- Aterciopelados
The annual ¡Viva! Chicago Latin Music Festival has long been the weakest of the city’s big summer music festivals in Grant Park, with bookings that looked especially narrow and provincial compared to the sprawling, sophisticated lineups assembled for the blues, gospel, jazz, and Celtic music fests. From 1989 until last year Viva! was programmed by Enrique Munoz, a former sales rep and liaison to the Latino community for 7UP, who told me in 1999 that his programming was geared to “best represent the diversity of Chicago” and is “based on Billboard Magazine, CD sales, radio-play (or air-time), name recognition, and cost-effectiveness.” Unfortunately, artistic merit rarely seemed to be among the metrics he considered. The event was theoretically geared to the whole city and intended to reflect its diverse Latino makeup, most of the music was either Mexican or Puerto Rican.