For some time now we have been pointing out in the press that the latin music and, with them, the Spanish language, have seeped into the global pop mainstream (from Madonna’s duets with Maluma to the achievements of a Bad Bunny, etc.). And so it is, although the recent Latin Grammys, although they had Seville as a beautiful setting, did not leave a trail conducive to triumphalism in a strictly Spanish key. The perception is that Spainbeyond the Rosalía talisman, participates very little in this great international wave, and it does not seem that that will change in 2024.
I am not referring only to commercial predominance of reggaeton. We have already seen how a genre that, in our eyes, looked like an exotic vestige and pure niche, such as the Mexican regional, gave a striking boost in 2023 through the fusion with new urban languages (the run lying incarnated by a Featherweight, who performed weeks ago at Sant Jordi and at the Wizink Center). She also bachata. And these days, ‘Billboard’, the unofficial organ of the American music industry, warns, in its New Year’s forecasts, that the corrido tumbado will strongly mutate towards the so-called ‘war dance’ (with ads like that duet from the producer Marshmello with the group Ruled Force), and the different forms of cumbia (the Mexican, in the foreground) and the Texan style. He adds other rising currents: the openly Christian and the one that merges Latinity with African or Asian hints.
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And Spanish music? There is no sign in this projection of the broad strokes that will govern emerging and influential Latin music on a global scale. Time to remember that Nowadays there are more Spanish speakers in the United States (57 million, although it is not an official language) that in Spain, a country relegated to fourth place (also behind the Mexican giant and Colombia). And, well, it is true that the United Kingdom ceded the representation of the English language to the United States decades ago, although the comparison produces a certain vertigo.
So, meanwhile, in other times, crooners and pop-rock bands (from Camilo Sesto to Hombres G) they made the Americas with great success, Now the current is going in the opposite direction.: there are Bad Bunny, Karol G, J. Balvin, Bizarrap, Rauw Alejandro, Sebastián Yatra and many others. Should Spain take music more seriously as an exportable industry and as a cultural and linguistic disseminating agent? Never before has the world looked so receptive.