Burst of New Music : Young Latins Find a Voice in U.S. Pop

“I’m as American as apple pie,” says Angel Ferreira, adding after a pause, “or a burrito.”

Born in the East Los Angeles barrio, a drug-addicted high school dropout at age 17, Ferreira is now a professional dancer, choreographer and recording artist. His music video--”Wet Jam,” a hybrid of home-boy rap and “Singing in the Rain”--elicited bags full of adoring fan mail when it aired recently on the Spanish-language cable TV program MTV Internacionale. And eight major record companies have been trying to sign him up.

Ferreira, 27, represents the latest evolution in American pop music, one that reflects the country’s changing demographics and cultural mix.

Create New Market

Having grown up listening to Top 40 radio while hearing their parents and grandparents speak Spanish at home, a generation of Latino kids is creating a market for a new kind of pop music--born in the U.S.A., but with roots in the Caribbean and Central and South America. What is more, the record companies are gearing up to serve this new market, figuring that millions of dollars can be made there.

Since the success of the movie and sound track album “La Bamba” two years ago, the American pop music charts have become populated by young Hispanic performers--Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, Sa-fire, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Sweet Sensation, Expose and Martika. The latter is a 20-year-old Cuban-American whose single, “Toy Soldiers,” recently reached the top of Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 chart.

Linda Ronstadt’s most recent album, “Canciones de mi Padre” (Songs of My Father), sung entirely in Spanish, has sold more than 1 million copies. The group Los Lobos followed the commercial success of their “La Bamba” sound track with an album of traditional Mexican music. And the debut album by the Gipsy Kings, a band of authentic Gypsies from Southern France who play flamenco-style guitar and sing in an obscure French-Spanish dialect called Gitane, has been the most surprising hit of 1989, selling more than 500,000 copies in this country.

“It’s suddenly becoming cool to like Latin music,” said Jose Behar, vice president of the Latin music division of Capitol-EMI Music.

“I think you are seeing the influence of the Hispanic community,” said Luis Pisterman, managing director of WEA Latina, the Latin music division of Warner Communications’ overseas record operations.

“We’re right at the birth of a whole new evolution in music,” said Edward Sax, an American-born, Mexico City-based businessman who is pumping several million dollars into two new Los Angeles-based companies, Outpost Records and Latin Sound Network.

“Latin music is right where black music was just before Motown exploded in the early 1960s,” Sax said. “It’s coming. It’s in the kids’ blood. And it’s not only happening here in Los Angeles but also in Texas, Chicago, Miami and New York.”

The major U.S. record companies have been expecting it to happen for some time. They can read the census figures as well as anyone.

Since 1980, the Latino population of the United States has increased from 14.6 million to an estimated 21 million, a growth rate of about 44%, six times greater than that of the total population. In fact, the United States now ranks as the fifth-largest “Hispanic country” in the world, trailing only Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Colombia.

What is more, it is a young population--68% of Latino Americans are under 35; their median age is 23. And they are rapidly becoming more affluent. The total household income of Latino Americans is about $170 billion, which represents a larger purchasing power than is possessed by the populations of Mexico, Central America, Venezuela and Colombia combined.

“You can’t ignore that market; every instinct says I have to be in it,” said Joe Smith, president of Capitol-EMI Music Inc., who has greatly expanded his company’s Latin music division in the last few years “because I want to be there when it happens.”

Smith said he “got a real lesson” recently when he took one of Capitol’s Latin artists, singer Daniella Romo, to dinner at trendy Spago restaurant. “The people who work there are used to seeing all kinds of stars and they don’t react,” he said. “But when she got out of the car in the parking lot, they all went crazy. They came out of the woodwork asking for her autograph. So you know it’s there.”

For the big record companies, the problem has always been getting a handle on the Latino marketplace and making it profitable. Traditionally, the Latin music business has been seen as divided into five primary markets--California, Texas, Chicago, Florida and New York/Puerto Rico--individual “little countries” with different and mutually exclusive musical tastes.

For example, in New York and Miami, where the Latino population is mostly of Cuban, Puerto Rican or Dominican ancestry, the “tropical” Caribbean dance beat of salsa and meringue is popular. In Texas, with its large Mexican-immigrant population, the preferred sound is called Tejano, or Tex-Mex, a bouncy blend of traditional Mexican and American country and Western music. The conventional wisdom has always been that you can’t give away Tex-Mex music in New York City or Miami, and salsa won’t play in San Antonio.

This regional segmentation is one reason the big record companies have not invested more heavily in the Latin music business before now, since it has meant that no one record or performer would likely sell on a mass scale. There has also been a perception that young Latinos won’t listen to Latin music.

“The young Latin population is much more interested in American music,” said one record company president. “They’re buying Bobby Brown and Madonna. They’re here to assimilate or they would have stayed in Guadalajara.”

Others disagree. “The regional thing is breaking down,” said Mike Missile, a marketing executive for Bertelsmann Music Group, which operates RCA Records. “This year, salsa is selling on the West Coast and in Texas. And in New York City, some distributors report that over 50% of their business is Mexican.

“Those false barriers are starting to tumble,” said Missile. “Now you can market to the entire country.”

By all accounts, the force of change has been the young people--first-, second- and third-generation Americans with a shared “bicultural,” big-city experience.

“They are not illegal aliens. They’ve lived here all their lives. They are not going to return home; they are home,” businessman Sax said. “They’ve grown up rooting for the Dodgers and the Lakers and listening to American Top 40 radio. So what you have is a burst of new music that is basically American in origin--it’s from the streets--but Latin in its ancestry. It’s American rock ‘n’ roll with a Hispanic flavor.”

