Do you like música country? Nashville wants to know

Seeing potential in a new market, the Country Music Association has formed a task force to investigate how many Hispanics like the genre.

November 3, 2006
BY TRAVIS LOLLER

When country music acts started noticing more Hispanic fans at their concerts, it didn't take long for Music Row to start dreaming of its Next Big Audience.

After all, many Hispanics in the United States, especially Mexicans, already love norteño, a traditional sound that sprang from the rural experience of northern Mexico. But could these norteño fans also be interested in the fiddles and steel guitars of country music?

The Country Music Association in Nashville says there are no good studies to show how many Hispanics listen to country already, so the industry group recently formed a task force to investigate.

Anecdotal evidence suggests Spanish speakers are not a large part of the country music audience. The phrase ''country music'' doesn't even have a translation in Spanish.

''If they know it at all, they'll call it música country,'' said Eddie Wright-Rios, a Vanderbilt University professor who specializes in the cultural history of modern Mexico.

Maria Pena owns Las Americas Music in Nashville and carries music in Spanish almost exclusively. No one ever comes into her store looking for country music, said the Chihuahua, Mexico native, adding that she doubted her customers were familiar with the genre.

But Pena's employee, Camelia Wissar, also of Chihuahua, said she listens to country and her friends do as well. Asked who she likes, she listed Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks.

The CMA task force was created shortly after the only country music station in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city with a Hispanic population of 49 percent, abruptly changed formats to urban contemporary in August.

But Jeff Walker, a CMA board member who chairs the Hispanic task force, said it's not a knee-jerk reaction. He said the country music industry simply sees potential in the Hispanic market.

Country music enjoyed a 17.7 percent increase in album sales in the first half of this year -- the largest percentage jump of any genre -- but overall U.S. album sales are down, and music executives are always interested in an untapped market.

Country music has tried in recent years to broaden the image of its audience as white people in rural, red-state America -- an effort symbolized by the CMA holding its annual awards ceremony in New York, instead of Nashville, last year.

Eva Melo, of Tennessee-based Latin Market Communications, said the CMA has requested a Hispanic market study, but she is skeptical her fellow Hispanics will take to the genre.

''I don't know if Hispanics will relate to country music because it doesn't come out of Mexico,'' she said. ``It comes out of Nashville.''

Also, the Hispanic audience is not monolithic. Nearly two-thirds of all U.S. Hispanics are Mexican, but Spanish-speakers from other countries have diverse musical tastes.

''In different areas of the country, they listen to different music,'' she said. ``In Miami it's more salsa, merengue and cumbia. California is more Spanglish, hybrid, fusion.''

Maritza Baca, a marketer who recently formed the U.S. Hispanic Country Music Association in California, is convinced Hispanics are gravitating toward country.

''I think there's definitely a trend,'' she said, noting that in a Mexican airport she has heard country music over the intercom. She said Spain has a Country Music Association, and Argentina just put on a country music festival.

Source: The Miami Herald