There’s a lot of history packed in this two-minute song: “La Bamba” is a traditional Mexican wedding song, performed in the regional son jarocho musical style of Veracruz. Radiating cool like an ice block in the wind, Moré created the standard by which all future Latin pop Lotharios were judged. In 1999 he was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame, and immortalized in the 2006 film El Benny. Unlike many of his big band contemporaries, Moré refused to leave his home in Cuba, and died due to complications from liver failure in 1963. But after the 1959 communist revolution, Fidel Castro nationalized the Cuban music industry, forcing the American-owned label to relocate to Miami, Florida. Moré, along with fellow Cuban icons La Lupe and Pacho Alonso, was signed to RCA subsidiary label Discuba in 1956. Accentuated with booming Afro-Latin percussion and horn-heavy American big band exoticism, the track’s legacy nevertheless hinges on Moré’s sultry and seductive tenor. Recorded with the Rafael de Paz Orchestra in Mexico City, the music doesn’t move so much as it glides, with a syncopated swing that’s puro Cubano. “Bonito y Sabroso,” the most dynamic of the songs recorded by Cuban mambo masters Pérez Prado and Benny Moré, serves as a guidepost to the genre’s Golden Age. Rolling Stone contributors selected 50 of the most influential songs in Latin pop history, ranked in chronological order. Some of the most famous Latin pop songs have survived military dictatorships, war, famine and natural disasters – and they still hold up in spite of passing trends. Just ask Romeo Santos and the Bronx-based bachata group Aventura, whose 2002 single “Obsesión” scored Number Ones across France, Italy and Germany before the United States caught on.Įncompassing everything from salsa to rock en español, Latin pop is a constantly evolving genre colored by the traditions, migrations and innovations of Latinx people in spite of all odds. From the Cuban mambo craze of the 1950s to the global virality of “Despacito,” Latin American music has been a fixture of popular music around the world so long as it’s been recorded. and the Blackout All-Stars supergroup in 1996.īy reading Anglophone music media, one might think Latin pop’s ubiquity in the United States is a sudden one – but it’s hardly as recent a phenomenon as new listeners believe. This summer “Latino Gang” Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin nabbed the Number One spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with their Latin trap hit, “I Like It.” But in sampling the Tony Pabon and Manny Rodriguez-penned single, “I Like It Like That,” this win marks the third time the boogaloo song has cycled through the United States pop chart: first by Pete Rodríguez, whose original recording hit Number 25 in 1967 then again by Tito Puente, Sheila E. With Latin pop getting heightened visibility in the American mainstream this year, it’s time we call for a history lesson.
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