“The thing is, even if these kids speak English as their first language, they are hearing Spanish at home,” said Greta Nodar, vice president of the Los Angeles-based advertising agency The Hispanic Group. “Yes, they are assimilated, but their soul remains Hispanic. Their family does not let them forget they’re Hispanic.”

‘Want Their Own Madonna’

“Sure, they’re listening to Madonna and Prince, but they also want their own Madonna,” said WEA Latina’s Luis Pisterman. “There has been a misconception that the young people won’t listen to Latin music.”

In the past, the big American record companies have focused their energies on signing up Spanish-speaking international stars such as Julio Iglesias, Jose Jose and Emmanuel--singers of romantic ballads whose appeal is mostly to the over-40 Latino consumer. Now, however, the search is on for young, home-grown heroes from the streets of Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

According to Barbara Corcoran, the producer of MTV Internacionale, the up-and-coming Latino stars more accurately reflect the attitudes and concerns of their peers in the audience.

“The lyrics to their songs have to do with what they are going though in these big urban centers, not what they left behind in some other country. Sa-fire’s song, ‘Thinking of You,’ is about her uncle who died of AIDS in the Bronx. Her real name is Wilma Cosme.”

And the audience is responding with what appears to be pent-up enthusiasm. “We hosted a dance at a Houston club with a group called Pajama Party, which is what I call a Miami girl group,” Corcoran said. “Usually, we expect about 600 people at these shows. But 4,000 kids showed up, and they went crazy!”

According to Corcoran and others, while most of the young Latino performers currently on the pop charts sing in English, the audience is equally receptive to Spanish. “I’ll tell you something, we have done very well with Spanish rock,” she said. “We don’t believe that the only good rock music is in English. There’s some great Latin rock ‘n’ roll. It has swept all of Central America. Rock is very political, and Central America is a very politically charged place right now.”

“It’s really happening,” Corcoran said. “We haven’t gotten that one huge global artist yet, but there are lots of stories in the works.”

The stories are Latino versions of chasing the rock ‘n’ roll dream:

“We’re from Texas; ‘La Bamba’ made us move here,” said Reuben Cruz, the leader of a Tex-Mex rock band called the Street Boys that recently relocated to Los Angeles in hopes of landing a recording contract.

According to Cruz, before seeing the movie, the four band members--age 20 to 27--were unfamiliar with the story of Richie Valens, the East Los Angeles barrio kid who changed his name from Valenzuela and reached the top of the pop music charts with “La Bamba” and “Donna” before dying in a plane crash in 1959 at the age of 17.

Although the Street Boys play rock, their musical influences include childhood memories of “parties at our houses when we heard our parents’ music,” Cruz said. “It was so lively and you saw the whole family dancing together when they put that music on; it’s very inspiring. Our music has that Latin feeling.”

“We sing about our experiences,” he said. “Our song ‘Door of Glory’ is about leaving home, and how hard it is to step through that door of glory to find what it is you’re looking for, whether it’s in a different city, state or country. That’s what we’re doing.”

At hard rock clubs such as Madam Wong’s in West Los Angeles, the Street Boys take the stage with Mexican flags emblazoned on their jackets. “We’re not embarrassed at being Mexican-Americans,” Cruz said. “We’re definitely proud of it.”

It took Austin-based singer-songwriter Tish Hinajosa nine years to land a recording contract with a major record company. “No one knew how to market me. I always wore my Hispanic heritage; it’s a big part of my performing and writing,” said the 33-year-old mother of two whose debut album, “Homeland,” was just released by A&M; Records.

Born in San Antonio, the youngest of 13 children of Mexican immigrant parents, Hinajosa’s music--like her name--reflects the almost schizophrenic experience of one who was “raised listening to the Beatles and hearing Spanish being spoken at home.”

Wanted to Be American

Growing up, “everyone wanted to be so American. We were supposed to grow out of the Hispanic culture. We had to prove that we were American. We were not encouraged to be Hispanic. We had Hispanic surnames but only spoke English.”

Three songs on her new album are sung entirely in Spanish, and several others contain Spanish verses. They tell of life on both sides of the border:

Joaquin loves his homeland, but it can’t give him enough.

He wants a good life, a job and a wife

and some children with dreams that come true.

One song is clearly autobiographical, about Felipe and Maria, who crossed the Rio Grande to raise a family of 13 on the west side of San Antonio:

Days were good and days were bad,

but mostly they were lean.

School and shoes and food and books

believin’ in a prayer . . . .

They were pilgrims that made

a good life the hard way.

“The message I want to get across to younger Hispanic-Americans is that it’s OK to be part of both cultures,” Hinajosa said.

Perhaps the most remarkable story of all is that of Angel Ferreira, whose ticket out of poverty and drugs in East L.A. was a scholarship to the famed Joffrey Ballet in New York City. From there he landed a role in the movie, “A Chorus Line,” and wound up as the principal dancer on Madonna’s 1987 world concert tour.

Now a resident of Los Angeles again, Ferreira has carved a niche for himself as a choreographer of music videos, working with such groups as Pretty Poison and Milli Vanilli. His own heroes range from soul singer James Brown to Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. And he admits that he was stunned by the thousands of fan letters responding to his “Wet Jam” video on MTV Internacionale.

“It wasn’t ‘I think you’re cute, marry me’ stuff. It was more ‘I think you are a great representative of our culture. You made me proud.’ It obviously inspired them,” he said, slipping into the vernacular of his barrio roots. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, this brother came from the neighborhood. Check it out; he’s really cutting it up.’ ”