They don’t know how they came here,” frets Jorge Hernández, Los Tigres’s lead singer. “A lot of the kids don’t think about the border. On their tours they see a gulf between fans born in Mexico and their American-raised children. Los Tigres “knew where their fans were before the census did”, he reckons. Each time the national media discover a new Hispanic community in Arkansas or South Carolina, the band has usually been there three years earlier, says Dwayne Ulloa, a long-time adviser to the group. Their band has played in every state except Montana. They sing of border crossings and smugglers, romantic betrayals and the heartache of exile. “Los Tigres del Norte” are giants of music, having sold 37m albums in a four-decade career. His single “Propuesta Indecente” is unknown to most Anglo-Americans, but has been viewed on YouTube more than 600m times.Įven traditional bands have seen their markets transformed by new migration flows to the Great Plains, Midwest and deep South. After going solo, Aventura’s lead singer, Romeo Santos, has sold out Madison Square Gardens in New York and filled arenas in such Mexican strongholds as Los Angeles-a once unthinkable feat for a bachata artist of Dominican-Puerto Rican stock. But another, swaggeringly confident, bicultural market is taking shape. Latin musicians who broke into the mainstream charts, such as Ricky Martin, sang in English, often in duets with Anglo “gatekeeper” stars. Mexican-Americans followed “regional Mexican” styles like banda (lots of trumpets) or the accordion-driven polkas of norteño. Puerto Ricans in the north-east had their own stars. Only a few years earlier many young Hispanics might have scowled at bachata. The group had enjoyed growing success among Spanish-speakers by infusing the sounds of R&B into bachata, a once obscure genre born in rural dance halls and dive bars of the Dominican Republic. Drake was referring to a Latino boy-band, “Aventura”, from the Bronx in New York. The reference may have passed some fans by. A FEW YEARS ago a bit of social history was made when Drake, a rapper, boasted on a 2011 hit single: “Them Spanish girls love me like I’m Aventura”.