Fuego: Meet 10 Key Players Inside London’s Latin Music Scene

Since the late 1960s, the development of Latin American music has mirrored the migration path of its people. Salsa music can be traced back to its original roots in Africa, of the Bantu people, before landing in eastern Cuba and travelling with the migrant community in search of the American dream, most notably in the cities of NYC and Miami.

Naturally, the sound took on elements of jazz before making its way back to Latin America and the Caribbean—countries like Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The percussive and upbeat sound then took over the nightclubs and taverns in the larger cities, and its popularity began to turn heads even outside of Latin American communities. The demand began to spread like wildfire, with Latinos stepping into the global spotlight for the first time.

At the turn of the millennium, as hip-hop began to really commercialise, reggaeton—an offshoot of Jamaican dancehall with elements of Salsa and hip-hop—was storming the airwaves. Following on from its introduction, it didn’t take long for the mainstream rap world to notice opportunity and latch on: U.S.-born Latino artists, such as Fat Joe, Noreaga and Pitbull, began bridging the gap and the crossover began. Hit tracks like Daddy Yankee, N.O.R.E. and Nina Sky’s “Oye Mi Canto” and Pitbull and Lil Jon’s “Culo” helped set the stage for global audiences to start taking notice again—this time with the full backing of established artists from the West.

Fast forward to today, there is no set genre anymore. The current Latin music landscape has influences ranging from trap to bachata and house. Big names like Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Ozuna and Karol G have stood in the centre of the world stage, becoming some of the best-selling artists of our time. What’s even more impressive is that they’ve achieved all of this almost exclusively in Spanish. Back across the Atlantic, here in the Britain, the Latin music scene over the last ten years has developed into something quite special. With over 250,000 Latinos currently residing in the UK, the bubbling music scene has gradually grown in size and diversity since the mid-00s, and we can thank the melting pot of multiculturalism for what the British-born Latinos are producing right now.

But this hasn’t come without its challenges. The conversation now sounds all-too-familiar and the concerns seem to echo what we heard from the UK rap scene only a decade ago: “The right people need to be in the right places to open the right doors.” Nevertheless, the scene is thriving right now—and on its own terms.

After the jump, get to know 10 artists doing their part for the UK/London Latin music scene.