\n<\/p>\n
In January 2023, the m\u00fasica Mexicana star Carin Le\u00f3n<\/a> was preparing for a concert at Nashville\u2019s Bridgestone Arena when he decided he needed to do something special for an encore.<\/p>\n Le\u00f3n grew up in Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora, Mexico, about 250 miles from Tucson, Ariz. Music was always playing around his home, often from border radio stations that piped in a wide variety of American hits, and his father was known to listen to David Allen Coe\u2019s \u201cTennessee Whiskey\u201d on cassette over and over.<\/p>\n \u201cMe and my brother would sing the song as kids, but we would make up different lyrics because we didn\u2019t know English back then,\u201d Le\u00f3n said. The country giant Chris Stapleton turned his R&B-slow-dance cover<\/a> of \u201cTennessee Whiskey\u201d into a career breakthrough, and Le\u00f3n, a Stapleton superfan, worked up his own powerfully soulful version for the largely Latino audience in Nashville.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next day, the performance went viral,\u201d Le\u00f3n said. \u201cPeople were saying, he can sing country music, he can sing in English. So that gave me a little spark.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Le\u00f3n, 34, was already a Latin Grammy-winning artist with billions of streams on Spotify before he covered \u201cTennessee Whiskey\u201d \u2014 and before he released bilingual collaborations with the country star Kane Brown<\/a> and the soul singer Leon Bridges<\/a>; wrote with the Nashville veterans Jon Pardi, Cody Johnson and Natalie Hemby; earned a standing ovation at the Grand Ole Opry with a set entirely in Spanish; became the first Latin artist to perform at both the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals; and opened for the Rolling Stones in early May.<\/p>\n \u201cMy comfort zone is being outside of my comfort zone,\u201d Le\u00f3n said from his shopping-bag-strewn suite at a swank Beverly Hills hotel in California, his girlfriend and team at his side. \u201cThere are no limits for music. There\u2019s just good music and bad music.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Alongside Peso Pluma<\/a>, Grupo Frontera, Fuerza Regida, Natanael Cano and Eslabon Armado, Le\u00f3n is part of a wave of artists who have lifted m\u00fasica Mexicana \u2014 an umbrella phrase encompassing Mexican genres like norte\u00f1o, banda, ranchera, grupera, mariachi and corridos tumbados<\/a> \u2014 to new heights of popularity in the United States. (Le\u00f3n famously rejected a more restrictive term for the genre, \u201cregional Mexican,\u201d when he wore a T-shirt at an awards show that featured a four-letter expletive before the word \u201cregional\u201d).<\/p>\n Among those artists, Le\u00f3n is perhaps both the most traditional \u2014 eschewing youthful hip-hop leanings or reggaeton rhythms for organic, hand-played instrumentation and romantic balladry \u2014 and also the most naturally progressive, a supremely gifted singer who blows through musical and cultural divides with fearlessness and determination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCarin breaks all the rules,\u201d Edgar Barrera<\/a>, the Latin super-producer and Le\u00f3n\u2019s frequent collaborator, said in a video interview. \u201cRegional Mexican music has always been looked down on. It\u2019s seen as very rural. Carin is like, \u2018We\u2019re a lot more global than you think.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n M\u00fasica Mexicana and country music share much in common, despite the seeming cultural and political divisions between the fan bases. Streaming has raised the visibility of both genres, turning what were previously considered provincial musics into commercial forces. The American cowboy, so much a part of the iconography and outlaw ethos of country music, is based on the Mexican vaquero. \u201cThat deadly 200-mile border along the southern part of the States has been a zone of cultural exchange for hundreds of years,\u201d said Nadine Hubbs, a University of Michigan professor and author of the forthcoming book \u201cBorder Country: Mexico, America, and Country Music.\u201d<\/p>\n At Stagecoach, backed by his 20-plus-piece band from Hermosillo, Le\u00f3n wore chaps and a Tejana hat (akin to a Stetson) and took swigs from a bottle of bacanora, the once-outlawed Sonoran cousin to mezcal and tequila. His set included a cover of Johnny Cash\u2019s \u201cMan in Black.\u201d<\/p>\n Troy Tomlinson, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville, which signed Le\u00f3n in 2023, said that \u201cauthenticity and humility\u201d are what generally move country music fans, and Le\u00f3n possesses both in spades. \u201cI\u2019ve been going to the Opry since I was 10 years old, and his was one of the most moving shows I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he said. Tomlinson believes the evening marked a turning point in Nashville\u2019s tortoise-slow evolution in accepting nonwhite artists into its fold.<\/p>\n \u201cI admit \u2014 for the first 30 years of my career, I always thought of everything in genre boxes,\u201d he said. \u201cBut younger audiences, and streaming, have begun to change this town.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since the 1970s, a small number of Mexican American artists \u2014 most prominently Johnny Rodriguez, Freddy Fender, Linda Ronstadt and Rick Trevino \u2014 found success in country music, singing primarily in English. Wyatt Flores<\/a>, a rising Mexican American singer-songwriter, performed at Stagecoach on the same day as Le\u00f3n. And amid a growing movement in and around Nashville to promote artists of color, Beyonc\u00e9 and Shaboozey each held the top spot on Billboard\u2019s hot country songs chart<\/a>.<\/p>\n Institutional racism still plagues Nashville, but, Tomlinson said, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many people in the industry called me the day after they saw my photo with Carin from the Opry and said, \u2018Tell me more about this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the course of his solo career, which has included four albums, Le\u00f3n has collaborated with numerous Latin acts, including the Colombian stars Camilo<\/a> and Maluma, Grupo Firme from Tijuana, Mexico, Grupo Frontera from Texas and the boundary-pushing Spanish rapper C. Tangana<\/a>. Le\u00f3n credits Tangana for inspiring him to take risks. \u201cFor years, I wasn\u2019t happy doing the music I was doing,\u201d he explained from the back of a black S.U.V., en route to perform \u201cIt was Always You (Siempre Fuiste T\u00fa),\u201d his feathery duet with Bridges, on \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d \u201cI wasn\u2019t happy with my relationships. I was angry about life.\u201d Everything changed, he said, \u201cwhen I started to do the music I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n