Like the holiday season itself (emphasis on season — as in weeks of festivities), Christmas songs are kind of a big deal in the Latin-music world. From meditative religious songs to rollicking salsa soundtracks perfect for a parranda (the caroling/party tradition), sun-kissed Spanish versions of "White Christmas" to "El Burrito de Belén," there's a song for just about every occasion, and chances are it's been recorded by just about every big-name Latin star. In the spirit of the season, we put together a massive navidad mega-mix with the perfect song for every mood and moment, whether you're waking up at the crack of dawn for a novena service, preparing for a festive nochebuena dinner with family or just celebrating the season with friends. It includes a multiversion "Burrito" breakdown! ¡Feliz Navidad!Listen now:
Feliz Navidad: A Latin Christmas Celebration!
We all love our holiday traditions, including our favorite seasonal songs, whether you're a classicist or a "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"-ist. This year, why not add a global dimension to your holiday listening traditions by embracing some international music customs? We've assembled an extensive guide to the best international and Latin holiday albums, including Christmas-, Hanukkah- and solstice-friendly music from Ireland, Cuba, Jamaica, Eastern Europe and more. So start listening and find some new ways to (musically) say Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Nollaig Shona Dhaoibh! Ah Freilichen Chanukah! Happy holidays!
"Urban Latin" is at once an extremely specific and yet incredibly vague term, but for our purposes here we've defined it loosely as Latin music that in some way cozies up to mainstream hip-hop and R&B, whether through its beats, its aesthetics, its collaborations or its target audience. We've focused this Cheat Sheet on three prominent styles: reggaeton, Latin hip-hop, and the newest big player in this game, bachata. That Dominican pop genre hasn't always been as urban-identified as, say, reggaeton (in fact, bachata was originally the music of the rural poor), but many of its biggest stars are carving out an aesthetic kinship to R&B that feels organic and sounds hot. 
One of Latin music's biggest events of the year is coming up November 10. We're talking, of course, about the Latin Grammy Awards, the annual star-studded fete honoring the brightest stars and most exciting newcomers in the wide, wonderful Latin music world. Held this year in Las Vegas (and airing on Univision), the 2011 program promises to be a stunner. Mariachi star/actress 
Over the last decade or so, many Latin artists have carved out a new style by stitching indie rock, hip-hop, electronic and pop together with folk and traditional music to create a sonic tapestry that's at once comfortably familiar and chicly cutting-edge. New York outfit 
"Latin crossover" has meant many things over the years, from pop songs featuring Spanish lyrics to Latino artists who cracked the predominantly white mainstream charts. It's a vague, loaded and problematic term. But underneath that confusing umbrella, talented artists of Hispanic heritage have added rich musical, stylistic and sometimes linguistic strains to the tapestry of American pop music. That's what we're celebrating with this Cheat Sheet on Latin Crossover Artists, compiled in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, which is observed September 15 to October 15.
In this edition of the Latin Roundup, we get to touch on several corners of the vast and varied world of Latin music, thanks to the stellar collection of stylistically wide-ranging albums out in the last couple months. Norteño's "narco" kingpin Gerardo Ortiz dropped his first album since last winter's attacks on his entourage. Indie-pop darling Ximena Sariñana made good on the hype surrounding her debut with an even richer, more mature, more fun sophomore collection. And rock queen Alejandra Guzman recaps her illustrious career with a killer greatest-hits collection. So let's dig in.
Like the country's rich and varied natural landscape — and its thrilling and often tumultuous socio-political history — Colombian musical culture is exhilarating, breathtakingly diverse and at once richly historic and cutting-edge. Its musical claims to fame encompass everything from wide-ranging folk traditions to some of the world's biggest Latin pop stars, from rock heavyweights to alt-folkloric hip-hop. Colombian musicians are also equally brilliant at both artistic importing and exporting: salsa inundated the country and Colombians made it their own, while homegrown cumbia has infiltrated nearly every sector of the Latin world. What we've assembled here in this guide to Colombian music is only a very brief introduction, but it will give you a taste for just how deliciously diverse this country's musical heritage is. Dig in.
We admit that the title of this Cheat Sheet we've compiled ("we" being Latin editor 
Latin alternative music, like anything lurking under that ambiguous "alt" umbrella, is a hodgepodge hive of sounds, ranging from gritty rock to twee pop, from experimental electronic music to quirky hip-hop. But one aspect of the sound is easy to pin down: initially a kind of boys' club (or at least a club in which admittedly very talented boys got most of the attention), the world of Latin alt has recently been invaded by captivating, critically acclaimed, incredibly talented female artists. In fact, there are so many fresh new female faces in this world that we're focusing here primarily on women working in the cantautor (aka singer-songwriter) tradition, and saving the hard-rocking outfits, punk bands and emcees for another time. But even within that concentration, a wealth of sonic diversity exists, from Juana Molina's ambient electro-pop to Rita Indiana's techno-merengue, from Pistolera's folklorico rock to indie-pop darling Ximena Sariñana, whose masterful self-titled sophomore album dropped this week.
The Latin music world is so wide-ranging that we couldn't possibly contain all of its riches in one little roundup. So last time around, we focused on Mexican regional music. This time, we're rounding up the latest and greatest in Latin pop, but even that list is incredibly diverse. Our top Latin pop albums of the last couple months range from bachata to country pop, dance pop to Pitbull. Dig in and catch up with nutshell reviews and can't-miss tracks!
