Coachella 2022’s expansive Latino presence reflects years-long embrace of a more diverse audience

Since its inception in 1999, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has launched musicians to superstardom, influenced fashion and pop culture, become a playground for celebrities and ultimately branded itself as a global tastemaker in a crowded festival field.

This year, while stars Harry Styles and Billie Eilish top the festival’s famous poster in big, bold letters, it’s impossible to ignore that the festival’s closely watched lineup spotlights Latino performers on the second line of the bill each day. Look deeper and it isn’t just Latino acts on the top of the Coachella poster that makes this year’s lineup eclectic, but more than 20 performers reflecting the diversity of genres influenced by cultures throughout Latin America.

While their music may be all over the sonic spectrum, from banda to reggaeton to rap to pop to rock and beyond, these acts are all united by their backgrounds, amplifying the fact that Latino music is mainstream music.

After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the sold-out festival returns April 15-17 and April 22-24 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. Stars such as Brazil’s Anitta, Mexico’s Grupo Firme and Banda MS and Colombia’s Karol G will perform for not only 125,000 people — and their phones and social media accounts — expected to attend each weekend, but also to the world via a YouTube livestream.

“Latinos are some of the most diverse music listeners and the fact that a lot of different Latino music is being included in the lineup indicates that Latinos make up a huge population,” said Tomás Mier, a staff writer at Rolling Stone. “It’s not just them being featured. They’re leading these lineups. To hear Spanish be spoken and sung at an event like this is very exciting.”

Worldwide appeal

Coachella has been a global affair showcasing a variety of genres since its beginning, with Spanish language artists on the bill going back to the first year in 1999 when Venezuelan band Los Amigos Invisibles performed.

Coachella gained a big following not only in California, but also in Mexico as it grew, and in 2008, Paul Tollett, head of Coachella promoter Goldenvoice, announced the festival’s lineup at a press conference in Mexico City. Among the artists on the bill that year included Mexico’s Café Tacvba and Austin TV as well as Brazil’s Bonde do Rolê.

While Coachella continued to book Latino artists here and there, things began to shift in 2017 after Tollett tapped Pomona-based promoter and Viva! festivals founder Rene Contreras to book the concept that would become the Sonora Tent. The festival’s seventh stage debuted with a lineup of multiple Latino acts representing rock, punk, garage rock and various other sounds.

Bands the year the Sonora debuted included now-defunct East L.A. band Thee Commons, a bilingual group that mixed cumbia and rock with punk and psychedelia, rockers such as Las Ligas Menores, Los Blenders and the tropical sounds of Inland Empire’s Quitapenas, who at one point inspired the crowd to start a conga line.

Contreras had proven himself as a tastemaker by creating and managing Viva! Pomona, a festival focused on elevating artists from various marginalized and diverse communities that have become an unofficial pipeline for rising artists on their way to Coachella. Contreras has also been involved in curating the Chella Celebrando a La Comunidad event and recently announced the Viva! L.A. Music Festival.

“I’m grateful to be able to push the culture forward with my friends and with Goldenvoice,” Contreras said in a phone interview, noting that he was honored to be part of the team.

A growing market

To those who follow the music industry, it’s a no-brainer for a taste-making festival like Coachella to include multiple Latino acts in the lineup.

Russ Crupnick, managing partner of MusicWatch, a market research company that focuses on the music industry, said that people buying music aren’t as rigid about staying within certain styles as in the past because “they’re exposed to so many different genres.”

“We’ve noticed that there’s been a massive uptick in the amount of recorded music that’s in the Latin genre,” he said.

Crupnick credits some of the genre’s popularity to streaming and social media, since people anywhere can access all kinds of music, which means it’s not just Latino music fans listening. According to MusicWatch, 41% of Latino music fans in the U.S. don’t affiliate with Hispanic ethnicity.

Coachella 2022’s Latino performers carry a substantial influence on social media. Karol G’s follower count on TikTok is 32.9 million, and 50.9 million on Instagram. Anitta, whose #EnvolverChallenge or #AnittaChallenge is one of the latest viral challenges on TikTok, has a TikTok follower count of 17.4 million and 61.3 million followers on Instagram.

Coachella’s organizers are paying attention as Latino artists capture fans who have a diverse taste in music that overlaps with the appeal of major headliners.

“A lot of Gen Z-ers have a diverse taste of what we listen to and night one is a perfect example of that,” Mier said.” “I know so many kids that are really excited to see Grupo Firme and then Harry Styles later that night.”

A bigger stage

While the Sonora has become part of the festival, more Latino artists are getting high-profile sets on Coachella’s largest stage. In 2018, Coachella booked Los Ángeles Azules and they had fans — even Justin Bieber — swinging their hips to cumbia beats on the same stage where Beyoncé would perform a day later. Los Tucanes de Tijuana introduced Norteños, Chilean singer Mon Laferte swayed the crowd with her melodies while Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny and Colombia’s J Balvin showed that a perreo dance party can break out anywhere and on the same lineup as Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande and Tame Impala..

“We’ve obviously had an uptick in Latino acts performing at the festival in the years past and it’s been clear how much of a splash they’ve made,” Mier said. “It makes sense that it’s being expanded.”

Angel Chavez, a Coachella Valley resident who started attending the festival in 2009 and uploads videos about the event to YouTube, said that the 2022 lineup was noticeably different in genre and performers this year.

“I was shocked to see this new lineup and how many Latino artists are on it,” Chavez said. “You have artists like Banda MS, Grupo Firme, Cuco and acts from South America like Karol G, Nicki Nicole and Anitta. It’s starting to feel like they’re all being represented.”

Among the artists on the bill for 2022 is Los Angeles-based psychedelic-soul group Chicano Batman, which first performed in 2015 and again in 2017.

Bardo Martinez, Chicano Batman’s frontman, said in a recent phone interview that it was exciting and inspiring to see a variety of Latino music at Coachella, among other cultures, on display. Martinez said he and the band members are also a mix of different backgrounds from El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia, which is reflective of this year’s lineup.

“Latino is a diaspora of many different cultures within Latin America,” Martinez said.” I think the new generation is reflective of that. I think a lot of the artists have new fresh music and cool sounds that everyone can appeal to and groove to, regardless of their cultural background.”

If you go

When: April 15-17 and April 22-24.

Where: Empire Polo Club, 81-800 Ave. 51, Indio

Tickets: Sold out but available on secondary market.

Information: coachella.com

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