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Los Lobos, a hard-charging band with roots in East Los Angeles, has broken out of the barrio with gritty albums such as By the Light of the Moon, as well as the popular sound track to the hit movie La Bamba, the story of '50s Latin Teen Idol Ritchie Valens. The driving melodies and hypnotic rhythms of hip-hop -- call it lateeno-pop -- crowd the airwaves and the club scenes as one of the country's hottest new types of dance music. The movie Salsa has raked in $8.7 million in domestic box-office receipts since its May release. Record sales of Latin music are up, although the buyers remain predominantly Latino. Still, audiences for such crossover artists as Ruben Blades and Temptress Sa-Fire are increasingly mixed.
Never heard of Lisa Lisa, Linda Caballero? Of Willy Chirino or Carlos Oliva? Then boogie on down Crossover Street: Cruz's timeless appeal is spanning generations; younger artists like Chirino and Oliva are fusing classic salsa with rock and American pop; and raven-haired hip-hop sirens have replaced Menudo in the affections of some Latin teens. What the Motown girl groups were to the '60s, Brenda K. Starr, Sweet Sensation and the Cover Girls are to the Nuyoricans of the '80s.
Out West, Los Lobos is welding rock 'n' roll to traditional Mexican forms, jump blues and country-and-western sounds to limn the Mexican immigrant experience in America. Ben Tavera King, 35, a San Antonio guitarist, has fashioned a fresh style that blends Latin inflections, good ole boy strummings and the hypno-rhythms of New Age. The pleasures of Latino pop are not only musical but also social: "The music affirms their identity," says Maria Cordero-Aranda, 32, a Los Angeles psychiatric social worker of Puerto Rican descent. "It tells them who they are and where they came from."
Mainstream performers, meanwhile, have fallen for the spicy sound. Linda Ronstadt, who has some Mexican ancestry, has had an unexpected hit with Canciones de Mi Padre, a collection of Mexican folk songs. "I feel completely enchanted by the music, and I feel very connected to what I am," says Ronstadt, who is backed on her record by the crack Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitan band. Paul Simon has been flying down to Rio to work on a new album with Brazilian musicians, much as he employed Ladysmith Black Mambazo on Graceland, and both Manhattan Transfer and Songstress Sarah Vaughan have been exploring Brazilian sounds and rhythms.
Indeed, Latin music may finally be breaking out of its old image of a lounge lizard in a frilly shirt pounding a conga drum. "As our numbers and economic power increase, so does the acceptance of our music," says Chirino, whose rock-influenced style is typical of the sophistication and range of the Miami Sound. Observes Cuban Jazz Saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, whose electrifying flights of improvisatorial fancy rank as one of music's most thrilling high- wire acts. "The black-bean invasion has arrived."