One of the few really strong Latin acts in CCM, part of their strength is knowing how to rock across genres: undeniably Latin-soaked contemporary pop so unlike all the rest that it becomes a cool celebration of new music. Salvador has a heap of ties to Los Lonely Boys, including their similar music styles, career trajectory and specifically the single “Heaven,” but they also share Texan family-band roots as well. Salvador hails from a small Hispanic church in Austin with about 30 people in the congregation. Best enjoyed live, they play all their own instruments, which sound like normal band behavior, but with Salvador, you have to start counting the trumpets, jazz guitars and cowbells. Whether quiet praise and worship or crazy live jam Latin explosion, Salvador succeed because of their expert musicianship. Not many Christian rockers can get an all-Spanish-language song to top CCM charts.
- Amy Bartlett

An anomaly in the world of Latin Pop, Arjona is known as protest singer associated with student culture. Born in Guatemala, he was raised in Antigua and later lived in Mexico City before relocating to Buenos Aires, where his controversial themes were more accepted.
- Robert Leaver

Formed in San Jose, Calif., at the dawn of the 1970s, Los Tigres del Norte — comprising the Hernandez brothers of Sinaloa and drummer Oscar Lara– had been playing music together since they were children, but it wasn’t until impresario Art Walker heard them in San Jose in the late ’60s that they began to take themselves seriously as a band. Walker signed them to his new label Fama Records, and the group began to have limited success, playing throughout San Jose’s growing Mexican district and getting some airplay. But the group truly coalesced when bandleader and vocalist Jorge Hernandez heard a singer in Los Angeles perform “Contrabando y Traicion.” The dramatic narco-corrido was unlike anything he’d ever heard, and it became the group’s break-out single in 1971. “Contrabando y Traicion” told the story of a Bonnie and Clyde-esque drug-running couple with a flair and drama not seen before in narco-corridos, and the hit spun off legions of imitators who invented further adventures for the ruthless fictional heroine, Camelia La Tejana, as well as a slew of songs in a similar vein. Early hits like “La Banda del Carro Rojo” followed up on “Contrabando y Traicion”’s success and cemented the band’s place as a corridos powerhouse. Though pioneers of the narco-corrido, the band has never allowed itself to be pigeonholed in that genre, refusing to name real drug traffickers in their songs (unlike many other groups) and shunning the gun-glorifying imagery associated with the genre. Their diverse repertoire includes love songs, songs about the immigrant experience in the U.S., and critical commentaries on Mexican politics. They spearheaded the movement to write songs about the immigrant experience with the 1976 single “Vivan Los Mojados,” a still-relevant track that questions what would happen to American agriculture if all the “wetbacks” were sent back to Mexico. “La Jaula de Oro” (The Gold Cage) is widely considered a masterpiece; it deals with the alienation a longtime immigrant can still feel in the United States. In 2000, stars of rock and pop came together to pay homage to the group with an album of covers, El Mas Grande Homenaje A Los Tigres Del Norte, which acknowledged the group’s massive contributions to music north and south of the border. After three decades, Los Tigres del Norte have become less a band than an institution, a defining voice for over a generation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
- Sarah Bardeen

This Mexican pop trio was conceived and created by renowned producer Mario Domm, who rounded out the sound with two young vocalists known as Samo and Pablo, men who apparently don’t merit last names. The group didn’t hit immediately: its 2006 debut, Todo Cambio, simmered for a long time, until the public suddenly embraced the single “Abrazame.” A string of subsequent hits meant the original record was still dominating the charts well into 2007. Suffused with romance but steeped in the RnB stylings favored by groups north of the border, the band’s sound utilizes the croon power of the two singers to build tension that inevitably explodes in ecstatic crescendos.
- Sarah Bardeen