CARLOS VIVES, “VOLVÍ A NACER”

13th October, 2012

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This is it: the final #1 of the Hot Latin chart as it had been calculated since its beginning in 1986. Despite my ignorant speculation in early entries on this blog, it had always been an airplay chart; commercial singles of Spanish-language pop were uncommon in the U.S. after the 1960s, as label consolidation created pressure to direct consumers toward higher-ticket albums. Where the charts were concerned, radio formats were a rough but workable approximation of audience: if a song was popular in the Black or Latin communities, regardless of actual genre, it showing up on the R&B or Hot Latin charts meant something.

So Billboard shifting, in October 2012, to a streaming-heavy calculation for its flagship genre charts meant that audiences no longer counted. As an infamous illustration, the streaming switchover meant that Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" would hold the #1 spot on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for months in early 2013, whereas on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, which used the old calculation, it peaked at #34. But it had the "hip-hop" tag on streaming services, so that's the bucket it went into, even though the core audience for the music wasn't much embracing it. (And in fact it had more play on rock stations than R&B ones, peaking at #13 on Rock Airplay.)

But the Latin audience, being both more diffuse (Texas, California, New York and Florida all have very different Latin-music histories and cultures, as different as the countries they saw the most immigration from) and coming with a significant language barrier, would be affected differently. I'll be discussing some of those effects in future installments, but the most immediate and obvious would be the virtual disappearance for many years of genre variety from the top of the chart: pending the unexpected, this is the last we will see of accordion-led Colombian vallenato. Urbano -- the useful catch-all term for Latin music derived from hip-hop, dancehall, and electronic dance -- will rule the top of the chart for the rest of the decade, with glacial turnover as whatever song with "Latin" in its metadata is being played most at parties sticks around for months at a time.

Don't get me wrong, that will include a lot of great music. The chart as calculated by airplay gave kind of a false impression: because it combined inputs from widely different audiences (Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, Cubans in Miami, Tejanos in Texas, Chicanos in Los Angeles, not to mention all the rest of the Hispanic diaspora across the country), it actually delivered more genre diversity than individual listeners were likely to experience from their preferred radio stations. Which of course made it ideally suited for my purposes, as a genre-agnostic magpie wanting to get my arms around as much Latin music as possible. But we've already seen how the airplay chart had diminished reggaetón and other forms of urbano ("Gasolina" getting stuck at #17 while a Juanes rock anthem reigned at #1 is the canonical example) -- and urbano is going to be some of the most exciting and interesting music of the 2010s and 2020s, so getting to look at it in all its explosions and contradictions is going to be fascinating.

But before that, a farewell to Carlos Vives, who will not, as of this writing, be gracing this travelogue again (the closest he will come is a duet with fellow Colombian Shakira in 2014, which will stall at #2 behind a third Colombian; but that's a ways off yet). The chart that started with the Spanish Rocío Dúrcal and the Mexican Juan Gabriel has seen many shifts in taste and fashion over the course of its young life, and if we had to have a valedictory for the past twenty-six years from someone who has been a regular presence for the past thirteen, you could hardly ask for a better selection. Always pleasant to hear from, with one foot firmly planted in the soil of local tradition but one eye always cocked to the horizon for the freshness and modernity of international pop success, he's a Latin Grammy favorite who has aged gracefully into an upbeat, avuncular sound that challenges no boundaries and invites everyone into the jolly, communal celebration.

"Volví a Nacer" (I was born again) is a love song said to be inspired by Vives' second wife, Claudia Elena Vásquez, who married him in 2008. Like so many of the love songs we've looked at over the years, it's replete in hyperbolic expressions of devotion and achievement for the sake of the beloved, the kind of vows a medieval knight-errant would recognize as proper to his lady love. Of course the religious symbolism of the title is present (that too is very medieval, which is another way of saying Catholic, which is another way of saying Latin), but it's submerged in the more human anxiety of whether the lover will remain with him.

The music, swelling from piano ballad to vallenato jig to rock & roll guitar heroics, is similarly a wide tent, with massed voices in the chorus just begging for a singalong. If it doesn't quite convince me to sing along here in the fall of 2024, that may not be its fault: the more muted, paranoid atmostphere of the 2020s can't help being a little skeptical of populist bonhomie. While I don't doubt Vives' sincerity, it's not just the sturdy, gospelly uplifting chords that end up sounding a little naïve.

FANNY LÚ, “TÚ NO ERES PARA MÍ”

25th April, 2009

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When Fanny Lu first appeared here a little under two years ago, I talked about how her debut, "No Te Pido Flores," was the stronger and more iconic song than the song with which she first went to #1 on the Hot Latin chart. But this one leaves "No Te Pido Flores" in the dust.

