Bad Bunny’s shows at Tottenham Hotspur’s ground will make the reggaeton superstar the first Latin artist to sell out a UK stadium.
Here, LatinoLife MD and festival organiser Amaranta Wright explores what the global success of Latin music means for London’s Latin Americans, who have spent decades creating cultural spaces in the shadows of mainstream culture yet are still denied official recognition on the National Census...
There was a time when Latin music in the UK existed in the shadows: salsa nights in church halls, community festivals in local parks, small venues willing to take a chance on Spanish-language acts, independent promoters working with tiny budgets and DJs carrying entire scenes on their shoulders. With two sold-out dates at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (June 27-28), Bad Bunny’s visit to London has changed all that.
The most influential Spanish-language artist of his generation, not only is Bad Bunny the first ever artist to perform stadium shows in the UK, as Spotify’s Global Top Artist of the Year for four consecutive years, he is the most consumed artist on the planet, regardless of his heritage.
Without singing a word in English the Puerto Rican has transcended the language barrier that previously defined which music was cool. For the first time in history, music in Spanish has almost the same market share as English-language music, whose global consumption has dropped to an all time low of 54%, compared to 80% in the 2000s (according to Luminate).
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance and Karol G headlining Coachella not long after was a turning point for non-Latin audiences in the UK. His arrival in London, followed by Pitbull in July (the first Latin artist to headline Hyde Park) and Karol G next year, the first Latina to perform in a UK stadium, places Latin culture at the centre of one of the world’s most influential music capitals.
The visit has even got the Mayor of London excited.
“With Bad Bunny set to be the first Latin American artist to headline a major UK stadium later this month, it’s going to be a fantastic summer to celebrate Latin American music and culture, as we build a better London for everyone,” said Sadiq Khan.
For London’s Latin community, however, Bad Bunny’s record breaking visit is not simply entertainment. It is recognition of a creative culture and community that has been brewing under the surface ready to explode. But what will the event actually mean for UK Latin Americans, who have spent decades making moments like this possible, yet are still not recognised as an ethnic category in the UK census?
A community finally visible?
It is notable that Bad Bunny and Karol G’s record-breaking shows are to take place in Haringey, a borough which has both one of the the UK’s largest Spanish-speaking populations, and a tumultuous history with it.
Between 2018 and 2022, Haringey’s Latin American community was engaged in a battle with Transport for London (TFL) to save its thriving Latin market in Wards Corner, the building above Seven Sisters station, which TFL had sold to developers.
My own festival, LatinoLife in the Park, took place in Haringey’s Finsbury Park between 2019 and 2022, and was named the UK’s most inclusive festival (FestSpace), but was forced to find a new home in Walpole Park, Ealing.
Today, with bridges being mended, it is as if Bad Bunny’s visit hails a new era for the Latin community that surrounds the stadium, following the successful Save Latin Village campaign.
“You’d be stretched to find a better example of people power than what happened in Ward’s Corner,” said Jacobo Belilty, director of the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK (CLAUK), now installed at the previously contested site. “The resilience that the community showed was extraordinary. There is no other way to describe it than a victory.”
LatinoLife in the Park
Haringey Council embarked on rebuilding positive working relationships that continue on today, including officially recognising Latin Americans as an ethnic group in their monitoring forms and establishing a partnership between itself, Places for London (PfL, the TfL subsidiary and site’s freeholder) and the community-led organisation Wards Corner Community Benefit Society.
Belilty and the team are today busy creating a Bad Bunny ‘casita’ installation at Wards Corner in time for Bad Bunny’s visit, with the support of PfL. As if mirroring the sparkle of Latin music’s global success, the refurbished premises has a new energy.
Entrepreneurs such as Manuel Pelaez, who ran a cafe there, have been invited back, whilst projects like Sound Latino radio by Cesar Gamba are finding new homes. The very people who were having to use their resources to fight for survival, are now applying their talents to building business and creating culture.
“These spaces have been transformed from places of pain to positive spaces of creativity and this is something very powerful,” said Victoria Alvarez, who once headed the Save Latin Village campaign and is now board trustee of the Wards Corner Community Benefit Society.
Today, there is a new vitality and hope as they wait for the brand new building opposite, which will be the market’s new home. LatinoLife in the Park, meanwhile, has been invited back to Finsbury Park in 2027, when Haringey becomes London Borough of Culture.
Trickle down vs community building
The sight of tens of thousands of Latinos and non-Latinos gathering to celebrate Latin music challenges outdated assumptions about what role Latin Americans play in contemporary British culture.
For entrepreneurs such as club promoter Felipe Cano, who was raised both in the UK and Colombia, visibility matters, representation matters and he hopes the economic impact extends well beyond the concert itself.
“This concert opens up the most exciting opportunity we’ve had to connect with new audiences,” said Cano, who will host a Bad Bunny after-party at Seven Sisters. “Many Bad Bunny fans may never have attended my parties or events before, and this gives me the chance to introduce them to the Latin nightlife experience and build lasting connections with people who share a passion for Latin music and culture.”
LatinoLife in the Park
Across London, in the lead-up to the weekend, tribute nights, club events, themed parties and after-parties are being organised. Venues, DJs, promoters, production crews, caterers, media outlets and hospitality businesses all stand to benefit from the increased activity.
