Rockefeller Center’s Citi Concert Series on TODAY is a summer Friday tradition from May through September. Rockefeller Center is a living backdrop, and you might even get on TV. But you have to get there before 5am. Ouch!
2026 Citi Concert Series on TODAY
For the Latin community, this year’s roster features two artists whose roots speak directly to our world: a Grammy-winning South African superstar carrying the sounds of Zulu and African pop to Midtown, and a Queens-born Latina whose Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage flows through every note she writes.
Tyla
Grammy-winning South African amapiano
Fri, July 24, arrive before 5am
FREE to both Fan Pass holders and walk ups
South African amapiano is basically Afro-house music from the Soweto townships with an iconic log drum sound and unique dance moves, danced alone or in synchronized groups. Amapiano dance signatures include turning out the hip, with internal pendulums of micro movements above and below, through long musical phrases. It’s pretty cool. Most amapiano is sung in Zulu, but Tyla pushed it onto the world stage in English with her global hit “Water.”
Tyla has a wonderful heritage. Her mother is Zulu with some Irish ancestry. Her father is of Indian heritage through Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean.
Kíko ~ My heritage is mixed like Tyla. I’m a quarter Persian through India for over a thousand years, and then Thailand. When I first looked at her, I read Tyla as African because of her braids, video casting, and the way she dances with her hips. But then I thought that she looks like my Indian family, and sure enough.
The Indian African mix is common throughout East Africa because the Monsoon Trade connected the regions since ancient times. In the Americas, there are large Afro-Indian communities in Trinidad and the Guyanas. That’s why we have good curry at Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade.
Melanie Martinez
Art pop rock by a Dominican-Puerto Rican New Yorker
Fri, June 26, arrive before 5am
FREE to both Fan Pass holders and walk ups
Born in Astoria, Queens, Melanie Martinez is of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent — raised in the same New York City neighborhoods where Latin culture has always burned brightest. Her art-pop universe is entirely her own creation: cinematic, surreal, and emotionally unrelenting, with roots in the Caribbean that quietly shape the emotional core of everything she makes.
Specifically, saints, orishas, and lwas are present in many Caribbean’s lives. So Melanie’s imaginary world is a New York mirror for the real Caribbean world.
She rose to national attention on The Voice and has since built one of the most devoted fanbases in alternative pop, with albums like Cry Baby, K-12, and PORTALS cementing her reputation as one of the most singular artists of her generation. Her June 26 performance at the TODAY Plaza will be a full sensory experience.
Get Tickets
You can just show up as General Admission before 5am and be admitted on a space available basis, but you never know. For top artists, the line forms as early as 7pm on the night before the show.
It’s easier to get in with a Fan Pass available through an online lottery on the show’s website.