Latin American music

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: