In Ever-Expanding Musical Universe, Crossover Rules

In the year that Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez both broke into the national Top 10, it was no surprise that the most crowded seminar at the MIDEM America’s Music Market was called “Crossing the Borders: The Bridge for Latin Music in Mainstream America.”

According to MIDEM America’s music division director Christophe Blum, the highly publicized success of Latino musicians such as Martin, Lopez and Marc Anthony, led to a higher than usual attendance at MIDEM, especially among North American companies.

Of the 818 companies registered for MIDEM America this year, 337 came from the U.S., an 18% rise from last year. “We have more North American participants,” Blum said. “And most of them are here looking for the next Ricky.”

By comparison, Mexico had 22 companies registered, the largest number for any Latin American nation; Brazil registered 19; and Argentina registered 17. All Latin American companies were outnumbered by the United Kingdom, France and Germany, testament to what MIDEM America’s artistic director Dominique Leguern called “a global love affair with Latin music.”

If Cuban music was the buzz at MIDEM last year, this year it was undoubtedly “crossover,” a word that seemed to mean different things to different people.

To singer and songwriter Jon Secada, who participated in the “Crossing Borders” panel Thursday, crossover was a highly personal journey from being signed to his first recording contract as an “Anglo” artist to his later success in the Latin market--the reverse of Ricky Martin’s path.

This echoed earlier statements by Michael Greene, president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which sponsors the Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards. Greene said that with the phenomenal growth of Latin music around the world, crossover does not only mean Latin artists recording in English, but rather non-Spanish-speaking consumers buying music from Latin artists in any language.

Secada, born in Cuba but raised in Florida, said he had been happy to record in Spanish, as he grew up “dancing disco and salsa,” but cautioned the record labels not to necessarily expect U.S.-born Latinos to record in Spanish.

For radio programmer Kid Curry of Miami’s KPOW-FM, crossover was the road he traveled as “a redneck from Colorado,” who became “an American Cuban” after moving to Miami. Curry’s station is one of the few in the nation that concurrently programs hits from the English and Spanish markets, an idea he said seemed radical when he proposed it in 1980, but which is now obvious.

“In Miami that’s what we are,” Curry said. “I’m as bilingual as I can be. . . . The truth about crossover is this: A hit is a hit is a hit. It could be Chinese disco. If it’s a hit, I’m gonna play it.”

For panelist Jose Behar, president and CEO of EMI Latin Records, crossover was a more nuanced concept that transcended language, encompassing culture and identity.

“You have artists that will always appeal to a Hispanic audience,” Behar said. “Then there’s the bicultural artist. You can’t create a bicultural artist by translating lyrics. It’s something you inherit. There’s a big difference between being bicultural and bilingual. To be bicultural is to be able to identify with the fans or audience, and for them to be able to identity with the artist. . . . I believe that finding these artists is finding a needle in a haystack. But they’re there.”

No one on the panel, which also included songwriter-producer KC Porter and Jorge Pinos, vice president for the international division of the William Morris Agency, believed Latin crossover in mainstream American music to be just a fad.

“With the Ricky Martin explosion, the labels have opened up more to us, “ said Pinos, who recalled being laughed at years ago by his firm when he once proposed taking on an unknown band, the Miami Sound Machine, as a client.

Porter pointed to Interscope Records’ enormous financial commitment to Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias as a sign that the world of mainstream pop is wide open for Latino performers.

“It’s not a fad, it’s a demographic phenomenon,” said Enrique Fernandez, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel columnist who moderated the panel. The comment, like several made during the panel, was met with applause from the standing-room-only crowd.

AS MIDEM America wound to a close, no one seemed any nearer to agreement on a definition of crossover, or even of Latin music. But it was apparent that the music of North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean is increasingly swirling together in what Secada called “an incredible melting pot” that is selling millions of recordings worldwide.

Perhaps Fernandez summed up the state of crossover best when he said, simply, “It seems that the music market has reached a point where everything is expanding in every possible way.”