The Hollywood Bowl’s Long Embrace of Latin Music
From mariachi to norteño to rock en español, these five performances show how the Hollywood Bowl has long championed Latin music and cultural diversity.
Since it opened in 1922, the Hollywood Bowl has embraced Latin music in a way that few other big-name American concert halls have. Legendary Latin music critic Agustín Gurza once wrote that the venue was a “pioneer in cultural diversity before that term even entered the popular lexicon.” These five concerts certainly fit that bill.
This roundup appears in Issue 34 of Alta Journal. SUBSCRIBE
Mariachi USA Festival
The Bowl has showcased Mexico’s most famous music form with opening acts and ranchera icons like Lola Beltrán since at least the 1940s, but it took until 1990 for an all-day fiesta to finally happen. Headlined by Chicana chingonas Linda Ronstadt and Vikki Carr, Mariachi USA proved an immediate smash and has regularly packed the Bowl with abuelitas and their Americanized grandkids ever since.
Los Tigres del Norte
The Tigers of the North played in 2018, backed by the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles—the first conjunto norteño to ever perform at the venerable venue. I was there, and it honestly wasn’t their best performance. The classical strings didn’t mesh with their polka essence, and lead singer Jorge Hernández too often looked down at a teleprompter to remember his lyrics. It didn’t matter: The packed crowd danced in their seats or took to the staircases to shimmy until security guards shooed them away—and then they did it again.
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs AND Los Auténticos Decadentes
I missed this one, and I still kick myself for it. These Argentine groups pioneered Latin American ska-influenced rock en español. Los Fabulosos’ song “Matador” was included in the underrated 1997 film Grosse Pointe Blank, while Los Auténticos are the Phish of South America, with their cultish following and ever-weird antics. That’s why every Argentine I know donned their crispest Messi jersey that night and brought some red wine, alfajores, and empanadas to exult in the eternal party of their heroes.
Fuerza Regida
The local-Latinos-to-Hollywood-Bowl pipeline continued its work in summer 2025 with this San Bernardino quartet, which started as a straightforward norteño group but earned worldwide acclaim once they began mixing in other rhythms—reggaetón, bachata, hip-hop—to accompany their sly lyrics about working-class Mexican Americans.
The Aguilar Family
In 1970, Ricardo Montalbán created the nonprofit Nosotros to advocate for better representation of Latinos in Hollywood. He gathered some friends for a fundraiser at the Bowl—oh, just Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Charlton Heston, and ranchera superstar Antonio Aguilar. Nosotros is still going strong, and so is Aguilar’s family. Fifty-five years after that first fundraiser, his son Pepe and Pepe’s children, Ángela and Leonardo, took their traveling road show to the Bowl for the biggest Latino concert there of 2025. The performers praised undocumented immigrants during a summer when Trump swung his deportation hammer at Los Angeles—and the music fought back.
Gustavo Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. In 2025, Arellano was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He was formerly editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-winning ¡Ask a Mexican!, a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Arellano is the recipient of awards ranging from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Columnist to the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impact Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and he was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.” Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
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