Latin American music, or the music of Latin America, is sometimes called Latin music. It includes the music of many countries and comes in many varieties, from the down-home conjunto music of Northern Mexico to the sophisticated habanera of Cuba, from the symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos to the simple and moving Andean flute.
Music has played an important part in Latin America's turbulent recent history, for example the nueva cancion movement.
Not to be forgotten also is the fact that Latin America produced one of the greatest boy bands in history, Menudo, out of which Martin came from, and which spawned mass hysteria worldwide and a string of other groups (Such as Mexico's Magneto, Puerto Rico's Los Chicos and Venezuela's Los Chamos and Ufff that tried to imitate Menudo's success. Chayanne, now an international superstar, was a member of Los Chicos.
Menudo was preceded by another Edgardo Diaz creation, Spain's La Pandilla.
Although Spain isn't a part of Latin America, Spanish music and Latin American music strongly cross-fertilized each other, but Latin music also absorbed influences from English and American music, and. particularly, African music.
For an analysis of Latin music by country see:
- Music of the Lesser Antilles
- Music of Argentina
- Music of the Bahamas
- Music of Belize
- Music of Bolivia
- Music of Brazil
- Music of Chile
- Music of Colombia
- Music of Costa Rica
- Music of Cuba
- Music of Dominica
- Music of the Dominican Republic
- Music of Ecuador
- Music of El Salvador
- Music of French Guiana
- Music of Haiti
- Music of Guyana
- Music of Jamaica
- Music of Martinique and Guadeloupe
- Music of Mexico
- Music of Nicaragua
- Music of Panama
- Music of Peru
- Music of Puerto Rico
- Music of Suriname
- Music of Trinidad and Tobago
- Latin music in the United States
- Music of Uruguay
- Music of Venezuela
- Music of the Virgin Islands