Did you know that salsa as we know it today was born in New York? It was originally the Son Cubano but was transformed by the Latin American diaspora. And did you know that punk was actually born in Peru? The first band to record this genre of music was called Los Saicos, which was famous long before the English punk revolution.

There are a lot of Latin American music influences that are carried onto today’s mainstream radio. With Robitussin, we explain three ways that Latin American music has influenced your favorite music genres.

Son Cubano to New York’s salsa

This Cuban sound originated in Cuba and spread globally, most notably in other Latin American and Hispanic Caribbean nations. The son Cubano forms, including danzón (dance music), cha-cha-cha, and various other forms of Latin music, eventually made their way to New York City. That’s when it transformed into what we listen to now.

Pioneers in auteur music, and even in Punk

Although today the big charts still list Anglo-Saxon singer-songwriters as the top lyricists, in Latin America, poetry and singer-songwriters have been influential since the beginning of the century.

Even such iconic genres as Punk have their origins in such unimaginable countries as Peru, where the first group to experiment with that sound was born in 1964.

Reggaeton’s impact on today’s radio

Last but not least, nowadays you turn on the radio and you listen to those songs that have set the whole world dancing. But where does their music’s reggaeton base come from? Many cite Panamá as the origin. From there, the Jamaican dancehall music made its way to Brooklyn, New York, in the 1980s and ignited what we now know as reggaeton. Around the same time, magic was happening in Puerto Rico, which undoubtedly meshed into what was already being created in NYC.

Were you aware of these Latin American influences?