Latin music is the future

REVIEW

How the style is changing pop

2023.02.22

Credit

Article. Kim Doheon (Music Critic)

Photo Credit. Billboard

Latin music has conquered the world. The idea of it being an “emerging genre” or “music to keep your eye on” is a thing of the past. The Hispanic population in the United States overtook the Black population by numbers in the 1990s and a Latin wave washed over the US music market as artists like Ricky Martin, Shakira, Santana and Jennifer Lopez topped the Billboard chart time and time again. Today, we’re seeing a renaissance.

The currents of this trend can be seen just by looking at the news that’s come out of the industry in the first month of this year. First of all, consider the lineup for the 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the most famous music festival in the US: When BLACKPINK was announced to be the headliner, it made news all throughout Korea. j-hope headlined Lollapalooza last year, and now BLACKPINK will be the first K-pop group to be branded the highlight of a major US festival.

Outside Korea, Bad Bunny’s amazing accomplishments were in the spotlight as well. His first studio album, Un Verano Sin Ti, has been streamed over 18.5 billion times on Spotify since it was released last year, giving him the distinction of putting out the world’s most-streamed album of all time. He performed a veritable feast of feats, including spending 13 weeks at number one on the Billboard chart and raking in over $435 million from touring last year. Bad Bunny was the most popular singer in the world last year and proudly became the first Spanish-speaking artist from Latin America to be selected to headline one of the main US festivals.

And what about YouTube? The most popular music video on YouTube at the moment is “BZRP Music Sessions #53” from 2021 Latin Grammy Awards Producer of the Year-nominated Argentinian DJ Bizarrap and Shakira. The song was released on January 12, and by the 30th it had already amassed 180 million streams on Spotify, 230 million views on YouTube and reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

As the title suggests, the song is the 53rd entry in the Bizarrap Music Sessions series. Made in collaboration with various artists since 2019, the project has earned Bizarrap one billion views on YouTube. Latin pop queen Shakira mercilessly attacks famed soccer player Gerard Piqué for cheating on her overtop the young producer’s beats, edging out Bad Bunny for the most monthly listeners on Spotify. And the brands she name-drops in the song—Ferrari, Renault, Rolex, Casio—have enjoyed a surge of popularity thanks to this unexpected variety of viral marketing.

Last, there was Paris Fashion Week, the most prestigious event in the fashion world. The highlight of the event, the Louis Vuitton menswear collection, was exhibited at the Louvre on January 19, with artist Rosalía performing at their 2023 fall/winter fashion show.

Rosalía is the hottest artist working today, with her unprecedented album MOTOMAMI winning universal praise the world over last year, earning her eight nominations at the 23rd Latin Grammys from which she walked away with three, including Album of the Year. Born in Barcelona, Spain in 1993 and trained in the traditional art of the flamenco cantaora, the musical prodigy fell for pop music’s charms and conquered the many genres that make up Latin pop. Demonstrating an endless desire to create through her ever-changing art, she climbed atop a yellow low rider to add a special flair to Louis Vuitton’s first fashion week since the death of Virgil Abloh.

The Latin music explosion hasn’t rested since “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi sat at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for 16 weeks straight back in 2017, only taking a brief break during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, hit songs like Camila Cabello’s “Havana” and the J Balvin–Beyoncé collaboration “Mi Gente” made their debuts.

Latin music gained momentum with the rise of female rappers Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, while new artists like Osuna, Farruko and Bad Bunny—mixing trap beats and hip hop culture with dembow rhythm in the mid-2010s—and next-generation pop stars like Karol G, Becky G, and Natti Natasha quickly became major musicians in the category. Their trailblazing led the way for the great new artists of today, including Rosalía, Rauw Alejandro, Paulo Londra, Nicki Nicole, Trueno and, of course, Bad Bunny.

Amazingly, such successes are only the beginning. As of 2018, Latin music can immediately draw on a population of over 640 million in Latin America and more than 450 million Spanish speakers worldwide. The streaming and YouTube numbers that the artists pull in are on the level that even major pop stars elsewhere can’t ever be sure they’ll achieve, with figures in the tens of millions being typical and hit songs easily exceeding hundreds of millions of listens and views.

Their songs are also high quality. Contrary to popular belief in Korea, it’s not all dance music just there for fun. Thanks to endless collaboration spanning the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean and Africa, countless subgenres have emerged with the melodies and messages evolving rapidly beyond the unique underlying rhythms. 2023 is set to be overflowing with genres like bachata, which had its beginnings with the Dominican Republic’s working class, RKT, which grew in popularity among lower-class Argentines in the 2010s, and cumbia villera. With other subgenres like lo-fi pop and retro, Latin music covers vast ground across the music spectrum and resists being shoved into any one category.

Latin music shares a kind of camaraderie with K-pop, too. Both rapidly gained a following thanks to developments in music streaming, YouTube and social media. They also share in common broad labels that encompass their respective artists’ nationalities and a plethora of creative approaches rather than specific musical elements. Another similarity can be seen among superstars like BTS and Bad Bunny who shot to stardom with huge audiences without using English. The difference between the two, however, is in consumer patterns: While K-pop has fans across the entire world, Latin music targets Latino Americans and the entire Hispanosphere.

Moreover, the K-pop craze made it to Latin America beginning in the early 2010s. The K-pop groups who were active at the time put on concerts for tens of thousands of fans in countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. With easy access to the music of superstars from the other side of the world thanks to advancements in social media, South American fans participated in the globalization of K-pop through endless fan-produced content like dance covers and challenges and numerous fan-organized events and activities.

But despite all this, Latin music remains relatively unknown in Korea. Naturally, there have always been K-pop groups and songs that draw on elements of Latin music. There have also been songs that specificity target the Latin market, either by using now global hit genres like reggaeton and moombahton or including Spanish expressions. Still, few Koreans follow trending Latin music, the artists or their exciting work seriously. They’re being held back by the language barrier and a sense of the unfamiliar; the direct expression of emotion in the lyrics and the rhythms that are unique to the music are a far cry from what Koreans are used to hearing in English-language American songs.

What’s encouraging is that K-pop tends to enter Spanish-speaking markets with an eye to do something beyond merely making money, eager to interact with the local culture. CHUNG HA sang “Demente,” featuring Puerto Rican artist Guaynaa, in Spanish, and girl group MOMOLAND went to Mexico last year to promote their song “Yummy Yummy Love,” a collaboration with singer Natti Natasha, who has over 12 million subscribers on YouTube. Such songs have also become more polished. LE SSERAFIM’s 2022 hit “ANTIFRAGILE,” for instance, exudes endless confidence through an expert blend of the “anti ti ti ti” chant, fantastic whistle sample, the dry Latin hip hop beat and an Afro-pop rhythm.

Latin music’s performance in the global space gives K-pop a lot to think about. More than simply following the basic formula of Western pop music, Latin music takes the formula apart and reassembles it to create a novel form of pop music that gives a peek into another culture, so it’s better that we see it as having a friendly rivalry with K-pop. We love the way K-pop entertains audiences with sophisticated stories, vigorous choreography and multi-faceted design, and nothing can beat how Latin music shines with an exuberance and freedom that can’t be constricted. As two partners in music, Latin music and K-pop are rewriting pop music history with their transformative new songs. In the words of Rosalía in her song “SAOKO,” “Yo me transformo.” With the world so tuned into Latin music and Latin America showing its love for K-pop, K-pop too should keep its ears open to Latin music.