Leila Cobo - Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music

The article in Billboard magazine read like so many pieces about Latin acts who achieve international renown. The artist had been discovered and pushed by the companys Latin American chief, but had become so successful that he was no longer going to merely release songs in Latin American countries. He would now be groomed for a major release for the mainstream market.

We could be speaking about Rosala in 2019. Or Ricky Martin in 1999.

But this was Cuban bandleader Dmaso Prez Prado, whose big band played mambo and other Latin rhythms. And the year was 1950.

The pianist and arranger, who, as the Billboard story said, cuts in Mexico, had been RCA Victors top Latin American seller for the past decade before the label decided to switch him from the international series to its pop label; meaning Prez Prado was being taken from the Latin market and moved into the mainstream.

By then, hed already made an impact with his Que rico el mambo, now considered a Latin standard, which he had rereleased as Mambo Jambo for the American market.

But it was after that label switch in 1950 that his popularity exploded, in tandem with the globalization of mambo. By 1955, Prez Prados version of Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, which was used as the theme for the Jane Russell film Underwater!, spent ten weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop charts, making it one of the biggest instrumental hits of all time.

The story of Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White is one of great music built on quintessential Latin beats, of a fascinating bandleader and pianist, and of a groundbreaking moment not just for Latin music but for music and culture as a whole. The 1950s were about far more than Prez Prado. The decade saw Nat King Cole sing in Spanish, the rise of Afro Cuban jazz, and the advent of the biggest triumph of Latin culture in Middle America: I Love Lucy, featuring Desi Arnaz, the real-life Cuban bandleader (and Lucille Balls real-life husband) who played Lucys endearing Cuban bandleader husband on TV.

It took more than seven decades to come full circle, to 2017, when Despacito, another great track built on quintessential Latin beats, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for sixteen straight weeks, a record at the time.

And Despacito highlighted a flood of Latin songs that came before and after, hits that found unprecedented global exposure, thanks to the rise of streaming services in an ever-shrinking world.

As of 2020, Latin music is the largest-growing genre of music in the world. Once considered the realm of romantic ballads and folk songs, it has blossomed to incorporate a dizzying array of subgenres, voices, nationalities, rhythms, syncopations, and styles big and small. It is sung in Spanish and in English and in both. It is inescapable.

But its been a long road since the days of Prez Prado.

In those seven decades, Latin music continued to seep into the fabric of popular culture, even as its popularity beyond the confines of Latin America and Spain ebbed and flowed, sometimes way below the surface of the mainstream, sometimes spectacularly above.

But even in the seemingly quiet years, when not a single conga or heart-wrenching ballad made it to non-Latin ears, Latin musicthe term broadly applied to music sung predominantly in Spanish, regardless of originthrived. Supported by an ever-growing diaspora that refused to let go of the beats and sounds of their homelands, the music and its reach expanded relentlessly. The number of radio stations devoted to Spanish music grew, as did concerts and album sales. In the late 1980s, when I came to this country, Middle America might not have known the names Vicente Fernndez, Luis Miguel, or Juan Luis Guerra, but all were selling out Madison Square Garden.

When I began working at Billboard in 2000 as the music brands head of Latin music, the genre was experiencing a new renaissance: the so-called Latin Explosion led by Ricky Martin, Shakira, Marc Anthony, and Enrique Iglesias, among many others.

My timing couldnt have been better. I was Colombian, born and raised, but had come to the United States to study classical piano performance at Manhattan School of Music. After I graduated, I decided to pursue my other passion, media and journalism. I applied for a Fulbright scholarship and obtained a masters degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. There had to be a way, I thought, to bring together music and journalism, music and media, my Latin background with my formal music training. It all meshed when I landed a job as the pop music critic for the Miami Herald. When the Billboard spot opened up in 2000, the time was ripe for Latin music to come into its own.

The seeds had already been sown. In the mid-1990s, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine awakened the world to the beat of the conga with music that was in English but had as its foundation aggressive Latin beats, a metaphor for a blending of cultures. It was, as Emilio Estefan famously once said, rice and beans with hamburger. At the same time, the ultimate Latin symbolthe sexy croonerhad made its way into every living room in America, thanks to Julio Iglesiass and Willie Nelsons To All the Girls Ive Loved Before. Who knew Latin and country music could mesh?