THE SOUND OF SUCCESS : STEADY GROWTH OF LATINO MUSIC SIGNALS TREND TOO BIG TO IGNORE.

Byline: Peter Watrous The New York Times

After the Mexican mariachi star Vicente Fernandez performed at a full Radio City Music Hall in New York last Friday, he kept right on going, to Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and El Paso, Texas; for a succession of sold-out concert halls.

By the end of his 19-concert tour, in Dallas on Nov. 10, he will have been heard by some 130,000 people, and not all of them Mexican-American. Yet his tour will go mostly unnoticed in the English-speaking music world.

But it will not be ignored by pop-music producers and marketers, who have been carefully watching the steady growth of Latino music in this country in the last few years. ``Clearly something big is going on,'' said Mike Shalett, the chief operating officer of Soundscan.

Artists such as Gloria Estefan, who has enormous appeal to both English and Spanish-speaking audiences, and Selena, who was gathering crossover momentum when she was murdered last year, probably have made the most noticeable impact. But it does not stop with them.

There is a wave of artists who have not entered the mainstream - Luis Miguel, Juan Gabriel (who appears Friday through Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre), Marc Anthony, Fernandez and rock groups such as King Chango and Shakira - but who are selling records and luring fans in what appear to be steadily increasing numbers.

Precise figures of Latino music's sales and share of the pop market are, so far, hard to obtain. The Recording Industry Association of America, which oversees the music business, has no figures at all about Latino music.

And Soundscan, which monitors sales in the United States, hesitates to give numbers, as many of the sales of Latino albums come from stores that are not part of its system. Recognizing that there has been an important shift in sales, the association is putting together research that will be available at the end of the year.

Concert promoters do not need to wait for those findings. Estefan, whose records are always high on the Billboard charts, sold out New York's Madison Square Garden for three successive nights this summer. Radio City Music Hall, which began booking Spanish-language stars in large numbers in 1992, has featured Spanish-speaking groups for up to 50 percent of its yearly music productions, and 95 percent of those shows sell out.

``We started it in 1992,'' said Ed Micone, executive vice president for entertainment at Radio City. ``I envisioned that there was clientele out there, and that people wanted to see the music. This was a market that was going to expand. MTV Latino existed, and Latin radio was getting hot. So it seemed logical, especially since the demographic of the city was beginning to change. And now the Latino market really is expanding like crazy.''

``In 1997, we'll do the newer singers and bands like Shakira, Jaguares and Marc Anthony,'' said Micone. ``These bands are so exciting, they're like the young Rolling Stones.''

Many people in the entertainment business say the Latino audience is only just beginning to be tapped. Spanish speakers constitute the fastest growing immigrant population in the country.

``Look, there are more Hispanics in the United States than there are Canadians in Canada,'' said Peter W. Davidson, the chief executive officer of Latin Communications Group, a company that owns El Diario in New York and 13 Latino radio and television stations across the country.

``The whole story of Spanish-language media is that it is getting more and more accepted, because of the numbers,'' Davidson said. ``The No. 1 radio stations in Los Angeles and in Miami are Spanish language. That's happened in the last few years. We're the fifth largest Hispanic country in the world. After a while, the weight of the numbers becomes inarguable.''

The corporate world has taken notice. ``Corporations are anxious to sponsor the music because it reaches a population they're now realizing is big and getting bigger,'' said Henry Cardenas, who books Latino musicians and other Spanish-speaking performers.

``It's also a great deal for them because the Hispanic media is so interconnected that for a small amount of money they might get 300 mentions on a radio station. So when I do a tour, or another promoter comes to me looking for sponsorship for a concert, it's fairly easy to get Coca-Cola or American Airlines to help.''

New Latin music record companies are starting up. The investment firm Wasserstein Perella Group began its label, H.O.L.A., with Polygram Records. Its first album, by Reign, is due out Oct. 26.

``When we looked at the music industry, the Hispanic pop area was the area positioned for high growth,'' said Townsend Zeibold, one of the firm's managing directors. ``It's a convergence of favorable demographic trends, and we didn't feel the major labels were addressing seriously what was happening. We really believe that a Hispanic version of Motown, where Hispanic and mainstream cultures merge, makes sense.''

Reign sings in Spanish and English. At Madison Square Garden in August, Estefan (who also sang in Spanish and English) asked the audience, in English, how many people spoke only Spanish. The crowd roared, and Estefan, a Cuban-American, responded: ``You all are bilingual! You don't just speak Spanish!''

While Estefan and others have been comfortable recording in both languages (and may have introduced English-speaking fans to Latino culture), the young crop of Latino artists, from rock bands such as King Chango to pop stars such as Christian Castro, still sing predominantly in Spanish.

Given the demographic change in the United States, crossing over to an English-language audience is not necessary for success.

And while the audiences for the music may be bilingual, they often are looking for a piece of their culture that they are not getting from mainstream America. The music covers all sorts of regions, attitudes and nationalities.

The Rock en Espanol movement can accommodate avant-rock such as Cafe Tacuba from Mexico or Soda Stereo of Argentina, which plays Sting-styled rock. Puerto Rico and New York produce smooth salsa, Latin house and experimentalists such as Dark Latin Groove while Cuba produces harder street music that because of the embargo is not regularly heard here.

The Dominican Republic has its merengue bands, and Mexico regularly sends its regional groups to the United States for three or four months at a time to play dance halls, small towns and big theaters, night after night.

In Texas and California, bands playing Norteno music or the raucous, brass band-styled music called Banda are selling records and filling dance halls.

But many of Latino pop's biggest stars are Mexican, and in a market known for its national loyalties it is the Mexican acts that transcend the divisions. For a recent concert by Juan Gabriel at Radio City, Peruvians rocked out sitting next to second-generation Cubans and first-generation Dominicans.

And, while Mexicans were in the majority, much of Latin America was represented. Much of this has to do with the extraordinary power of Mexican television, which dominates the Latin airwaves with soap operas and talk shows.

The Latino star system is such that a soap opera figure will branch out into singing, or a singer will do stints on a soap opera. And they all spend time on the talk shows. ``There is a very close relationship between all entertainment forms in Mexico,'' said Marisa Cespedes, entertainment correspondent for the Eco news bureau, based in Mexico City.

``Television is such a powerful cultural tool here, and really the only way to get exposure in Mexico is through soap operas and films,'' she said. ``Since the major Hispanic television channels are Mexican, it's no surprise that the stars transcend national barriers.''

While the audience for Latino pop is diversifying, it is also opening up to different forms of the music. A few years ago, Cardenas said, he would be asked to book young Latino rock bands that were part of the Rock en Espanol movement, for not even enough money to cover the transportation; the bands were hungry for exposure. Those days are over.

``Rock en Espanol is the future,'' Cardenas said. ``The second-generation Hispanics like their hip-hop and rock, but they're also into the new Spanish language bands, and the big pop stars like Luis Miguel. Rock en Espanol is going to take another five years to get really big. But it's going to get there.''

THE FACTS

Who: Juan Gabriel.

Where: Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City.

When: 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Tickets: $48 to $53.

Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Latina crossover singer Gloria Estefan has found success recording both in English and in Spanish.

The New York Times

(2) By the end of his 19-concert tour, Vicente Fernandez will have been heard by some 130,000 people. Yet his tour will go mostly unnoticed in the English-speaking music world.

(3) Juan Gabriel attracts multiple generations of Latino audiences.

(4) Luis Miguel is among the wave of nonmainstream artists who are selling records and luring fans in what appear to be steadily increasing numbers.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News