In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of the last time we had such a hard-hitting, compressed, machine-tooled POP song at #1. "Ni Una Sola Palabra"? "Suerte"? "Livin' La Vida Loca"? And it's still fully tropipop, that faintly embarrassing middle-class Colombian combination of vallenatio, cumbia, merengue, and pure pop; but taken at such a driving pace that it's practically pop-punk. There's even a pop-punk guitar solo rising up out of the accordion/drums/guacharaca stew late in the song.

And like a good pop-punk song, it's focused with sneering intensity on a cutting dismissal of a would-be lover. "Tú No Eres Para Mí" means "you are not for me," and the verses' detailing of it's object's fantasies of himself as a romantic lover are gleefully smacked upside the head by the chanted, headlong chorus in which she wants him to understand that he isn't for her, she isn't for him, and she won't stand any more failures. The contrast between the verses' adherence to romantic Spanish poetic conventions and the choruses' modern, self-respecting feminist rejection of all those tropes is a brilliant lyrical device that in some ways feels like a culmination of so many of the foregoing #1 hits in which men offered their hearts at lugubrious length to unreal, fantastic women who had no existence except in their imagination.

Fanny Lu is very much her own woman here: despite the Shakira-esque vocal phrasing, which can be understood as Colombian rockera convention by now, she's pushing tropipop into new realms of emotional certainty and musical intensity. The middle eight even introduces the unnaturally flanged vocals of AutoTune to this travelogue for the first time, a sound which will dominate much of the decade to come. Of course, its use marks this song indelibly as belonging to 2009, and the fact that i'm writing this in 2020 means that it's just reached the sweet spot where changes in musical fashion have made it sound embarrassing, but the period hasn't been historicized enough for it to sound nostalgic yet. Let me say, to the future, that I'm betting this will sound even more amazing then.

FLEX, “DIME SI TE VAS CON ÉL”

4th April, 2009

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The largely forgotten follow-up to a fluke hit that prevents a marginal artist from being immortalized as a one-hit wonder is a common enough pop phenomenon that we've already seen several examples in this travelogue -- perhaps most notably Barrio Boyzz and Son by Four. But few have been as delightful as this working-class reggaetón that leans harder into its author's Panamanian roots than "Te Quiero" did.

Because it's as much a vallenato song as it is a reggaetón song, and although vallenato is usually described as a Colombian music, it's easy for Anglos to forget that Panama retains close cultural ties with Colombia, only having been separated from the larger country in 1903 at the behest of U.S. shipping interests for whom an independent Panama was easier to strongarm into conceding their canal than resource-richer Colombia would have been. The combination of the reggaetón riddim and vallenato accordion and guitar figures gives Predikador's production an oddly rustic feeling, with synthesized panpipe sounds further evoking South American rather than Caribbean musical textures.

In Panama, Flex was still using (and still does today) the rap name Nigga, and one of his mentors, Mr. Saik (an adaptation of his original MC name, Psycho), appears on the song, usually bellowing in unison with Flex. Because as aw-shucks vulnerable as the song is -- and lyrically it's a cuckold's plea for his beloved to admit that she's seeing another man -- it's still a macho bellow-along, because first-generation reggaetón. The glorious bounce of the music also keeps it from being very self-pitying; it's practically impossible for vallenato to not sound cheerful.

But like the previous entry, this song too only interrupted Banda El Recodo's #1 reign for a week. The several competing Latin audiences (regional Mexican, tropical, urbano, Latin rock, and more) were in productive tension with each other, a tension which will only increase as the next few years unfold.

FANNY LÚ, “Y SI TE DIGO”

18th August, 2007

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Another case of a delayed number one (tip of the hat once more to chart analyst Chris Molanphy's AC/DC Rule, though he's discussing albums), where the single after the breakthrough hit is the one that goes to #1 on the Hot Latin Chart. We've seen it most notably before with Daddy Yankee, whose worldwide hit "Gasolina" primed the pump for "Rompe" to become the first reggaetón #1; and now Fanny Lú, already well-known in Colombia as a television presenter, hits #1 with the single after "No Te Pido Flores", the song that made her famous throughout Latin America.

A word I haven't used before on this travelogue, even though it's occasionally applied, is unavoidable here: "tropipop," a specifically Colombian mixture of traditional genres like vallenato and cumbia with Caribbean genres like merengue, salsa, and bachata, plus international pop. It was coined to describe Carlos Vives' collaborations with Emilio Estefan, and it's generally been quite commercially successful, if not very respected by practitioners of either traditional Colombian or Caribbean genres -- surface-level pop stars taking sounds without respecting the history, is what the charge boils down to -- and there hadn't been a female tropipop star before. Until producer José Gaviria decided that Fanny Lú, who had been trying to get a music career going since the mid-90s but kept having to give her television career higher priority, should be the female face of the genre.

