The Rise of Afrodiasporic Meta-Genres and Global Afro-Latinx Music

Abstract

A great part of the Americas’ musical production has a common denominator in the diverse population of people of African descent who came from Europe in the 1400s, and the free and enslaved people brought from West Africa to their shores. The African Diaspora is a common denominator in the great diversity of the Afro-Latin American musics and their large and deep imprint in the hemisphere’s culture. Great technological changes like radio, mechanical reproduction of music, aviation, movies and music production became the tools of cultural globalization after World War II. American policies toward Latin America made it possible that local afrodiasporic musics, like Afro-Cuban, Afro-Argetinian and Afro-Brazilian genres became global phenomena in the United States and Europe, in the same way that Afro-American Pop culture became a stylistic framework of music performance, the star system and technology-driven production. By the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first Century, Afro-Latin American music artists like Daddy Yankee, Jennifer López, Marc Anthony, Celia Cruz, Maluma, Juan Luis Guerra and Don Omar paved the way for a complete global and paradigm-shifting career for black artists like MULA, Tomasa Del Real, Tuyo, Ibeyi, Princesa Nokia and Miguel Jontel. The Afro-Colombian and Afro-Peruvian Pop music represents a dynamic afrodiasporic production from the Pacific coast of South America that offers an interesting perspective within Afro-Latin American musics. Internet and social media have made it possible that Pop music “Galaxies” like Brazilian Pop Culture, Afro-Argentinian Rock and Uruguayan Candombé music could cross paths with Puerto Rican modern plena and intersect with American Pop culture as exemplified by ex-Menudo Draco Rosa.