Artists who are resuming their pioneering role in musical fusion

Cult artists such as Carlos Vives, Alejandro Fernández, Shakira, Elvis Crespo, Prince Royce and others claim to be the pioneers of the era of fusion that Latin music is experiencing today and that has made it a worldwide favorite.

In their interviews for EFE, these stars pointed out that today seed fruits which they planted when mergers and collaborations were new.

“In my beginnings, I received many critics because we added new rhythms to the vallenato”, recalled Vives, who will visit the songs from his beginnings on the “El Tour de los 30” tour, which begins in New York on August 19.

“What people haven’t fully understood is that all the elements that I put in and put into my music come from ancestral Latin American rhythms, to which we add a more modern sound. But all these mergers are based on who we are,” added the Colombian.

For him, it is a “great pleasure” to see how “big” it is. urban music like Daddy Yankee and Wisin they approached him to combine reggaeton with his music. As well as listening to songs like “Dharma”, in which Sebastián Yatra mixed flamenco with vallenato in collaboration with Rosario Flores.

Connecting with young people

This April, New York singer-songwriter Prince Royce received the Pioneer Award at the Latin American Music Awards. This recognition reminded him of his beginnings, “when many people said that my thing was not bachata, because it was very pop”.

Royce started with a bilingual bachata version of the classic “Stand By Me” in 2010. “I wanted to bring bachata to young people, not only Latin Americans, but English speakers as well. This is something that was not done at that time,” he said.

“Now it’s normal to make music of many genres and several languages,” said the artist, whose inspiration was Juan Luis Guerra, who first made sophisticated versions of merengue and bachata.

“The same thing happened with salsa, which is a fusion of the Cuban sound with the sounds of New York, or with reggaeton, which is a fusion of Jamaican reggae with Latin-Caribbean percussion and the influence of English urban music,” he said. Ivy Queen, who also gave it a feminine touch with a deep voice that “wasn’t very welcoming” in its beginnings.

Elvis Crespo Merengue became fashionable all over the world 25 years ago with “Gently”, and he achieved it by reinterpreting the Dominican genre. “We did an a cappella introduction, which was quickly followed by trumpets, saxophones, güira, congas and percussion, and a middle rhythm,” the artist recalled.

Considering that the song was heard in space, in a Hollywood production, on the lips of Dua Lipa, and even in the house of Anthony Hopkins, who shook his hips to the rhythm of “Suavemente” and said “I’m Colombian”, it is unheard of that Crespo had to fight for the song to be included on his first album.

resistance even at home

Alexander Fernandez he found that resistance in his own home. His father, legendary singer rancher Vicente Fernández, did not understand well that his “Potrillo” wanted to “modernize” what was already perfect for him.

“My dad got really angry when I started making my music more pop,” said Fernández, who proudly considers himself a “pioneer of the current Mexican music movement.”

Ago Christian Nodal came out with his “mariacheño” style (mariachi and norteño), if Danny Félix, Natanael Cano and now Featherweight were doing bullfights lying down, or if Caliber 50 launched a merger with MC Davo, Santa Fe Klan and Beto Sierra, Alejandro Fernández already had ranchera closer to pop.

“I was convinced that this was the way to keep Mexican music alive and I was not wrong,” he said.

Not everyone who spearheaded the merger faced criticism. Maná, for example, was a band applauded for combining rock with pop and elements of Mexican folklore.

Shakira did the same with a Colombian accent and today her first albums are adored by fans of rock en español, although she first struggled for respect as a rocker. “The plurality of women’s voices, fusion and collaboration excites me today, because I remember that time well,” he said.

The Colombian artist was also one of the first to collaborate with other artists. His duet “La tortura”, with Alejandro Sanz, dates from 2005.

Sanz, for his part, was a pioneer in fusion traditional music from the south of Spain s pop and rock. “They are my two passions,” said the Spanish artist, talking about how the idea of ​​mixing these rhythms was born.

His sound opened spaces so that today stars like Rosalia succeed, C. Tangana, Omar Montes and many others.

For Vives, “music, like everything else, is cyclical and what is considered classical today was considered sacrilegious when it started.”

“But that is the nature of art and of us who have opened the way for today’s youth we went through others that were made for us”, he pointed out.