Sound System

Latin Music NYC soundsystem (Alessandro Flore/Dreamstime)
Latin Music NYC soundsystem (Alessandro Flore/Dreamstime)

This is a Jamaican sound system. It’s for a party in the neighborhood. Nowadays there is sound system culture in Brazilian favelas and Colombian comunas, but it’s originally a Jamaican thing.

DJ Cool Herc (Clive Campbell) threw the first hip-hop parties. It all started at “His Back to School Jam” at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in Morris Heights, The Bronx. DJ Cool Herc did several hip-hop firsts but he is remembered for his giant speakers, his “herculords.” Clive Campbell is a New Yorker, but he was born in Kingston, Jamaica. These are some of the Caribbean roots of hip-hop.

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