For teachers
Latin Music for the Classroom: A Teacher's Guide
musicalat is a free directory of Latin music that works well in Spanish, Portuguese, music and social studies classes. This page shows what is here, how to use it in a lesson, and how students should cite it.
What you can use
- ●291 artist profiles, each with a short biography, the artist's origins, sound and legacy, and their best-known songs.
- ●Every artist profile in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Switch language with the EN / ES / PT buttons at the top of any page.
- ●1,455 songs that play right on the page, with no account or sign-up for you or your students.
- ●Pages for 49 genres and 19 countries, each with a short introduction and the artists who belong there.
- ●Ready-made playlists you can start with one click.
Five ways to use it in a lesson
- 1
Musical geography
Play a song from the one-song-per-country list and have students guess the country. Then assign each student a country page and ask for three artists, one genre and one fact from the introduction.
- 2
Read it twice
Pick an artist and have students read the Spanish or Portuguese profile first, then check their understanding against the English version. The three versions follow the same structure, so they are easy to compare section by section.
- 3
A timeline you can hear
Use the decade-by-decade list to build a class timeline. Students place each artist on it and describe, in the target language, how the sound changes from one decade to the next.
- 4
Compare two genres
Give pairs of students two genres, such as salsa and merengue or samba and bossa nova. They read both genre pages, listen to one song from each, and present the differences in instruments, rhythm and origin.
- 5
Artist profile project
Each student chooses an artist, listens to the top songs, and writes or presents a short profile in the target language. The Origins, Sound and Legacy sections give them a structure to follow.
Before you press play
- ● Songs are not screened for lyrics or themes. The catalog includes reggaeton, trap and corridos alongside boleros and folk, and some songs contain explicit language or adult subject matter. Please preview any song before playing it for a class.
- ● Songs play through embedded YouTube or Spotify players. YouTube may show ads and suggest unrelated videos when a song ends.
- ● Artist profiles are written by a language model working strictly from each artist's Wikipedia entry and catalog data, as described on the methodology page. They are a good starting point, and students should confirm key facts against a second source. How it's built →
How to cite musicalat
Pages have no individual author or publication date, so cite the page title, the site name, the URL and the date you visited. For example:
MLA
“Celia Cruz: Bio, Top Songs & Sound.” musicalat, musicalat.com/artists/celia-cruz/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2026.
APA
musicalat. (n.d.). Celia Cruz: Bio, Top Songs & Sound. https://musicalat.com/artists/celia-cruz/
Replace the title, URL and access date with those of the page you used. Citation tools such as NoodleTools will ask for the same four details.
Tell us what would help
Is there an artist your class needs, a list you would use, or a detail that looks wrong? Suggestions and corrections from teachers are very welcome.
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