Mexican and Latin American Music in California
Because of its historical and cultural connections to Mexico and strong Hispanic influences, California hosts numerous Spanish language radio stations, variety music shows and local based Mariachi and Mexican folk music bands. Popular music such as Ranchera, Norteño, son music can be heard on many radio stations across the state from the San Francisco Bay Area to Central Valley. Among the most celebrated Mexican American singers from California are Jenni Rivera, Carlos Santana and Ritchie Valens. Southern California has been home to Spanish language singers and musicians for over 100 years. La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley has worked promote Salsa and traditional Latin American music to encourage a strong cultural connection between Californians and Latin Americans.
Reggaeton is becoming popular in California due to the success of rappers Daddy Yankee, Pitbull and Ruben Blades who have broken across language barriers into mainstream music. Reggaeton dance clubs can be found in Long Beach, Los Angeles and Chula Vista. Fusing reggaeton with hip hop music has ensured the genre's popularity among both young and old aficionados of Latin music. Salsa music has had success as popular dance music since the early 1980s. Its popularity continues due to popular music shows So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars. Local Salsa and Caribbean music groups regularly perform in Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Read more about this topic: Music Of California
Famous quotes containing the words mexican, latin, american, music and/or california:
“The germ of violence is laid bare in the child abuser by the sheer accident of his individual experience ... in a word, to a greater degree than we like to admit, we are all potential child abusers.”
—F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Mexican professor of pathology, author. “Reflections on Child Abuse,” Notes of an Anatomist (1985)
“Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets—we remember only.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“We have advanced by leaps to the Pacific, and left many a lesser Oregon and California unexplored behind us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)