Latino techno? You're kidding!

Tue28Feb2006

Latino techno? You're kidding!

13:32 H | Topics: Media - Music - Newspapers

As evidence of the fact that mainstream media continues to see Latinos as retrograde, this snippet from a very "surprised" article about the Latino techno movement:

Electronic and Latin music would seem to reside at polar ends of the music spectrum. One is precise, the other passionate. One is the brutalist Bauhaus beats of Kraftwerk, the other is the languid romanticism of the Buena Vista Social Club.

Why Buena Vista Social Club? Why is that the quintessential "Latin music"?

Has anyone ever heard of Rock en español? That surely isn't the polar opposite of techno.

I'm getting sick of this kind of crap. It seems that if Latinos aren't sporting cowboy hats and playing tubas, they're doing something totally out of this world, like, creating techno music. Wow, how amazing.

It's fine to talk about an up-and-coming movement in a genre that's perhaps not been dominated by Latinos in the past, but what bothers me is this "WTF?" reaction that mainstream media seems to have to Latinos doing anything other than Bossa Nova-ing or pumping accordions. It was the same when Latino hip-hop first came onto the scene.

Mainstream media is rife with this mentality, and it doesn't just apply to music. Journalists are wowed by the fact that now marketers are using irony and edgy humor (in lieu of abuelitas and mariachis) in advertising to Latinos because society as a whole sees the Latino community as naive and incapable of being spoken to like the rest of the world. Truly sad.

Via / Star-Telegram.com and Latin Music News