This weekend, the 70th annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology will be held in Georgia, USA. Daniel Party will present “Latinidad and the Billboard Hot Latin Songs Chart (1986-2024)” on Sunday, October 26, in Panel 11D: “Interrogating Gender and Identity.”

The CMUS principal investigator suggests that this study “aims to address this gap by developing a publicly-available dataset of the HLS chart between 1986 and 2024. This dataset enables us to explore several key questions regarding the changing nature of “Latin Music” and “latinidad”: How does Billboard’s definition of “Latin Music” sound like and how has that sound changed since 1986? Are patterns in Latino migration reflected in the chart? Are trends in interaction among different Latino communities reflected in “inter-latino” song collaborations (Party 2012)? How does the representation of women in the HLS chart compare with the one in other Billboard charts (LaFrance et al 2018; Watson 2019)? Ultimately, this study will help us better understand the ways in which the music industry has contributed to the construction of the idea of Latin Music, and it will provide a counterpoint to recent ethnomusicological explorations of the concept (Byrd 2015; Moreno 2023).

Daniel Party: “Latinidad and the Billboard Hot Latin Songs Chart (1986-2024)”

Sunday, Octuber 26th

9:30am – 10:00am

Marriott Marquis Downtown Hotel Atlanta, Georgia