I recently received a couple of emails from an music aficionado friend with some links to a popular Puerto Rican group that had its hit song “Latinoamerica” (=Latin America) performed by an orchestra at the Latin Grammy Awards Ceremony.  It’s not surprising the conductor was Gustavo Dudamel, Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

It’s not surprising that “The Dude” would conduct a hit song with an orchestra….this was the Latin Grammies, after all.   But I couldn’t imagine another conductor, say, Lukas Foss or Rafael Frubeck de Burgos, conducting this song.

The song, by the Puerto Rican group Calle 13, is listed as reggaeton, the new style ubiquitous in the Caribbean, but it’s actually more akin to nueva cancion, the movement in Latin America during the sixties that promulgated human rights and dignity, the same human elements that were being stripped away by dictators like Pinochet in Argentina and Somoza in Nicaragua.

Dudamel didn’t go to Juilliard or some classical conservatory to learn music.  Read More →