IMMIGRANT IDOLS

ON A MILD SUNDAY EVENING IN MARCH, a month in which they ruled Billboard's Regional Mexican Airplay chart, the four members of Calibre 50 rolled through Las Vegas in a tricked-out bus, headliners bound for the Silver Nugget Casino & Event Center. While global crossover artists like Shakira...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Billboard 2017-04, Vol.129 (10), p.58-61
Main Author: Katz, Jesse
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bands
Casinos
Entertainment industry
Grammy awards
Immigrants
Immigration policy
Latin language
Latin music
Musical performances
Noncitizens
Social networks
Spanish language
Tourism
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Summary:ON A MILD SUNDAY EVENING IN MARCH, a month in which they ruled Billboard's Regional Mexican Airplay chart, the four members of Calibre 50 rolled through Las Vegas in a tricked-out bus, headliners bound for the Silver Nugget Casino & Event Center. While global crossover artists like Shakira and Pitbull tend to define perceptions of Latin music, the most popular Spanish-language genre in the United States is by far regional Mexican, a format steeped in nostalgia and bravado that accounts for 60 percent of the Latin radio stations monitored by Nielsen. Norteño music gets its name from the northern borderlands of Texas, where accordion-loving German and Czech immigrants settled in the 1800s. Because Mexico's Pacific Coast is a bastion of horns and woodwinds, Muñoz, the son of an elementary school teacher and a homemaker, picked up the accordion out of pragmatism: "There was nobody else that played it." Because the band members speak little English, they confess to knowing almost nothing about Conan O'Brien before appearing on the March 1 episode of his TBS show, broadcast from Mexico City.
ISSN:0006-2510