Bad Bunny’s success in London, however, did not emerge in a vacuum. The packed stadium that will welcome Bad Bunny is, in many ways, the culmination of decades of collective work carried out by thousands of people who have been advocating for Latin culture long before it became commercially fashionable.
For years, organisations, promoters, artists and cultural leaders have been steadily building audiences for Latin music across Britain. Our own festival, the UK’s only Latina-run park festival, is just one of many LatinoLife initiatives, including club nights, conferences, awards ceremonies, talent development and mentoring programs and much more, that have been raising the profile of Latin culture and developing the UK Latin music industry.
Our work over the last 25 years, has ensured the increased presence of Latin artists on stages at major events such as SXSW London. In other parts of the country, organisations such as Luma Creations in Liverpool, have helped cultivate audiences, create professional opportunities and demonstrate that there is a genuine appetite for Latin American culture throughout the UK.
Fuelling the next generation
But what about long-term benefits of Bad Bunny’s visit? For young British Latinos growing up in the UK, seeing an artist perform in Spanish before tens of thousands of people can be transformative. It reinforces the idea that their language, heritage and cultural identity are strengths rather than obstacles. The growth is undeniable.
At the same time, hundreds of tracks by UK-Latin artists are released in Britain every year. Every sold-out stadium sends a signal to those artists that growth is possible. That their audience exists. That their moment may lie ahead.
For young British Latinos growing up in the UK, seeing an artist perform in Spanish before tens of thousands of people can be transformative
Amaranta Wright
Until recently, UK-generated Latin music occupied a strange position within the UK music industry. The cultural contribution was there. The talent was there. Yet investment, infrastructure and recognition lagged behind. This is one of the reasons why our festival chose to base its offering on featuring the plethora of first generation British-born Latino kids who were fusing London sounds with Latin rhythms, rather than solely bringing artists from abroad.
“When we started out, there were two things that were missing in the Latin festival offering, which was curated almost exclusively by non-Latinos who had no lived experience of our culture,” said Venezuelan-born Jose Luis Seijas, who pioneered the reggaeton scene back in the early 2000s, now runs the country’s most successful weekly Latin club night, Viva Reggaton, and is musical director of LatinoLife in the Park. “One was the absence of urban Latin music, and the second was the absence of British-born talent. This was why I started doing events, because myself and my Latino peers in London, didn’t see ourselves reflected in what was being offered.”
For decades, these artists struggled to access industry networks, media coverage and mainstream exposure. Promoters struggled to convince venues. Festivals rarely included Latin acts outside specialist programming. Media coverage remains limited despite growing audiences. Yet, true to the resilience in the community they belong to, artists continue creating, recording and performing because they believe in the future of the scene.
A turning point?
After years of nurturing UK-Latin talent, the recognition and support are coming. LatinoLife became the Arts Council’s first Latina-run National Portfolio Organisation in 2023 and last year it was chosen to run the PRS Foundation’s only Latin music Talent Development Partner, which means taking that British-born talent to the point of export.
“In a world where music in English is no longer dominant, nurturing Britain's bi-lingual talent is not just important for the artists, it is essential for the UK music industry which needs to stay relevant in a rapidly changing global music market,“ said Jose Luis Seijas.
Yxng Dave
Last year, as head of LatinoLife’s development programme, Seijas took British-Colombian rapper Yxng Dave to perform in Medellin and British-Portuguese-Angolan rapper Broken Pen to Brazil, where he was invited by Bahian band Afrocidade to perform at Feira Preta, Latin America’s largest festival of African-diaspora music.
"The experience was the most important of my career, and the best experience of my life. The level of musicianship in Bahia was insane, I learnt so much and I’ve been invited back to make an album. It has been a turning point in my career,” said Broken Pen, who will perform on the Brazilian stage at LatinoLife in the Park Festival in July.
Meanwhile, British-Colombian artist Sasha Keable is the UK’s most successful Latina artist. Hot off her Tiny Desk performance, the BRIT and MOBO Award nominee may not yet be singing in Spanish, but she inevitably will.
Seijas' hope is that, from an artistic perspective, as the talent develops, the UK industry responds so “that promoters book more Latin artists, that festivals create more opportunities, that labels invest more seriously. And that the next generation does not have to fight quite as hard for visibility as the last one did.”
For Jacobo Belilty from CLAUK, cultural visibility is more than just about artists on stage. “The recognition of Latin Americans in the UK census has the potential to unlock solutions to the many barriers faced by this community,” he said.
While Bad Bunny may be the headline, the real story is much bigger. It is the story of a community that has spent decades building cultural infrastructure, creating opportunities and refusing to be invisible.
In London this weekend, that work will be impossible to ignore.
“Bad Bunny has a big platform which by its very presence can help uplift these stories and turn them mainstream,” concluded Belilty. “He has achieved this with his Super Bowl performance, and we want to be part of that story.”
LatinoLife in the Park will take place on Sunday, July 19 at Walpole Park, W5
PHOTO: Bad Bunny performing in Madrid this month (credit: Mariano Regidor/Getty Images)
