Latines Are Pivotal to Americana Music’s Past and Its Future

If you look at the history of the Americana music genre — loosely defined by a fusion of folk, blues, country, and jazz — you will find that Latine musicians have always been there. In the last few years, the Latine influence over the genre has gained recognition and traction, partly because Latine artists are increasingly outspoken about their roots, insisting on not being erased. 

In 2022, the Chicano rock band Los Lobos won a Grammy for best Americana album, a significantly recent win for a band that has injected Mexican and Spanish-language influences into the genre since 1973. In 2023, Selena Gomez was cast to play Linda Ronstadt in a biopic, honoring the Queen of Rock’s Latine roots and contributions to the Americana genre. 

And in 2024, contemporary Latine musicians are producing and releasing Americana music in full force, mixing their heritage and language with the traditionally U.S. genre. Grammy-winning artist Gaby Moreno’s new album, Dusk, mixes blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and Latin folk music on several Spanish-language tracks. Released on February 16, the album draws on her rich experiences as an immigrant from Guatemala. Meanwhile, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s 2024 album, The Past is Still Alive, out on February 23, tells the story of the singer’s journey through radical spaces from their Puerto Rican upbringing in the Bronx to their current home base in New Orleans. For Moreno, who delights in discussing Latin American and American influences that led her to her current path, it’s past time to create a new, official genre: Latine Americana.

“It’s a music genre that encompasses all these different styles — the sounds that are merged from folk, country, blues, rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll,” Moreno tells Refinery29 Somos when asked to define Latine Americana. “But [it is] performed and played by Latine artists and [sometimes] sung in Spanish.” 

Moreno’s definition comes after years of wanting the music industry to officially categorize her as an Americana artist. With Dusk, she hopes to make a bid for Latine musicians across the U.S. to make their entries into the genre to expand its Latine influences. For her, Americana is flexible enough to allow a seamless mixing of Latin American sounds and genres, as well as linguistic turns into Spanish and Spanglish. 

“Since I was a little girl, I discovered blues and jazz, and then I was also inspired by Latin music, especially folkloric music from Latin America. Americana is an amalgam of all of those styles, and that’s what I love doing,” Moreno says. “The fact that I’m a Guatemalan mixing blues and rock and folk, you can call me an artist who is between the cracks, which is very Americana.” 

Due to globalization, music nowadays is often, as Moreno says, “the result of migration of different styles,” which is what she tried to bring to the music genre. “Migration is a theme that I’ve always delved into, and it’s something that is so close to my heart. I feel it’s my essence,” she says. “I am an immigrant, and I will always keep writing songs about that. I’ll keep bringing it up as long as I am making music because it’s important. It’s important to me to celebrate immigrants and celebrate diversity.” 

Another aspect of the Americana genre that works well with Latin American culture is its storytelling tradition, which Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra took as an opportunity to document the radical spaces they navigated throughout their lifetime as a Latine musician. And of course, that meant combining the many genres and inspirations Segarra picked up throughout their lifetime.

“I went to Puerto Rico and met other folk musicians. There is such a history of storytelling and political songwriting and people playing the cuatro instead of the guitar,” Segarra says. “I felt like there were actually a lot of Puerto Rican musicians from the island that are doing similar contemplative songwriting. And for me, growing up in New York is such a big inspiration, especially the folk revival in the ‘60s with Bob Dylan is so ingrained in the city. It’s just so specific to be a Puerto Rican from New York.” 

As a queer Puerto Rican growing up in the Bronx, Segarra never quite felt like they belonged. Even in cultures where they thought they could fit in, like the punk radical scene, they felt they were too Latine for certain spaces and too much of a radical “weirdo” for Latine spaces. Now, as a musician, Segarra has to navigate their Latine identity and the whiteness of the spaces they perform in, but at the end of the day what they enjoy is meeting their Latine fans who may have felt similarly to them.

“It’s really important to be myself [in these non-Latine white-dominant spaces],” they say. “In 2017, I put out an album called The Navigator that really focused [on] my Puerto Ricanness. When I put out that album, I found so many more young Latine kids coming to the shows. Anytime I meet people like that, it just makes me so happy. It’s definitely the dream. I was able to play a show in Puerto Rico one time and that was like, ‘okay, I need a new dream because I just made this one come true.’” 

In 2017, the Americana genre went through an identity crisis, as musicians of color made their demands for more inclusivity hard to ignore. While the genre has never been rigidly defined — due to its origins in fusion and genre mixing — it still shut out many artists, following a music industry standard that consistently privileges non-Latine white, Anglophone musicians. Reporting for Rolling Stone, Jonathan Bernstein wrote that Americana has “incredible potential for cross-cultural connection,” which comes with “the subtle racial tensions and profound power dynamics at play in the world of roots — or Americana — music.” The Southern roots of the genre clashes with the non-Latine majority-white artists who headline festivals and Americana-specific awards. 

Perhaps the current Latine musician boom in the genre is a response to that. At the time, Segarra told Rolling Stone: “I have a never-ending list of incredible artists who happen to be Latin and who are making amazing music right now. But even though I like to be hard on people and push for more, I do understand that the vibe of this country for people who have not been directly affected changed very rapidly, so now it’s time to play catch up.” In 2024, Segarra is still making the case for a more diverse genre. 

“What gets [me] the most is when I’m in a space that is super white and I’m like, ‘How do I represent [Latines] while also not claiming to be the brownest person,’” they say. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Damn you’re using me as the example of diversity,’ and I try to find a way to be like, well, what about the artists in Puerto Rico? What about the artists that are Puerto Rican and also Black? I’m trying to use my foot in the door in a way that’s helpful to push it open for others.”

For Moreno, a motivation behind defining the Latine Americana genre is to make the space more welcoming for other Latine artists who have previously hesitated when creating Americana music. “I would love for people to realize that there’s so much more to what ‘Latin music’ means,” Moreno says. “In the U.S. market, I feel that we need more representation from Latin artists in this world, [we need more visibility for] the Latin artists who are making blues music, the Latines who are making folk music. I would love to be a part of that change.”

And both Segarra and Moreno point to the stereotypes within the music industry more generally: The music industry pigeonholes Latine musicians into specific music genres like pop, reggaeton, or urban music, with very little space for transitioning to different styles of music. With both Dusk and The Past Is Still Alive, Moreno and Segarra, respectively, are bringing their backgrounds to a genre that heavily implies that they don’t belong. But the reality is that Latine artists have always been a part of this tradition — white-dominant and Anglophone cultures have just rendered them invisible. 

For Segarra, The Past Is Still Alive is about putting the past and the present in contact with each other. It’s about making sure everyone knows that we are the ones making history as we live our lives. “We talk about history, we talk about these important people. But we are invigorating the past, and we’re creating history now,” they say. “So these people that you see around you, these artists, or your friends, or your community — it’s so important to cherish them while they’re here.” 

Let’s heed Segarra’s advice, and give flowers to the Latine Americana musicians who have always been here — and the ones that will inevitably come in the future.

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