Music

Right now, as I am typing up this blog entry, I am listening to Mana, a Mexican rock band from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Listening to this song sung purely in Spanish got me thinking about our lecture today in class about race and music. It made me realize that most of the music that is dominant in radio stations and the Billboard Top 40 or whichever is mainly by English speaking white artists. Sure, this year we had Despacito sung by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 88 but it wasn't until they released a remix single featuring Justin Bieber, a white pop artist, that the song had more commercial success. It makes me wonder if there weren't a white English speaking artist on the single, would that still have happened? Would the song still be that successful if it was just the original non-primarily-English-language artists?

Honestly, I doubt it would have. The song would have done great regardless, yes, but probably would have only charted on such charts like the Hot Latin Songs chart and such. Despacito charting in a predominantly English language chart is a success for Latinos but it's 2017 and we're still marveling at achievements such as these when this should have been happening a long time ago and still continuing. But it's another step to having more non-English-language music be in the musical airwaves.