Regional Goes Global, Part 1: Finding Peso Pluma's music revolution in Nashville

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4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this year, Peso Pluma — a 24-year-old who grew up in between Guadalajara, Jalisco and San Antonio — became the first regional Mexican artist to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart. Something in the music industry was changing. Streaming numbers for regional Mexican shot up astronomically, as the musical stylings of banda and norteño made their way onto the Coachella main stage and burgeoning stars like Peso Pluma began to book their first U.S. tours in major markets. But what accounted for regional Mexican's rise? And what does the genre's continued popularity say about not just changing trends in the Latin music industry, but the changing shape of America?

For the next three episodes of Alt.Latino, Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras dive into the regional Mexican explosion, revealing the complex relationships both Mexicans and Mexican Americans have with identity from either side of the border. In this first episode, Felix and Anamaria travel to Nashville, Tenn. to witness Peso Pluma's performance and to try to understand the root of the phenomenon, through their own personal experiences and the people they meet along the way.

Audio for this episode of 'Alt.Latino' was edited and mixed by Janice Llamoca and Joaquin Cotler, with production support from Shelby Hawkins, Suraya Mohamed, Natalia Fidelholtz and Lauren Migaki. The editor for this episode is Jacob Ganz and our project manager is Grace Chung. Our VP of Music and Visuals is Keith Jenkins.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Lori Lisa Raga from Code Switch, the Race and Identity Podcast from MPR.
0:04.4	I'm one of thousands of MPR network voices at more than 200 local newsrooms across the country,
0:09.7	working to bring people together through our free and independent journalism, music, and so much more.
0:15.3	The NPR Network.
0:16.4	What you hear changes everything.
0:18.5	Learn more at NPR.org.
0:20.1	network.
0:21.1	The Revolution Mexicans in the music, I have a number that we have a piece of primo.
0:27.0	Giego,
0:31.0	I have a lot of their core of the album. Piao, who I can't
0:33.0	their core of the album Genesis,
0:36.0	that's I'm here we're Rubico. We just said that the Mexican Music Revolution has a name and that name is Pto Fruma.
0:54.0	And people really need that.
0:57.0	I love this one. From NPR Music, music, this is all Latino. I'm Felix Contreras.
1:09.2	And I'm Anamaria Sayer. Let the Cheesme begin.
1:13.0	Pesso Pluma doesn't look like a revolutionary. He's 24 years old, Scrani, kind of unassuming. But here he is standing in front of a a Not that the door vieder, no, that the first
1:55.0	that was going to be the concert of the Putable
1:58.0	and Peeve. Standing there in that crowd in Nashville, the idea that he was the image of a revolution, it felt very real.
2:09.0	Here with his US TV debut performing the number one Latin song in the country as real as it did when
2:16.1	Pesso pluma popped up on my TV screen this past June.
2:20.2	Give it up for Pesso Pruma!
2:38.3	Performing his hit Aya Vailasola on the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon. This song was instantly all over social media on Tik-Tock. I want to say watching Latinos do those things like performance a nice show, late show makes me so proud.
	...

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