And so that's what this is: if it sounds like bachata timbales, vallenato accordion, merengue bounce, and generalized international pop singalong melodies, that's tropipop. Not that bets weren't hedged: there was also a bachata version in which she duetted with Toby Love, and a merengue version with Eddy Herrera; but neither of them is quite as solid as the original; and the original isn't quite as solid as "No Te Pido Flores." She seems to be imitating Shakira's phrasing a bit here, but expresses none of her wit: it's a straightforward love song, subcategory "I don't have the courage to tell you how much I love you." It's perfectly pleasant, if rather anonymous and a touch overproduced -- those massed background vocals, for example, are highly unnecessary; she's not such a weak singer as to need the support.

But this isn't the last time we'll see Fanny Lú, and when we do again it will be with one of the signature songs of the era, so this isn't just the valley after a peak; there's a higher peak coming.

CARLOS VIVES, “COMO TÚ”

28th August, 2004

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For eight years and more, I've had "Welcome to my beach party" as the first line of my About slug on the right side of this page, and today the prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing.

Which isn't to say that none of the foregoing eighteen years of number ones were beach party-suitable (that would be as foolish a claim as to say that all Latin music is). Vives himself, indeed, has provided several excellent jams that jibe with sea breeze and sunburn; but this hit marks a subtle turning point, or rather is a key instance in a turning continuum, of all music that enters the Latin #1 spot being transformed into party material.

There are two primary elements in this song: vallenato (or at least the pop-vallenato that was the closest 2000s international pop radio would get) and rock n' roll (or at least ditto). While the rock instrumentation may predominate, the vallenato shuffle sets the tempo, and the vallenato accordion duels with the electric guitar in discrete solos. Vives' hoarse, delighted singing, with patter verses indebted to hip-hop or perhaps to dancehall toasting (his dreadlocks in the video aren't the only island signifiers in the song), splits the difference between Black Crowes-ish bluesy boogie and souped-up millennial-era Latin pop.

Emilio Estefan was a producer, which explains why the music simply explodes out of the speakers the way it does, but it's Vives, hard-working but always genial, who makes it so deliriously joyful. This might be the best, most thrilling pop jam we've met on this travelogue since "Suerte", and the fact that both Vives and Shakira are Colombian isn't lost on me: its international pop scene may have gotten a late start (at least compared to Golden Age Latin pop nations like Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba), but it's more than made up for it since.

CARLOS VIVES, “LUNA NUEVA”

23rd March, 2002

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Hooray, he's back!

As we've seen twice now, Carlos Vives had been a journeyman pop star since the mid-80s (the release of his first album coincides with the beginning of this travelogue), but it was only in the millennial era that he began to top the chart regularly. "Luna Nueva" (new moon) unveils no new facet to the beachy singalong persona which has given him these hits, but its agreeable uptempo rattle and uncomplicated love-song lyrics make it one of the most enjoyable songs we've encountered all year.

Its categorization, as I'm coming to expect with Vives, is more perplexing. It uses the rock-based instrumentation of his pop-vallenato band, but the shuffling rhythm and squawking, not swinging, accordion is closer to Mexican corrido. As always, he's a synthesist, and his pan-Latinism is one reason he's here at the top of the Hot Latin chart rather than merely famous in South America or the Caribbean.

In the video, he plays an inmate of a psychiatric hospital that functions more like a prison, literalizing the title line in the chorus, where he wants to love "con desespero, como loco en luna nueva" (with wild despair, like a madman in the full moon). It's a cartoonish and offensive depiction of mental illness, which is probably why it's not on his official channel. But the internet doesn't forget.

CARLOS VIVES, “DÉJAME ENTRAR”

24th November, 2001

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"Hero" might have been Enrique Iglesias' most lasting contribution to English-language pop of the 2000s (though his, and everyone's, fortunes will change in the 2010s), but on the Latin chart, "Héroe" was only a week-long interregnum between the two most exciting Colombian talents of the period. We'd known Shakira already, and we know Carlos Vives, whose pop-vallenato "Fruta Fresca" was a genial way to close out 1999, but "Suerte (Wherever, Whenever)" and "Déjame Entrar" (Let Me In) were both declarations of a new assurance and global relevance in Caribbean mainland pop.

"Déjame Entrar" is a summery pop-vallenato-cum-cumbia jam produced by Emilio Estefan, and is again more of a global pop song with accordion than a traditional vallenato by any strict accounting. Vives himself admitted that it was impossible to separate what was Colombian from what was Cuban, Puerto Rican or Dominican in it: rhythmically, it's a tropical melange, with guitars as jangly and harmonies as smooth as any North American college rock band; the middle eight is particularly reminiscent of mid-90s alt-rock radio.

