“ I haven’t seen a place Latin music is not touching.” Rodney Alejandro BM ’97
choose some of my own music, though it’d be easier to share what I did for Ricky”—especially the MTV Unplugged album. The 2006 record was hard to mess up given Martin’s amazing repertoire, Torres explains. But his arrangements helped show “a Ricky we hadn’t seen” on stage: spontaneous, relaxed, with no choreography or intricate production. And in a pioneering concept, Torres suggested featuring native Puerto Rican instruments and music, espe- cially in “Tu Recuerdo” and “Pégate,” new songs he produced and cowrote. Now when he hears the cuatro playing around the world and people singing those songs, he proudly feels he “fulfilled the musical and the cultural, patriotic part” of being an artist. Several years after “Gasolina” was released, I was in a club in Shanghai when suddenly the song’s revving intro took over, and everyone was dancing to what my friends and I’d been partying to for years back home in Puerto Rico: reggaetón. I took in the scene, full of goosebumps. I didn’t expect a generation of reggaetón superstars—most already known in PR—would follow, redefining mainstream Latin music. More surprising was that 13 years after “Gasolina,” Daddy Yankee struck again with an even
bigger song, Luis Fonsi’s soulful voice taking the lead while the Puerto Rican cuatro played throughout. As the whole planet knows, “Despacito” was a monster hit. The video is YouTube’s second-most- watched ever. Even covers in countless languages went viral. The song (and what followed) gave Latin music so much extra fuel that “it feels like the up and down is over,” says producer and engineer Carlos Perez de Anda BM ’14. Globally, “Latin music is here to stay.” In 2017, US Latin music revenues jumped 37 percent, then crossed $1 billion for the first time in 2022, according to the RIAA. In 2024, recorded music revenues in Latin America rose 23 percent, reported the International Federation of the Phono- graphic Industry. Throughout Europe, artists such as Karol G, Christian Nodal, and Rosalía pack arenas. “I haven’t seen a place Latin music is not touching,” says Rodney Alejandro BM ’97, dean of professional writing and music technology at Berklee. He points to Jay Chou, one of the Chinese-speaking world’s biggest artists, adopting Latin pop in “Mojito,” and to K-pop companies launching Latin operations (e.g., HYBE). Fresh sounds are trending—like those of Peso Pluma and Elena Rose—as are collaborations with famous Asian performers—take J Balvin’s and Badshah’s trilingual “Voodoo,” and Lisa featuring
Cuban Salsa Dancers in Little Havana, Miami. photo by John Coletti
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