Mexican Music: Recognized Yet Unheard at Industry Events

BMI, one of the two major American performing rights organizations, held its sixth annual Latin awards dinner and ceremony here Sunday evening, honoring the composers and publishers behind the most-played Spanish-language songs of the past year.

While not connected to the MIDEM Americas convention taking place in Miami Beach, the BMI event was scheduled to coincide with the international Latin music conference, and many of the awardees were in town.

The big winner was Miami songwriter Kike Santander, whose “Si Tu Supieras,” made famous by Mexican singer Alejandro Fernandez, earned him both songwriter of the year and song of the year. In all, Santander took home five awards.

Not far behind Santander was the young Mexican songwriter Mario Quintero, with four awards for songs he wrote for his popular band, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, including “Es Verdad,” “Hacemos Bonito Pareja,” “Secuestro de Amor” and “El Tucanazo,” all of which have dominated Los Angeles airwaves in recent months.

All told, a majority of the winning 47 songs had been recorded in the Mexican regional genre, by groups such as Los Tigres del Norte, Jaime y Los Chamacos, Luis Miguel, and Banda Arkangel R-15, testament to the genre’s continued stronghold on the domestic Latin market.

“Mexican music is what sells” in the U.S., said Eugene T. Smith, associate publisher of Billboard magazine, who attended the dinner.

Several attendees observed, however, that the MIDEM Americas conference is noticeably void of Mexican regional performances in genres such as banda, norteno, ranchera, mariachi and tejano, in spite of the brisk sales in the genre. The only acts from Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. this year perform pop or rock, and one of the biggest of those, Cristian Castro, has canceled his performance.

Some say the absence of Mexican regional music at MIDEM Americas demonstrates Miami’s continued refusal to integrate Mexican sounds into its tropical view of Latin music. Smith said he thinks it has to do with the fact that MIDEM is “based in France. They consult with their pals in Miami and have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the country.”

David Damien, a Los Angeles-based promoter who handled the BMI event, said, “That’s my music, but Miami isn’t a Mexican town.”

MIDEM Americas artistic director Dominique Leguern, who programmed all of the concerts, said she did not include Mexican regional groups because she did not have the sense that they were popular.

She had not yet seen the list of BMI winners.