The Country Music Establishment Could No Longer Dismiss Black and Latine Voices in 2024
From Shaboozey and Beyoncé to Carín León and Grupo Frontera, country has never sounded—or looked—more like America itself.
This February, when Mexican superstar Carín León made his debut at Nashville country institution the Grand Ole Opry, playing norteño to a crowd of mostly Latine fans, the performance was received as a sign of things to come. “Carín León is bringing música Méxicana and country music ever closer,” declared the New York Times. Edgar Barrera, a singularly prolific Latine pop songwriter and producer, observed that so-called “regional Mexican” music, just like American country music, “has always been looked down on. It’s seen as very rural.”
Banda is a Mexican musical style that dates to the mid-19th century, known for its tubas and grito hollers; the grito also proliferates in ranchera, a more romantic genre of rural Mexico. The fact that banda, ranchera, and their many offshoots—the accordion-propelled norteño; the storytelling-driven corrido—are analogous to U.S. country music was finally coming into view. Mexico is filled with cattle ranches, and it was the vaqueros of its land that begat cowboying and rodeos in the United States. The rise of groups like Texas’ Grupo Frontera and California’s Fuerza Regida, two massive acts who just released a collaborative album full of rambling guitars and yearning vocals, further demonstrates that the common roots between these styles is increasingly difficult to ignore.
