For many years, I was fortunate to play in a band that featured part rock, part Latin music. It was an incredible education both musically and culturally for this gringo kid from the suburbs.
When Bad Bunny was performing during halftime of Super Bowl LX, I couldn’t help but feel happy for all my musical brothers and sisters who played largely in obscurity for so long. I imagined what it must be like for those who lived in the United States but performed the music so closely aligned with their cultural heritage. How they felt. What they were thinking.
More importantly, all the kids who look and sound and speak like Bad Bunny got to see themselves in front of one of the biggest televised audiences of the year. Many may have thought of this mostly as a political statement, but it was, for me, a musical one.
Latin music has always been a part of the culture of America, especially considering that “America” also includes the rest of the North, Central and South parts of the Western Hemisphere. But, here in the States, music from Spain filtered into the first inklings of early American music in New Orleans’ famous Jackson Square, where one of our only true art forms, jazz, was born.
In the 1960s, Latin music exploded in the U.S. In New York, Fania Records became the epicenter for Salsa in America the way Motown was for rhythm and blues. Fania discovered artists who would become some of the most influential performers of Latin music including Rueben Blades, Hector Lavoe, Willie Colon and Ray Barretto.
Three years after The Beatles released the Spanish-infused “And I Love Her,” Frank Sinatra recorded an album with Brazilian bossa nova master Antonio Carlos Jobim, which was nominated for multiple Grammy’s at the 1968 awards show.
This beneath-the-surface influence continued throughout popular music for decades, impacting everything from pop (Miami Sound Machine) to rock (“Tequila Sunrise“) to country (Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias) to Christmas (“Feliz Navidad“).
This isn’t some weird music that came from another country for one day at the Super Bowl. This is something that is embedded in the fabric of American music, a part of our shared culture for nearly 100 years.
But it wasn’t until the last decade-plus that reggaeton and bachata began to reach dance clubs, airwaves and massive concert tours. Artists like Pitbull, Sharkira, Ricky Martin, J Balvin, Daddy Yankee, Romeo Santos and others suddenly found incredible crossover success blending pop, hip hop and traditional Latin rhythms.
And in case you didn’t notice, Bad Bunny mixed the more modern reggaeton he is known for with traditional Salsa throughout his performance, which is notable not just for its addition to halftime of the most popular single-day sporting event in the world, but for the fact that Salsa music is incredibly complicated.
I remember, in my 20s, learning to understand the syncopated grooves of a samba by having my friend, a Latin percussionist, tap the beat on my shoulder until I had it down. That music is not only wildly influential on every aspect of American music, it’s also a huge challenge for musicians, invariably making them better and broadening their musical palette.
You may not be a fan of Bad Bunny’s music overall. Honestly, I’m not really either. My tastes tend to run in the direction of traditional Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban. But it’s impossible to deny the impact of that performance on both people who were discovering him for the first time and others who were seeing themselves through his eyes.
For many, particularly those in Latin American communities across the U.S., this could very well have been their version of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. That seminal moment in music history turned teenagers into musicians by the thousands. Some of them would go on to become the most important musical artists of the 20th century.
So, whether you agree with the rather front-facing politics of the moment or not, understood the lyrics or didn’t, felt the groove move you or stayed glued to your La-Z-Boy, understand that Bad Bunny’s raucous and, ultimately, joyous halftime show will have a lasting impact on the millions of people who watched, particularly the kids and young aspiring musicians who were finally able to see themselves in a way they would have only dreamed of before.
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.