Music Row Looks to Hispanic Audience

Singer Brad Paisley performs "The World" at the 41st Academy of Country Music Awards, in Las Vegas, in this May 23, 2006, file photo. At this year's Country Music Association gala in Nashville, Paisley is nominated for entertainer of the year, album of the year, male vocalist, single, musical event and music video. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) (Mark J. Terrill - AP)

"A lot of people confuse regional Mexican music with country because it comes from the ranches and farms, but if you translate a country song into Spanish, it wouldn't sound like regional Mexican music," she said.

"In regional Mexican they sing about their culture and customs, things you don't have in the U.S. I don't know if Hispanics will relate to country music because it doesn't come out of Mexico. It comes out of Nashville."

Also, the Hispanic audience is not monolithic.

"In different areas of the country, they listen to different music," she said. "In Miami it's more salsa, merengue and cumbia. California is more Spanglish, hybrid, fusion."

Rick Rodriguez, who manages the Latin division of Nashville-based Songs for the Planet and works as a song plugger for the same, has been trying to encourage Music Row to mix with Hispanic artists and music.

"I'm a Mexican from South Texas," he said. "I grew up listening to people like Freddy Fender and Johnny Rodriguez. If we can get old-school country music, like back in the day what was coming from Hispanic cats, I think it would be big."

Texas-based singer-songwriter John Arthur Martinez, who was the runner-up on the inaugural season of Nashville Star (a country music talent competition like "American Idol'), said Hispanic listeners are already there.

"Nashville has not made a conscious effort to court the Hispanic audience on a major scale, but without realizing it they've already attracted people like my sister," he said. "Her CD collection is 90 percent country and 10 percent tejano."

Martinez thinks Music Row "could lure more people to buy the music if there were more artists that looked like them."

Maria Pena owns Las Americas Music in Nashville and carries music in Spanish almost exclusively. No one ever comes into her store looking for country, said the Chihuahua, Mexico native, adding that she doubted her customers were familiar with the genre.

But Pena's employee, Camelia Wissar, also of Chihuahua, said she listens to country and her friends do as well. Asked who she likes, she listed Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks.

"I listened to it in Mexico, too," she said in Spanish.