Important points about Latin Music!
- Latin music began with colonization of South America. The Portuguese, Spanish, African and Caribbean natives were all slaves and expressed/communicated through music. This blending of cultures and music created Latin music.
- Latin music surfaced popular music when it was featured in jazz music in the early 1940’s.
- Latin music has a strong connection with dancing, a few styles of Latin music/dancing are: mambo, tango and the salsa. Because of its’ strong connection to dancing, Latin music has strong beat patterns and expressive melody lines.
- There are so many subgenres of Latin. But for our purposes we’ll generally be looking at Latin Jazz Instrumentation: bass, drums, guitar, horns (trumpets, saxophones, etc), vocals (sometimes but not always), piano, acoustic guitar, cymbals and calves.
- Some Latin Jazz artists are: Tito Puente, Poncho Sanchez, Arturo Sandoval
- Latin Pop: Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Selena, Becky G, Marc Anthony, etc..
- Reggaeton Artists: Daddy Yankee, J. Balvin, Bad Bunny, Karol G, etc…
Sites to reference…
History of Latin Music, TeachRock Handout
Santana and Latin Rock, TeachRock Handout