Not even a mini heatwave could deter thousands of Inland Empire residents from showing up to a local música Mexicana festival.

On a Saturday afternoon in May, when the temperature peaked at 100 degrees, dozens of banda fans filed into an ever-growing line outside downtown Riverside’s John W. North Park as they waited to enter La Tardeada. It’s a banda festival going on its second year and organized by Division 9 Gallery — a community arts space that hosts citywide Latino-focused cultural events.

Many of the attendees opted out of wearing comfortable summer attire, despite the intense heat, and instead put on their best vaquero outfits: a mix of leather botas, cowboy jeans held by intricately designed belts, embroidered blusas, plaid button-down shirts and classic tejanas.

For hours, the main stage was crowded with dressed-up dancers embracing cheek to cheek, moving to the sounds of trumpets, guitars and the occasional accordion. They only stopped to lift their micheladas and Modelos into the air as the lead singers shouted them out for braving the heat.

“If this were a monthly thing, I feel like I would be there all the time,” said Cielo Ramirez, an event-goer who had just left the main stage minutes earlier.

La Tardeada’s success, in being able to draw around 4,000 attendees throughout the day and with the crowd’s excitement to participate in the festivities, is a reflection of the large impact the genre has had on the region. It also showcases how the Inland Empire and its residents have played a key role in música Mexicana’s rapid growth across the United States.

It’s no secret that the regional Mexican genre has exploded in popularity in recent years. A report by entertainment data analysis company Luminate, released at the end of 2024, found that it’s the largest Latin subgenre in the U.S., with on-demand streams almost tripling since 2021. A Spotify report also showed that música Mexicana streams on its platform have grown worldwide by more than 440% in the last five years. In the U.S., Latinos make up 83% of the genre’s listeners, according to a 2023 Luminate report.

The region has also produced some of the genre’s largest stars: The hitmakers of Fuerza Regida proudly rep their home turf of San Bernardino in many of their songs and visuals. “Sierreño sadboy” Ivan Cornejo is a Riverside native. Romantic balladeer DannyLux comes from the Coachella Valley. Cumbia pop queen Estevie was raised in Beaumont.

The Inland Empire’s demographics also make it a major market for the genre.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to the Pew Research Center, are home to the sixth- and eighth-largest Latino populations in the U.S., respectively, and are both in the top 10 list for counties with the largest Latino population increase between 2010 and 2020. People of Mexican descent make up 86% of the region’s total Latino population, the center also found.

This large Latino demographic in the Inland Empire is, in part, due to its large rural sectors and lower cost of living, according to Xóchitl Chávez, an associate professor at UC Riverside’s department of music. Apart from being a musician, she’s also spent years documenting how Mexicans have maintained their cultural traditions after migrating to the United States. She said the area, for decades, has attracted migrants looking to replicate their birthplace’s culture. She’s also found that the two counties have been a major música Mexicana market for decades before its recent mainstream boom.

“There are a lot of working-class folks who are willing to invest their money in the region,” Chávez said. “People were able to actually buy land, and now they’ve been able to convert that land into spaces.”

She pointed to the many family-owned restaurants, ranches and music venues — bars like El Rodeo in Moreno Valley, rodeo arenas like Rancho Imperial in San Bernardino, and restaurants like A Mi Hacienda in Norco — that have been an informal circuit for local regional Mexican artists. These circuits, she explained, are considered informal because artists have learned about these spots, or were contracted by these smaller venues, through word of mouth.

Festivalgoers enjoy banda music at the La Tardeada Festival.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Many other events she’s visited for research have taken her to rented-out parking lots behind warehouses or on privately owned ranchos, she added. However, while at La Tardeada, Chávez said the event could be the city’s largest banda festival and that it also highlighted a larger mainstream market shift seen throughout larger venues and concert halls.

“The casinos were probably the first ones to pick up on that right before the pandemic,” Chávez said. “This is something that is new because there is an income. Vaquero culture, banda culture is expensive, and people don’t give that credit.”

In the last few years, the Yaamava’ Resort and Casino in Highland, Morongo Casino Resort, as well as the Spa in Cabazon and Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, have regularly hosted a wide variety of música Mexicana artists. Icons like Grupo Firme played at the Highland-based casino late last year while Los Ángeles Azules and popular Mexican band La Arrolladora Banda El Limón are scheduled to perform in their concert hall in the coming months.

