There is Latin music in NYC in stadiums, arenas, concert halls, clubs, restaurants and bars, parks and even on the streets.
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) was started at the Warehouse Club in Chicago 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 sent out into the world.
Rosa Antonelli, Argentine Concert Pianist, Takes You from Chopin to Ginastera to Piazzolla
Thu, September 17, 2020 at 7:30pm 🇦🇷 🇺🇸 CONSULATE OF ARGENTINA NY Antonelli’s YouTube Free
New York City’s Top DJ is Colombian-born Alex Sensation
Monday-Saturday LA MEGA FM 97.9
Continue Reading New York City’s Top DJ is Colombian-born Alex Sensation
Las mañanitas a nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe
Fri, December 11, 2020 St. Patrick’s Cathedral MIDTOWN EAST, NYC Celebrate the Our Lady of Guadalupe’s birthday with Don Jaime Lucero of Casa Puebla, mariachi and folk dancers
Continue Reading Las mañanitas a nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe
La Bohème
Saturday, January 2, 2021 January 2 – April 17 METROPOLITAN OPERA Lincoln Center, NYC – Eleonara Buratto (Mimi) Dmytro Popov (Rodolfo)
Buika is the Spanish Queen of Flamenco Soul
March 12, 2020 CARNEGIE HALL Midtown, Manhattan -Sponsored byCarnegie Hall
Continue Reading Buika is the Spanish Queen of Flamenco Soul
Los Hacheros
Sundays VERLAINE Lower East Side, NYC – Thursday, April 2, 2020 GONZALEZ Y GONZALEZ Greenwich Village, NYC – Puerto Rican Golden Age salsa for dancing. ¡WEPA! -Original SponsorCarnegie Hall
Los Aurora
Sunday, March 29, 2020 WORLD MUSIC INSTITUTE LE POISSON ROUGE Greenwich Village, NYC – An entertaining blend of flamenco, jazz and rock that is part of the Nuevo Flamenco movement out of Barcelona, Spain. -Sponsored byWorld Music Institute
Così fan tutte
Wednesday, March 4, 2020 METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE Lincoln Center, NYC – Mozart’s Italian rom-com opera is back in McCermott’s Coney Island setting February 15-March 14, 2020.
Maelo Ruiz
Friday, March 20, 2020 LA BOOM NYC Woodside, Queens The Puerto Rican salsa romántica singer is joined by Colombian Vallenato group Binomio de Oro.
Latin Music is as Diverse as Latins
These categories are based on the Latin Grammy categories.
Latin Pop in NYC
Thalia is the “Queen of Latin Pop,” but the music takes many…
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 Hip-Hop in NYC
Hip-Hop was created by African American and Caribbean American kids in The…
Reggaeton in NYC
Reggaeton is today’s global youth music and the sound of young New…
Latin Trap
Latin Rock
Latin rock has come a long way from “La Bamba” in 1958.…
Latin Alternative
Tropical
Tropical is Caribbean music, but it’s not only from the islands. Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Central America, including Mexico, have Caribbean cultures on their coasts too.
The category includes the modern tropical forms: salsa, merengue/bachata (Dominican Republic), and cumbia/vallento (Colombia).
Salsa in NYC
Salsa is 1950s Cuban son montuno and rumba dance music mixed with Puerto Rican bomba and plena, and Harlem swing…
Cumbia & Vallenato in NYC
Cumbia and Vallenato are Afro-Indigenous folk music and dances from Caribbean Colombia that are…
Merengue & Bachata in NYC
Merengue and Bachata are tropical rhythms from the Dominican Republic. Both originated…
Traditional Tropical
This category includes son, danzón, bolero, chachachá, bomba, plena, danza, rumba, joropo and mambo.
Son is the Cuban root of a lot of Latin music. It’s the first blend of Spanish flamenco guitar and African rhythm in the region around Santiago de Cuba. It has the feel of Spanish bolero, or troubadour lullabies. Buena Vista Social Club is the most famous son band.
Danzón is the national music and dance of Cuba. It’s influenced by the first international dance, the French contredanse. The Spanish version is the contradanza. Outside Havana, it’s called La Habanera (the way they dance in Havana.) The Habanera is the root of tango and salsa dancing.
These musics sound more Spanish until Arsenio Rodríguez re-Africanizes son montuno in the late 1930s and 1940s. In a way he brought the rumba of Havana and Matanzas in Eastern Cuba into the music. He adds congas and brings the rhythm forward. He adds piano so the guitar becomes a lead instrument instead of providing the rhythm. He adds more trumpets to create the modern Latin front line. He was a tres player, but and the rhythms become much more aggressive. This is the beginning of what becomes salsa in New York in the 1970s.
Contemporary – Tropical Fusion
This category includes merengue, bachata, tropical pop, cueca, candombe, ska, Haitian kompa, socca (soca), zouk, bomba, plena and their derivatives. Soca is the Trinidadian music that blends rhythms from India with calypso. It is the sound of the West Indian Day Parade, New York Labor Day Carnival.
Regional Mexican
Mariachi & Ranchera in NYC
Mariachi is ranchera sung by bands or orchestras dressed in fancy charro cowboy outfits.…
Banda
Tejano
Norteño
Traditional Latin
Traditional music includes folk, flamenco and tango. All have also developed urban forms.
Folk Music & Dance in NYC
Folk music and dance are traditional expressions of families and…
Flamenco NYC
Flamenco is a Spanish art form with influences from many cultures. There…
Tango Beat® in NYC
Tango is a folk music and dance from the African barrios along…
Latin Jazz in NYC
There is Latin Jazz in NYC at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, World Music Institute; at jazz clubs like Dizzy’s Club, Blue Note and Terraza 7;…
Latin Christian Music in NYC
There is Christian music in churches across the city, especially around the holidays.…
Portuguese Language
Portuguese Contemporary Pop
Portuguese Rock or Alternative
Samba NYC
Samba is an Afro-Brazilian rhythm from Bahia (northeastern Brazil) that was urbanized in the favelas of…
MPB
The Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) category includes the bossa nova (samba-jazz) of the 1960s and the popular music that followed in samba-rock, and samba-pop forms.
Bossa Nova
The world’s most popular music after the Beatles
Sertaneja
Sertaneja is Brazilian country music. In the same way that country music is popular in the United States, sertaneja is very popular in Brazil. It’s very folksy.
Portuguese-Language Roots Music
Fado NYC
Fado is Portuguese folk music about “saudade,” the deep longing you feel in your soul when far from home and your loved ones.…
Latin Children’s
Classical Music in NYC
Classical music is a rich tradition with Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Arab roots.…
Opera in NYC
There is Opera in New York City at the Metropolitan Opera House and David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, BAM and in the summer, in city parks.…
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
USA: Blues, Jazz, Country, Rock, Alternative
European: Classical, Flamenco, Fado
Asian: Flamenco (Romani are from northern India), Soca (Calypso with East Indian influences)
Sound System
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.