Spanish music is great for your brain and overall learning experience they’re an enormous part of Latin American and Spanish culture. These genres of music are deeply rooted in history, culture, and the Spanish language itself.
- Each region of the Latin -speaking world has its favorites. You don’t know the Dominican Republic if you don’t know about bachata. Don’t know Colombia until you know classic salsa. You can’t know Argentina without knowing tango without Spanish music.
- They make for unforgettable Spanish lessons. Music is incredible for memory, even if you think you’re not the musical type. Learning a few choice Latin music can get vocabulary and grammar to stick in your brain effortlessly.
- Singing along polishes your pronunciation. When you start memorizing lyrics so that you can sing along, you’ll naturally start picking up on tone and how letter sounds are vocalized in Latin music something that’s much harder to do when staring at a book.
And singing along employs the effective language learning strategy called shadowing where you do your darkness to imitate the person you’re listening to. It’s well known as a strategy to improve pronunciation.
- Singing a whole Spanish song is a major confidence boost. Once you’ve memorized a whole song and can sing along without looking at the lyrics, you’ll feel like a legit native. You’ll finally feel the soul of Latin music.
- Dancing + learning = good vibes! There’s no more enjoyable way to learn Spanish than listening to foot-tapping music with plenty of passion.
You’re much less likely to feel discouraged or negative while studying with Latin music it was made to make you happy!
10 Irresistible Types of Latin Music to Make You Dance
If you someday travel around Latin America, this Latin music will make up the background your life every day you spend walking around towns and cities and they emanate from every house. After you get past the section about rock and roll, expect some new twists and turns. With every type of music below, I’ve included a little playlist of songs that fit into the genre so you can get a taste of the sound.
Salsa:
The early salsa is a type of Latin music that absorbed a number of other musical influences, including jazz, rock, and mambo, Over the decades to become the modern salsa we all know and love. In any given salsa song, you’ll usually hear bass guitar, piano, bongo and conga drums, claves, maracas, a guiro or Tw and. Maybe even a brassy orchestra to fill out the sound. While it gained popularity in America the 1950s, it only really took off in the 60s, during “The Fania Years,” when Fania Records made a huge push to grow salsa’s. Popularity worldwide obviously, with great success. The 60s are still consider the golden age of salsa, giving birth to the classic sound. That was adopt and adapt by Celia Cruz, Marc Anthony and more over the years.
Merengue
Merengue is a Latin music can be fast, extremely fast even impossibly fast for newbie dances. Luckily, the two-step, left-right-left-right dance is simple enough for anyone to master, so long as you have the energy to keep up with the crazy-fast beats. It’s great for language learners because it covers such a vast array of topics and themes, and lyrics are often more humorous. All you really need is a tambora drum and a guíra (a scraper instrument, similar to the guíro but made from metal) to get the merengue party start.
Bachata
Bachata is another Latin music that’s popular worldwide, and not just in Latin America and New York City weirdly enough, this genre has a dedicated fan base in Japan. It’s a very slick music perform while dance with two partners dancing close, requiring lots and lots of hip wiggling and foot-pop flourishes. The lyrics tend to be over-the-top romantic in nature, often including themes of heartbreak and forbidden love. It’s the kind of stuff you just want to belt out in a ridiculously dramatic way, which is, of course, amazing for studying Spanish.
Reggaeton
Ah yes, the controversial, love-it-or-hate-it genre that’s undeniably popular in the Spanish-speaking world at large. It’s now also gaining popularity in the United States and other countries that aren’t majority Spanish-speaking. Most recently, the popular reggaeton song “Despacito” beat out Taylor Swift in the U.S. top music charts. And you and I both know we danced the heck out of “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee. When we were back in middle school. It’s fine to admit it. Reggaeton is usually straight-up party and dance popular Latin music artists, which makes it perfect to blast loudly, dance to and sing along with. In my book, it’s perhaps the best genre for Spanish students just because of the fun factor. And in terms of lyrics, it’s often very wordy music, especially between choruses. So it’s great for practicing informal Spanish, slang and yes, curse words.
Rock
Now, rock probably needs no introduction. Plenty of varieties of rock have made their way around the Spanish-speaking world, so you’ll find fans everywhere abroad. Turns out, rock music is wick popular in the mountain cities of Ecuador, for whatever reason. I can dig it. There’s rock out there featuring the classic styles from all big rock-and-roll decades in American history. Including the 70s, 80s and 90s there are even angsty emo-rock bands. That capture the Latin music sounds of the oh-so-edgy.
Balada
They vary in sound, some being more pop and rock in nature while others have a more folk sound. Basically, a lot of different genres might fall within this but the common factor of a. Balada is its powerful vocals and sappy, dramatic lyrics. And it’s about 99% of the Latin music in the books. When you go out for a night of karaoke in Latin America. Locals there find it fun to drink their beer and sing sad songs as loudly and dramatically as humanly possible! So, learn a few of the big hits of ballads and prepare yourself for nights out while traveling.
Música folklórica
Every country in Latin America is home to different indigenous cultures, each with their own unique languages, instruments. And musical styling, so you can get lost in a sea of music if you begin exploring this genre. The trick for Latin music is to find folk music that’s sung in Latin rather than an indigenous language so that it can supplement your language learning.
