Before Grammy winner Tommy Torres BM ’93 was releasing chart-topping hits as a solo artist and producing for the likes of Ricky Martin, Jesse & Joy, and Alejandro Sanz ’13H, he was an assistant engineer for Sony in New York, watching sessions with Michael Jackson and Nirvana. But he hadn’t been promoted in years, so he started making demos in those same studios at night and sending them everywhere. One day, demo in hand, he snuck into the office of fabled A&R VP Tomás Muñoz, who was on the phone saying that Ricky Martin shouldn’t thank his grandmother in his album Vuelve because it went against the “international, seductive man” they were portraying. Basically, “James Bond would never do that,” laughs Torres. Muñoz kept his demo and said, “No more intrusions.” Some time later, he said it was clear that music was Torres’s calling and he’d have a career in it. “But why are you here?” Muñoz said. “I’m the only one working in Spanish and I’m retiring. Move to Miami.” Two months later, Torres was driving a U-Haul with his girlfriend. He says: “The guy couldn’t have been more right.”
Miami-Dade is the country’s only county where most residents are immigrants. Spanish is king and an ear for accents is queen. Un cubano is a sandwich, a coffee, and a Cuban man. The nightlife’s intense but not all flash and velvet ropes. Wildlife abounds; tourists, too. Home for many locals is still beyond the sea. Even so, for sing- er-songwriter Nicolle Horbath BM ’22, “Miami feels very close to Barranquilla, and feeling rooted helps inspire me.” In 2024, her Latin Grammy nomination for Best New Artist was announced here by fellow Colombian Juanes. Miami’s less a US city, more a tropical meeting place for Latin America. And for decades it’s been a prominent global hub for Latin music, though partly thanks to digital media, artists no longer feel obligated to record their breakout album here. Many whose music is produced and managed in Miami live abroad, working here occasionally, if at all. Still, the city’s home to numerous studios, labels, producers, songwriters, artists, and icons (like Gloria and Emilio Estefan ’07H). And, in recent years, Berklee alumni have become increasingly vital to that mix. EDM, hip-hop, jazz, and others are smaller yet notable parts of the industry (160,000 attended last year’s Ultra Music Festival, and the city’s a magnet for DJs worldwide). It’s tough to pin down Miami. But at its core, it’s a vibrant concoction as porous as its limestone foundation, absorbing all the sazón, sounds, and stories touching its shores. Explosion, fever, craze! You’ll often hear those words describing Latin music’s popularity, as if it’s a sudden, singular phenomenon. But the category covers a sweeping range of music from many countries, so different time periods mean different mainstream sounds. And Latin music’s global popularity has ebbed and flowed for over a century, starting with tango in Europe, then rumba and other Cuban styles creating hits featured in Hollywood’s early sound films. Fast-forward through various swells of salsa, Latin pop, regional Mexican, rock en español, and many others, and you reach this century’s first global wave. Actually, it really kicked off in 1998, with Ricky Martin’s thrilling “La Copa de la Vida” performance at the World Cup Final in France—over a billion watched—followed by another rendition at the ’99 Grammys, the elaborate production getting a standing ovation. Torres arrived in Miami in 1999, and it wasn’t long before he was producing multi-platinum artist Ednita Nazario, who recommended him to Martin. His career boomed afterward, earning multiple accolades, including a Berklee Alumni Achievement Award in 2023. Two decades on, Torres says that if, in the afterlife, he could show his work to “John Lennon and other artists . . . I’d
Palm trees swaying in front of the miami skyline. photo by Michael Russell
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