Local cover artists, like Mariangela Nobre, also regularly perform at these venues. Nobre has been covering the late regional Mexican artist Jenni Rivera at these casinos since 2021. The Inland Empire audience has shown her the most admiration, she explained, as fans repeatedly come to Nobre’s shows to sing along to their favorite Rivera tracks.

“I think it’s a community that pays attention to the artist, and that’s very rare,” Nobre said.

The Inland Empire is also home to the Toyota Arena. An 11,000-seat venue located in the city of Ontario, the Toyota Arena has hosted some of the genre’s top stars in the last few years. The venue most recently went viral in 2022, when Fuerza Regida played a sold-out concert after blocking the westbound 10 Freeway as part of a marketing stunt.

The arena itself has also long been a hot spot for música Mexicana, according to Mark Ocegueda, an assistant professor of history at Brown University, who grew up in San Bernardino and is writing a book on the history of Latinos in the region.

He explained that, back in the 1930s, San Bernardino had the second-largest Mexican community within the Greater Los Angeles region. That large population, he believes, pushed the entire region to be a go-to spot for Mexican artists — recalling that the Toyota Arena hosted Vicente Fernández back in the early 2010s.

“There has always been a recognition that it’s a strong market,” Ocegueda said. “The way that genre is visible and thrives in the I.E., I think it’s a really important space for that genre of music.”

In the opening shots of Fuerza Regida’s music video for “Mi Vecindario,” clips of the downtown San Bernardino nightlife play between shots of the group’s frontman, Jesús Ortiz Paz, or JOP, riding around in a Rolls-Royce. The group also references Rancho Cucamonga and Colton, two prominent San Bernardino County cities, in the first 30 seconds of the song “El Walks.”

Even in the cover art for their debut studio album, “Del Barrio Hasta Aquí,” the group has highlighted its connection to the region. The photo emulates the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album photo, but replaces the London streets with the city’s Santa Fe smokestack and rail yard.

That location is a historically important space for the region’s Mexican American immigrants, according to Ocegueda.

“When the Mexican Revolution was going on, you had a lot of Mexican immigrants coming into these railroading hubs and centers like the Inland Empire, like San Bernardino,” Ocegueda said.

For decades, these newly immigrated workers would be segregated into the neighborhoods surrounding the smokestack, he added, leading to the growth of a large multigenerational Mexican community.

“The fact that Fuerza Regida has taken that picture is paying homage to that particular history on the west side,” he said. “It just seems really appropriate because it ties in present-day immigrant communities with the longer history of Mexican immigrant communities.”

Festivalgoers form a line to dance to banda music.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The success of the genre and the region’s biggest stars has also influenced the region’s first-generation youth to pursue musical careers in the rapidly growing genre.

At La Tardeada, on a community stage yards away from the main dance floor, four teenagers called Herencia Firme stepped up for their set.

The quartet has been performing together for about two years, the group’s frontman, Enrique Ibarra, explained. They hail from Moreno Valley, went to the same high school together and created the group because of their shared love of the genre.

“A person I really respect is the singer of Fuerza Regida,” Ibarra said. “Seeing them at No. 1 for such a long time was crazy because that just means that there is more than one opportunity for our group.”

So far, they’ve primarily performed at family parties, quinceañeras and as opening acts at informal rancho festivals. Their hourlong set at the downtown Riverside festival would be their most prominent gig yet. Around 50 event-goers walk onto a small wooden dance floor while another 50 stand in the back, ready to listen to the band dressed in all-black streetwear. They are prepared to play a range of cover songs from contemporary and older corrido artists, but Ibarra quickly calls an audible onstage to start with some cumbias after seeing the small dance-hungry crowd.

Slowly, they transition back into their original setlist, playing songs like Fuerza Regida’s “Tú Name” and Clave Especial’s “Tu Tu Tu” as the banda fans start to migrate onto the grass to sit and listen to the artist’s first large festival performance.

They held the audience’s attention without any major issues. Later that afternoon, the organizers offered Herencia Firme another time slot on the same stage to continue performing for the crowd.

“The Inland Empire provides a lot of opportunities,” Ibarra said. “As long as you are a good group, you’ll find a lot of work.”

Hernandez is a freelance writer based in Riverside. This article is part of a De Los initiative to expand coverage of the Inland Empire with funding from the Cultivating Inland Empire Latino Opportunity (CIELO) Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation.