Junior H: a tumbado crooner from here and there

For many years, the US-Mexico border has been fertile ground for a cultural exchange that is often expressed in the music coming out of the area. Polka, zydeco, country, and blues sit at the same table with corridos, banda, and norteñas, sharing sounds, musical references, and meeting points. This rich musical exchange has never stopped growing and evolving.

However, it wasn’t until about 20 years ago that younger generations of Latinos finally had a specific type of music that reflected the rawness and diversity of their immediate reality. Born in a bicultural environment, they grew up listening to their parents’ music along with the music of the United States: rock, rap, and all its derivatives.

The marketing people have labeled this music as “regional Mexican,” a catch-all category covering all the sounds being created in Latino communities in Los Angeles, Chicago, Nevada, Miami, North Carolina, Houston, and many other intercultural spaces.

In 2001, Billboard and Telemundo created the Regional Mexican Music Awards, and a new musical generation took the baton to represent the music scene in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Physical albums gave way to digital platforms, and musicians like El Komander, Gerardo Ortiz, and Ariel Camacho became the new standard bearers of a Hispanic culture born on a ranch and infused with gangsta hip hop energy.

New styles of regional Mexican music emerged, with names like the duranguense, corridos alterados, corridos verdes, and eventually corridos tumbados, paving the way for internet stars like Junior H, a key artist for Rancho Humilde, an independent record label based in Compton, California that has signed other top performers of corridos tumbados, such as Herencia de Patrones and Natanael Cano.

Among corrido tumbado artists, Junior H has attracted the most attention because his music uses the requinto and bass guitars typical of Mexican corridos, but with a subversive twist and attitude normally found in punk or hard rock. His spare vocals are sometimes melancholy and slurred (tumbada), with stylistic touches and imagery from trap and reggaeton, and lyrics peppered with slang from the roughest border cities. If the urban Latino version of Caribbean music is reggaeton, then the brokenhearted romantic version of Mexican American music is someone like Junior H.

It’s hard to imagine that less than three years ago, Junior was an immigrant worker in the United States, who liked to write songs and upload them to the internet. Junior H posted his first song on YouTube in 2020, and since then, he has released more than a hundred songs and five albums (Atrapado en un Sueño, Cruisin’ With Junior H, MUSICA ˂3, $ad Boyz 4 Life, and Mi vida en un cigarro 2). His music and lyrics swing wildly between the powerful and the tragic, encompassing every emotion experienced by Latinos of his generation.

Often compared to Portuguese fado music or an evolved, Mexican American version of Neil Young or Bob Dylan, Junior H’s music is immediately recognizable and defies the music industry’s attempts at pigeonholing him into trap and urban music stereotypes. Unlike hundreds of his peers, Junior H is adept at writing memorable songs that don’t sound like everyone else.

Despite performing solo concerts and festivals in Mexico and the United States, Junior H is still far from being a regional number one. However, people often say he’s “your favorite artist’s favorite artist,” proof of his growing reputation.

He has collaborated with Ed Maverick, and Bad Bunny posted Instagram Stories of himself listening to Junior H. Successful Spanish rappers C. Tangana and Yung Beef, as well as the Mexican rapper Alemán, all say they listen to his music often. Independent singer-songwriter Dromedarios Mágicos paid tribute by covering Junior H’s hit, “Mente positiva”. And people often compare him to legends like Chalino Sánchez, or more recently, a sierreña version of Duki, the famous Argentine trap artist. This tells us that we are witnessing the rise of a singular artist and a new sign of the prominent Latino cultural presence throughout the world. Junior H views our reality and identity from a very specific angle, and takes a very direct approach to popular music that has not been seen in a long time. And that is no small thing.