But if its pleasures are primarily on the surface, they're still exquisite. Vives' cheerful rock-derived vocals, the circular, boot-stomping rhythm, and the gorgeous textures from timbale to accordion to gaita (the indigenous Colombian flute) give his acoustic song as much energy and rhythmic complexity as any dance track, and the lyrics, an unsentimental (he likes the dirt under her nails), open-hearted request to love and be loved (the refrain "déjame entrar en tu mirada" means literally "let me into your gaze" but can be translated more idiomatically, "let me drown in your eyes"), without any of the emotional blackmail or self-aggrandizement common to male love songs (viz. "Héroe") is as much a breath of fresh air as the guitar strums and romantic, reflective accordion solo.

If "Héroe" is the overwrought fever-pitch fantasy of a narcissistic adolescent, "Déjame Entrar" is a self-possessed, grown-up pitch for a loving relationship between equals. Anglophone pop, being essentially adolescent, is structured to value the former over the latter; one of the wonderful things about Latin pop in this period is that there was still room for grownups.

CARLOS VIVES, “FRUTA FRESCA”

8th January, 2000

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A new decade, a new century, a new millennium -- and a new voice. That we haven't met Carlos Vives before on this travelogue is due more to chance than to the number ones closely tracking the development of new sounds in Latin Pop; he's a contemporary of Luis Miguel or Ricky Martin who had had a career as a smoldering telenovela presence in the 80s, and his first few records of po-faced ballads didn't have much of a reception. But when he played a vallenato composer in 1991, and started making pop-vallenato music in his own right in 1993, he tapped a deep well of exciting dance music that was largely new to the broader, non-Colombian music audience, and became a star.

Vallenato is a tradition Colombian dance music, originating on the country's western Caribbean coast (as opposed to cumbia, which came from the central Caribbean coast), and its traditional instruments are a hand drum, the scraping guaracha instrument that also makes cumbia's signature sound, and accordion. Vives added a rock band and (on "Fruta Fresca") Andean pipe, and his version of vallenato (to the disgust of traditionalists) is notably more uptempo and Caribbean than the traditional music.

"Fruta Fresca" is a love song, its sentiments as breezy and universalist as its sound, and like practically everything else good in Latin Pop at the turn of the century, it was produced by Emilio Estefan. Which may be how Vives finally ended up at #1 after nearly a decade of stardom. It's the Estefans' world, we're just living in it for now.

GLORIA ESTEFAN, “ABRIENDO PUERTAS”

21st October, 1995

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This song begins what, scanning the horizon, looks like becoming a semi-annual tradition: another Gloria Estefan album, another Gloria Estefan number-one single. After having thoroughly ingratiated herself to the Latin Pop audience with Mi Tierra (the album that produced three chart-topping songs), she'll never again go without that audience's appreciation for her work — at least as of press time. And she repays that appreciation with some of the most joyful and glorious music we've yet encountered in this travelogue.

"Abriendo Puertas," as even a Sesame Street-level Spanish education should tell you, means "opening doors," and the light, scattered-tempo vallenato rhythm of the song reiterates the dance-yrself-free message of the lyrics, which on the chorus run something like "And we're opening doors, and we're closing wounds/Because in the new year we're going to live life/And we're opening doors, and we're closing wounds/Step by step down the path we're going to find our way." It's the sort of pleasingly universalist message that could, frankly, be a hit at any time, but in the fall of 1995 it perhaps inevitably recalled the great grief of that year (at least as far as US Latin Pop fans were concerned), and its call to get up and dance anyway, to tear down barriers and dismiss failure as a lie, sounds both thrilling and, well, healing.

That vallenato rhythm is worth remarking on: it's a close cousin of the cumbia rhythm that Selena exposed us to, with similar origins in the mixed-race cauldron of coastal Colombia, and the guitar/accordion combination (unrelated to the similar combination in Mexican norteño) is one of the genre's trademarks. Perhaps unusually for the highly-vertically-integrated Estefans, the song was written and arranged by Colombian songwriter/producer Kike Santander, who will be a name to remember in the years to come, as the late 90s fade into the 00s.

Still, Gloria and producer husband Emilio, ever the ambassadorial multiculturalists, make a point of letting the opening guitar sound not only tropical but African — a hint, perhaps, of Congolese rumba echoing back to her own native Cuban rhythms? — and mix the rest with salsa horn charts, funky urban bass, Afro-Cuban percussion, and a call-and-response chorus that could have grown out of any of the above, but which in this travelogue is a Gloria Estefan hallmark. They don't call themselves the Miami Sound Machine anymore — they're bigger than Miami, and far more eclectic than any Sound Machine — but she's had the same band her whole career, and they've kept up with her every swerve and wild goose chases. If she sounds now content — like she could just make variations on this record for the rest of her career and not miss a thing — she has perhaps earned it. How many other openers to fifteenth albums sound so irrepressibly joyful?