Home› The Americas›Mexico & Central America›Guatemala
Music of Guatemala
Mariachi and son jarocho, marimba ensembles of Guatemala, Garifuna punta, Panamanian tamborito and the corrido ballad tradition.
Sung and searched in Spanish. The YouTube button above can run your search in that language.
Roots and traditions
Types of marimbas
Marimba de Tecomates This musical instrument is from Chichicastenango and it is made of palo de hormigo, a type of wood used for marimba manufacture, and pumpkins (tecomates). This type of marimba is played by a single person who is requested to liven up concerts of the brotherhood from Chichicastenango. Marimbas have many sizes and shapes and that is what makes this instrument so unique. Marimba Simple The soundboards of the marimba simple are made of wood such as cedar or cypress. It is tuned according to the key, and with a membrane glued with wax at the lower end, which allows the “charlco” (marimba stick) to facilitate the prolongation of the sound. The construction of the first marimba was diatonic, related to a key, and because it is easy to play it was called Marimba Simple. Sometimes the performers want a different sound so to get a “flattened” sound, the performers would stick a small ball of wax at one end of the keyboard, which flattens the sound down by a half tone.
Popular music
Modern popular music
In recent decades, Guatemala has produced a variety of popular performers, such as pop vocalists, Guatemalan rock bands, bachata, salsa and merengue bands, hip hop and reggaeton, disk-jockeys, trios, and mariachi bands. The best known popsinger/songwriter from Guatemala is Ricardo Arjona. One of the better-known pop-rock bands during the 1980s and 90s was the group Alux Nahual. While this group has been separated since 1998, their recordings are still favoured by a certain age group of Guatemalan city-dwellers. In the teen pop genre, artists like Vanessa Spatz were exported internationally, with the support of Siempre En Domingo and toured broadly around Latin America. Her music being distributed worldwide by PolyGram. She retired as a performer in 1991 and continued her career as a producer and songwriter, co-producing the song "Email Me" for Jose Jose with Luny Tunes for the record label Bertelsmann Music Group known as BMG. Notable vocalists from the 20th century include Luis Galich, Roberto Rey, Herman May, Tania Zea, Karim May, and Elizabeth.
Read the full article: Music of Guatemala Text under CC BY-SA 4.0
Playing now
What Guatemala is listening to in 2026
Articles
No articles for Guatemala yet. Save a Markdown file to content/articles/ with
country: Guatemala in its front matter.
Live radio
Radio from Guatemala
Music only, no news or talk. Stations that play the local tradition come first, then the most listened. They play in the corner of the page.
Station directory by Radio Browser Streams come from each station's own server.