Welcome to another edition of 
Welcome back to 
A bunch of punk kids form their own adult-scaring, mainstream-baiting subculture with a unique style, slang and sound. Sound familiar? That's the recipe for basically every pop music style ever, but the particular concoction we're talking about here resulted in the Latin-laden R&B and swing genre known as pachuco boogie, which came to life in the '40s and '50s.
Regional Mexican music is a wide and varied world with hotly contested borders — its vast yet insular nature can be completely overwhelming to neophytes. From brass-tastic banda to romantic ranchera, from grisly narcocorridos to jubilant polkas (all sometimes in the same song!), this diverse swath of music pulses with the richness of Mexican cultures on either side of the border. The terrain encompasses the sounds of accordions and synthesizers, sticky-sweet pop and centuries-old folk traditions. It's a pretty exciting journey to take, and that's especially been the case in the first half of 2011, which has seen big-name release after big-name release (plus plenty of noise from hot new up-and-comers). We've rounded up this spring's hottest new releases in Norteño, banda, Tex-Mex/Tejano, duranguense, ranchera and more. So get ready to explore, and if you start to feel lost, just remember: almost all roads lead to Los Tigres del Norte.
You think "alternative" is a confusing, ambiguous, meaningless term? Try "Latin alternative." Does it mean a Latin band that plays, um, mainstream alt-rock? Or an artist that offers an alternative to Latin pop? And isn't every Latin band an alternative to the American rock mainstream? Yes? No? Maybe? Forget the semantics and just take a listen to the crème de la crème of albums that have come out under that heading in the last couple months. We've rounded up a Top 10 that includes American electro-poppers who sing in Spanish, Mexican garage rockers who sing in English, Argentinean psychedelica, Venezuelan dance punks and post-grunge rockers who pack soccer stadiums across the Latin American world. There's an alternative for everyone.
As a rule, our regular single-phile column is devoted to — OK, obsessed with — dissecting the latest and greatest in pop singles. And while our definition of pop is as varied as, well, the genre itself is, we do typically focus on English-language pop. But so many great Latin singles have dropped in the past few weeks that we had to remedy that language bias and give them some love. 
We must admit that Tuesday is our favorite day of the week here at Rhapsody: that's when new releases come out. Thankfully, the next three months of Tuesdays look absolutely glorious, full of fresh music from ukulele-brandishing rockers, electronic pioneers, strident country hit makers, unabashed pop divas, unrepentant metalheads, CCM luminaries, contenders for Best Rapper Alive honors, soul superstars and, of course, Lady Gaga. Here's the best of what's to come.
So many great new releases have come through the various channels of world and Latin in the short time 2011's been alive. So many, in fact, that we've pared them down to a Top 10 of the Year — so far. (And we didn't even quite manage to keep it to 10.) Now, that should tell you something about how this year's shaping up in the world of world and Latin. Saving the Latin pop for another time (or see our recent Latin-only 
The Latin pop world knows divas. Take 
Winter is typically kind of a cold, barren wasteland as far as albums go, but in the Latin music world — like much of Latin America — things often manage to stay fairly caliente. The last few months (and granted, we are reaching back to the very edges of winter) have seen a number of exciting new Latin releases that encompass everything from alt-rock to Garifuna pop, reggaeton (lots and lots of reggaeton) to Ricky Martin. Catch up on current Latin music with our roundup of recent albums, complete with nutshell reviews, don't-miss tracks and further listening suggestions.
If you're a new or casual fan of 
The worlds of world and Latin music can be very disparate. But because there is some overlap (hence, the job title of yours truly), we've merged the two worlds (or perhaps more accurately, multiple worlds) temporarily to run through some of the year's most hotly anticipated albums. Just call it musical globalization! On this vast horizon, then, are Garifuna soul and Guadalajaran rock, Pitbull and Ladysmith Black Mambazo — and that's essentially just the first quarter of 2011. In short, the world(s) are looking pretty exciting this year.
With every new year comes the promise of great new music. Those hopes are nearly always well founded, though inevitably there are also some disappointments. Here we've assembled what we think are the most promising prospective releases for 2011, broken out by genre. In the comments field, let us know your expectations for them, and whether there are some albums that you're looking forward to that aren't on this list.
It was a quite a year in Latin music. Ups and downs abounded: Shakira set the globe shaking with her World Cup anthem "
Finding an American equivalent to the Colombian pop star 
When they started out, 
Call it Mexico's gangsta rap. The lyrics are violent, the language is littered with slang, and making paper is the order of the day — pretty much exclusively through drug smuggling. You can even hear the music shaking apart car trunks all over the United States, but that's where the comparisons between gangsta rap and Mexican narcocorridos end. Narcocorrido artists' instruments of choice aren't the sampler and mixing deck: think tuba and accordion, and the rhythmic up-and-down of a guitar. And while most gangsta rappers boast of their own exploits, narcocorrido singers detail the dramas of real-life drug kingpins in Mexico. And singing them can get you killed.
The Charleston. The 
Sun. Sea. Love. Beaches.
What is the Latin Alternative Music Conference? It's the only gathering in the world dedicated solely to Latino artists who are making hip-hop, electronic music and indie rock, and it's happening in New York City between from July 6 through July 10. LAMC turns 11 years old this year — here's to staving off the adolescent blues with good music — and it's bringing an absolute boatload of excellent shows to New York City this week.
Think of a singer who defined a decade for you. Was it 
Listen to all your favorite artists whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. If you don't have one, 
We all knew music was gonna be big in the Obama administration. After all, 
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