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El Chapo de Sinaloa Vail Concert Commercial

YouTube videos for El Chapo de Sinaloa and Linda Ronstadt

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LA BAMBA AND ASSORTED OTHER LATINO BEATS

By Wayne Trujillo

Throughout the rock era, underground music enjoyed an almost supercilious vogue among the enlightened set. This aesthetic clique, positioned on the periphery of popular culture, typically decries anything mainstream as philistine rather than pristine. To their credit, these alternative enthusiasts of audio artistry often salute unheard ethnic music, usually in interpretations borrowed or covered by practitioners mimicking the ethnic or racial group.

Having noted that, it usually doesn't take long for the alternative to mitigate into mainstream. An obvious example is the evolution or rock and roll, a derivative of black blues that became a suburban staple largely popularized by Anglo-American artists.

While alternative artists typically have been the instruments through which niche music played across ethnic and racial divisions, minority musicians do crossover to both mainstream and alternative stardom rather than merely serving as an inspiration to a recent record. Even then, they often receive a delayed applause, hitting their commercial and critical stride long past the conventional prime for pop artists; performing for progressive audiences far removed from their roots.

The Blind Boys of Alabama instantly come to mind -- black musicians habiting rural churches and inner-city auditoriums well into middle age before alternative producers transported them to Broadway and concert halls frequented by the gentrified and, later, college campuses attended by the hip.

All of which makes a concert on September 26, 2008 in ritzy Vail, Colorado a noteworthy, even delicious, irony. When El Chapo de Sinaloa, a Mexican artist wildly popular among Spanish-speaking audiences, performed before a sell-out crowd at the ski resort's Dobson Ice Arena, the patrons weren't well-heeled liberals seeking esoteric but exciting entertainment. Artist and audience were Mexican transplants working, celebrating and singing in a foreign land thousands of miles and light years from their customs. And the primary impetus for this transportation of culture thousands of miles from home? Simple economics.

The global economy isn't bothered, bordered or bound by customs or language.

Morales Productions, a sister company to Latino Landscape, gambled that the Vail Valley's considerable Latino population would attend a concert headlined by a major Mexican star who regularly hits Billboard's Latin charts. El Chapo de Sinaloa isn't a household name across Main Street America; much less Vail's international clientele. Ski bums and service workers (not Latino) would be hard-pressed to identify the name; if they did, it's likely to confuse the singer with the drug kingpin sharing the moniker and home state in Mexico.

But thousands of Latino workers overlooked in the public and media perception of posh ski resorts did know El Chapo de Sinaloa. Or, at least, of him. More importantly, they love his music. And even if wealthy Mexicans have frequented Vail for decades, the influx of working-class Latinos converging on the ski resort's Lionshead area, where the concert occurred, made it seem as Vail were Mexican territory and Spanish the dominant language.

That such a parochial event could even occur, much less successfully, in an international jet-set destination underscores the pervasive Latino presence across the American map. More astonishingly, the concert and others similar herald an era of unapologetic ethnic aesthetics into the American psyche - from Wall Street to Main Street to Vail's Bridge Street (well, within a mile).

Comcast commercial for El Chapo de Sinaloa Vail concert

Traditional enclaves and venues that played undiluted ethnic refrains tended to be isolated -- exiled to barrios, ghettos and rural outposts largely ignored by American culture even if niche music frequently influenced the mainstream. Countless examples abound where popular culture freely borrowed the unabashed soul, emotions and rhythm unleashed in black churches and juke joints. The lusty horns and swaying beat of mariachis, salsa and ranchera appeared in not only La Bamba and Mongo Santamaria, but also country and western, jazz and Top 40 radio.

If the Civil Rights movement integrated black and white on the Billboard pop charts, the sheer numbers of Latinos in America today introduced the ethnic group, their music, their language--and to a lesser extent, their nuances and diversity--to suburbia. Legendary Latino stars like Juan Gabriel, venerated throughout Latin American and swathes of Europe and other global locales, seldom merit a mention in America's mainstream press and register hardly a blip on the national consciousness.

But, like many black blues and gospel greats, they are receiving belated respect from contemporary American audiences, albeit indirectly. Los Kumbia Kings, the brainchild of A. B. Quintanilla, the late Tejano songstress Selena's brother, racked up hits for over a decade, one of which covered Gabriel's classic, "No Tengo Dinero".

Los Kumbia Kings remained faithful to their inspiration, retaining the rollicking beat with an added sense of urgency. Updated with hip hop rhythms and rapped improvisations, the song saluted the past even as it embraced the present and foretold the future, which included an exploding fan base years and numbers way beyond the demographic and generation that made the original classic.

We've witnessed occasional bursts of unfettered Latino music to the national forefront in decades past, perhaps most notably with a trilogy of Linda Rondstadt releases in the 80's and 90's. Featuring traditional Mexican ranchera and Cubano rhythms, these recordings didn't concede their authenticity for commercialism, yet earned widespread attention, acclaim and sales. Still, Ronstadt's success at parlaying Latino artistry into relative commercial success resulted more from her established celebrity than a seismic breakthrough of the music. Ronstadt's established stardom allowed her success in side forays like opera, jazz standards and Spanish language canciones.

Likewise, academia often celebrated authentic ethnic artistry for years. But today intellectuals and students are swept up in a more serious effort to understand the variances of Latino culture that in past decades would've been fodder for elective courses and exotic studies.

Consider that Latino Landscape columnist Lorenzo Trujillo recently released a collaborative CD with artist El Rodriguez titled From Santa Fe to Denver. Trujillo's official identity as Assistant Dean of the University of Colorado Law School precludes an easy conception of him as an absorbed, dedicated musician. It would be easy to suspect his efforts as nothing more than an intellectual indulging a hobby. But his lifelong passion for the traditional music and dances of New Mexico's Spanish descendants earned him a master's degree and numerous fans as he deploys his experience, education and talent to educate audiences well outside the classroom and traditional venues the music and dances are routinely performed.

Today's Latino music is anything but niche. Beginning with Selena and continuing with Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Eva Longoria and a slew of other Latino artists, the American -- and global -- pop culture abounds with Latino talent.

Despite those superstars' mass appeal, more significant is the increasing presence on the American scene of Latino artists who aren't restricted or bothered by former corporate dictates that mandated crossover appeal and potential (such as translating lyrics and recording songs in English) before garnering major recording contracts and marketing dollars. Two such examples, El Chapo de Sinaloa and Los Kumbia Kings, aren't so much trendsetters as talented musicians guided by astute managers, chance and the explosive Latino presence in America that not only expands their markets, but also forces mainstream media to give increased attention to the Latino culture alongside their numbers.

Obviously, what's happening in Latino music is much more than sentimental tribute to dated musicians. There is immediacy and relevancy. Not unlike how President Barack Obama has assumed a pinnacle only imagined by at least two generations of Civil Rights leaders, Latinos introduction into mass media has introduced the ethnic group to Americans beyond the stale stereotypes past Latinos resisted for generations. Today's Latino artists record and perform on their own terms and turf, not to mention boast a beat and language that is uniquely their own.