The Sounds of Hispanic Heritage Month: A Spotlight on NEA National Heritage Fellow Musicians

The United States is a nation of immigrants whose collective stories interweave to make America the unique, resilient, colorful, and beautiful tapestry that it is. The cultures that they bring and integrate with the already existing culture create the unique American character not found elsewhere in the world—nowhere else do so many voices speak for one country.

The National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship program celebrates those various traditions and how they represent these diverse communities throughout the country. The fellowships represent what it is to be American; the values, customs and traditions, and histories of those various threads that make up this tapestry.

During National Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re looking at some of the Hispanic/Latinx performing artists who have been awarded the National Heritage Fellowship, from Mexican American singer Lydia Mendoza in 1982 to renowned music group Los Lobos in 2021. Here are a few of the past honorees to enjoy during the commemorative month.

Los Lobos (2021 Fellows)

Let’s start with one of our newest fellows, the band Los Lobos from East Los Angeles. On each of their first two rock albums in the 1980s they included a traditional Mexican song along with their rock numbers, and that was my first introduction to the music. Sure, I had heard some jazz renderings, like Charlie Parker’s version of “La Cucaracha” and Charles Mingus’ Tijuana Moods, but those weren’t traditional renditions. After touring constantly and doing the La Bamba soundtrack (which increased their popularity), Los Lobos decided to lay back and put out an EP of only traditional music (okay, they wrote the title track, but as a traditional song), La Pistola y el Corazón, an album that showed the beauty and versatility of Mexican folk music. It remains one of my favorite Los Lobos albums. La Pistola y el Corazón ended up winning a Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American Performance (and started my search for recordings of traditional Mexican music).

Here’s a rendition of Los Lobos performing “La Pistola y el Corazón.”

Eva Ybarra (2017 Fellow)

Conjunto music is one of the Mexican folk traditions with which I have become particularly enamoured, perhaps due to the sound of the accordion, an acquired taste for some but one for which I have always had affection. I came across an album, Romance Inolvidable, by someone I had not heard of before: Eva Ybarra out of San Antonio, Texas. I hadn’t come across any conjunto bands led by women before, so I picked up the album. Although maintaining the traditional conjunto style, all the songs were original. And the band cooked.

Here she is performing at the 2017 NEA National Heritage Fellowship concert, showing why she is called “Queen of the Accordion.”

Israel “Cachao” López (1995 Fellow)

I was caught up in the traditional Cuban music craze of the late 1990s, due to Buena Vista Social Club, of course. Once you start looking back at the innovators of the music from 1930s to the 1950s, you can’t miss the importance of Cachao, as he was known. Considered one of the inventors of the musical style known as mambo, he was a star in Cuba and helped to popularize Afro-Cuban music in the United States in the 1950s and ‘60s. He defected to the U.S. in 1962 and was “rediscovered” late in his career when the actor Andy Garcia made a film about him in 1993. Extra fun fact: his nephew Orlando, nicknamed “Cachaito” after his famous uncle, was the bassist on the Buena Vista Social Club sessions and included two of his uncle’s compositions on his only solo album in 2001.

Watch Cachao in a session recording, with Andy Garcia joining in the action.

Juan Gutiérrez (1996 Fellow)

Like traditional Cuban music, in which percussion plays a prominent role, Puerto Rico’s bomba and plena music also is heavily reliant on percussive instruments. Which is why percussionist Juan Gutiérrez is so important to the music. In New York City, he co-founded the ensemble Los Pleneros de la 21, which shared the joy of the traditional Puerto Rican music far and wide. Try not tapping your foot while listening to their music.

Watch this performance of Los Pleneros de la 21 led by Gutiérrez from 1991.

Roberto and Lorenzo Martínez (2003 Fellows)

Roberto Martínez grew up in a region of New Mexico that historically had been a stronghold of Hispanic culture, and that is where he learned the folk melodies, especially the corrido, a narrative type of song that is often about contemporary topics. Martínez began writing his own corridos and his son Lorenzo became interested in the music and learned violin, and soon began playing with his father. Together, they helped preserve the music and continue it with his original compositions. The two, with additional family members as Lorenzo Martínez y Riflexiones, played at the 2004 Smithsonian Folklife Festival as part of a special concert sponsored by the NEA of Hispanic National Heritage Fellows and had the audience dancing along.

Here’s a Smithsonian Folkways recording of a corrido Roberto Martínez wrote, with his son Lorenzo playing along on violin.

Lydia Mendoza (1982 Fellow)

Known as "La Alondra de la Frontera" (the meadowlark of the border) and "La Cancionera de los Pobres" (the songstress of the poor), Lydia Mendoza was part of the first class of National Heritage Fellows to be honored. She began playing with her family as a teen and in the 1920s became one of the first to record Spanish language music for a major label. In the 1930s, she performed Tejano and conjunto music for the Mexican American workers in south Texas, becoming popular and recording more sessions, including one for her signature song, “Mal Hombre.” She became the first Tejana inducted into the Conjunto Hall of Fame in 1991, received a National Medal of Arts in 1999, and even got her own postage stamp in 2013.

There aren’t a lot of video recordings of her performing, but the documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured her in this excerpt from his film Chulas Fronteras. 

Don Ball is a music aficionado as well as an assistant director in the NEA Office of Public Affairs.