While Seattle’s music scene has long been known for producing genre-defining artists and live shows, its Spanish-language programming has been sparse. Today, the city is welcoming more Latin music into the fold as artists in the genre break into the predominantly English-speaking mainstream. As Latin artists are more frequently booked in local venues, crowds of excited fans are making it clear to promoters that there’s an appetite for the genre in grunge-famous Seattle.
Take Bad Bunny, for example. When the 29-year-old Puerto Rican artist announced his return to Seattle last fall, the March 9 Climate Pledge Arena show sold out almost immediately.
Bad Bunny’s first-ever Seattle concert at Climate Pledge Arena in 2022 was “Seattle’s biggest party of the year” where “almost every song was greeted like a fan favorite,” Seattle Times music writer Michael Rietmulder wrote in a review. The performance marked the first time a Latino artist sold out a show at the newly renovated arena, which has over 17,000 seats. (It was another first for Bad Bunny, too; it was the first time an adoring fan succeeded in rushing onstage to hug him.)
Since his first SoundCloud release in 2016, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has defied the music industry and remained loyal to his culture by singing only in Spanish. Despite this, the popularity of his infectious songs — seriously, just try not to bob your head or sway your hips to his music — made him one of the most streamed artists globally with Spanish- and English-speaking audiences. Last year, his iconoclastic album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” was the first Spanish-language album to be nominated for an album of the year Grammy Award.
Latino nightlife and entertainment industry experts say the Puerto Rican artist, along with the reggaeton and Latin trap genres, have ushered in a badly needed renaissance for local Latino culture.
For years, big-name Latino acts on major arena stages have often been hard to find in Seattle, sequestered to smaller venues or venues outside the city. As far back as 2007, promoters speculated the local entertainment market would embrace the Latino audience when Vicente Fernandez played the White River Amphitheatre. At the time, promoter Fred Godinez, then based in Stockton, Calif., said he expected the show would “put the Seattle-Tacoma area on the map for future Latin shows.” He wasn’t wrong, but he was off by nearly two decades. So, why was Seattle so late to the party?
Nick Vaerewyck, Climate Pledge Arena’s vice president of programming, chalks it up to two things: a lack of understanding from promoters who weren’t aware of the opportunity for Latin artists in a market this far north and, before the arena rebuild, limited venues of this size to accommodate the demand.
Today, Latin artists like Daddy Yankee and Karol G regularly sell out months in advance. When Bad Bunny announced his March 2024 return to Climate Pledge Arena last fall, so many fans tried to buy tickets to his show that Ticketmaster crashed, Vaerewyck added.
“One of the first things I noticed when I moved here was that the building in general didn’t do Latin programming prior to the rebuild,” said Vaerewyck, who worked as a talent booker in Arizona and New York for nearly two decades before arriving in Seattle about four years ago.
Through its many iterations, the arena had only seen a handful of Latino acts, sometimes with decades between shows, including Santana in 1979, Cypress Hill in 1998 and The Mars Volta in 2005. (The latter two do not specifically market themselves as Latin music.)
Vaerewyck and Climate Pledge Arena leadership have made it a goal to change that. As part of his preliminary research for booking Latin acts at the arena, Vaerewyck went to smaller concerts headlined by Latin artists like Ana Gabriel and Nicky Jam, who performed at the 9,000-person capacity WAMU Theater in 2022. The packed crowd made it clear to Vaerewyck that Latino acts filled seats.
“It was a very underserved market,” he said.
Latin artists like Daddy Yankee, Grupo Firme, Rauw Alejandro and Maná have since graced the Climate Pledge Arena stage — and more are coming this season.
On April 4, Luis Miguel, Latin America’s most globally successful artist of all time, will return to Seattle for the first time since his Cómplices Tour stop in 2008 . Later this summer, Mexican breakout star Peso Pluma, who’s known for popularizing corridos tumbados, an offshoot genre of regional Mexican music with hip-hop influences, will perform at Climate Pledge Arena on Aug. 16. This will be Peso Pluma’s second concert in Seattle since his WAMU Theater performance last June.
Latin artists with smaller profiles among English-speaking audiences are also performing at a number of popular Seattle venues through early summer. Spotify chart-topping Mexican artist Xavi will perform at The Showbox SoDo on April 5; beloved Mexican rock bands Café Tacvba and Caifanes will play at WAMU Theater on May 30, and Chilean Mexican musician Mon Laferte will take the stage at the Paramount Theatre on May 31.
Latinos make up one of King County’s largest demographics — nearly doubling from 5.5 % of the county’s population in 2000 to 10.5% in 2023. Despite this, it can be easy for some Latinos to still feel invisible due to growing income inequality and growing gentrification that is increasingly displacing and outpricing Latinos from the city.
That sense of visibility and community changed with Bad Bunny’s 2022 Climate Pledge Arena concert, which coincided with the end of the pandemic lockdown. For some Seattle-area Latinos, the March concert was the first time they’d seen their culture and communities celebrated en masse.
That show was Maya DeAvilla’s first Spanish-language concert. For the 25-year-old Filipino and Mexican Seattleite, exploring her Latinidad — the shared experiences and expressions of Latin culture and identity — hadn’t felt like a priority in a majority-white Seattle. Bad Bunny’s virality and mainstream celebration of his music changed that for her.
DeAvilla, who works for the Vera Project as a community engagement coordinator, said she now sees Latino culture everywhere, from Pioneer Square’s Aqui Mercado and new small businesses to marquees outside local music venues.
“I never thought in my city we would have this many fans to the point where it’s like, now we can actually have [Latin music] at major arenas,” she said. “You can’t not cater to this growing demographic who is obviously extremely excited about the music and culture.”
Angelica Mendoza, who goes by DJ Tremenda Diosa and hosts Bad Bunny nights at Neumos, said when she started mixing and deejaying Latin music while in college in 2017 at the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus, she found little enthusiasm among audiences.
Although “people weren’t really biting,” Mendoza continued deejaying Latin music at mostly small, community-driven events after graduating.
For many Latinos, Bad Bunny was a turning point for Latino representation in the Seattle area.
Mendoza and DeAvilla both credit the isolation of lockdown, which heavily pushed people online, for popularizing the music and artist that has come to define their generation and, in turn, bringing a spring into local Latino culture and community.
When the pandemic hit and Bad Bunny dropped his album “YHLQMDLG,” Mendoza remembers her virtual DJ sets being flooded with requests to play San Benito’s “Safaera” and “Bichiyal.” It’s apparent that Seattle, which has “a Latin night every night now,” has finally accepted Latin music, she said.
Once pandemic lockdown was over, Mendoza said there was an immediate hunger to get to the clubs and move to the new music they weren’t able to properly dance to while holed up at home.
Chuck Wang, owner of the Vue Lounge nightclub in Belltown, where Bad Bunny will have his official after-party, agrees.
After 18 years in the nightlife business, Wang has seen Seattle nightlife catch up, albeit slowly. While before there was just one club hosting a Latin night, most clubs now regularly play Latin songs, regardless of that night’s theme.
“Sometimes you don’t really need to understand Spanish in order to enjoy the music,” he said.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that singer Luis Miguel last performed in Seattle in 2008.
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