¡Viva! Chicago Latin Music Festival

Los Lobos

¡Viva! is the underdog of Chicago’s perennial summer-fest blowouts. Considering the lowrider car show added this year, the uninitiated might assume it’s just one giant rumbling blast of norteño and Duranguense, but Viva’s organizers still manage to genre-hop with the best of them.

How appropriate, then, that Los Lobos—and its border-blurring acoustic pyrotechnics—close out the fest on Sunday night. David Hidalgo’s East L.A. band of brothers turned 35 this year, thus earning the right to record a children’s album of Disney-movie covers slated for a 2008 release. We hope to hell there’s a killer Tejano version of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Heartthrobs take center stage in Saturday’s lineup, which includes Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Alexis y Fido, Colombian rocker Don Tetto and bolero-inclined tenor Yamil. The latter, the self-anointed “Pride of Mexico,” no doubt will be enhanced by Chicago’s 11-piece Mariachi Zapopan and Mexico’s 40-member Ballet C’Acatl folkloric dance ensemble.

Sunday ups the pinup ante with an appearance by Latin boy band in perpetuity, Menudo. But the sincere reason to go is Fobia, which hits the stage at 6pm. The on-again-off-again Mexico City band never measured up to the monumental strides of its worldwide-breakthrough scene partners, Café Tacuba, but that didn’t stop it from shamelessly siphoning Tacuba’s carnivalesque dance-punk vibe on 2005’s excellent comeback album, Rosa Venus.