Latin American music

Latin American music, sometimes simply called Latin music, includes the music of many countries and comes in many varieties, from the simple, rural conjunto music of northern Mexico to the sophisticated habanera of Cuba, from the symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos to the simple and moving Andean flute. Music has played an important part in Latin America's turbulent recent history, for example the nueva cancion movement. Latin music is very diverse, with the only truly unifying thread being the use of the Spanish language or, in Brazil, its close cousin the Portuguese language {{ref|language}}.

References

• {{book reference|Author=Morales, Ed|Title=The Latin Beat|Year=2003|Publisher=Da Capo Press|ID=ISBN 0306810182}}
• {{book reference no ISBN|Author=Nettl, Bruno|Title=Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents|Publisher=Prentice-Hall, Inc|Year=1965}}
• {{book reference|ID=ISBN 1199757381|Author=Stevenson, Robert|Title=Music in Mexico|Publisher=Thomas Y. Crowell Company|Year=1952}}, cited in Nettl, p. 163.