Ask the Expert: World Cup music facts from Eduardo Herrera

Eduardo Herrera, an associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, is a big soccer fan. But when he attends games or celebrates with other fans, he is also hard at work: He researches the sounds of the World Cup, specializing in the chanting practices of soccer fans in Argentina.

Eduardo Herrera conducts anthropological research on the sounds of soccer fan practices in South America. Photo by Wendi Chitwood, Indiana University

Herrera combines oral history with fan observation and archival research to understand everything from official FIFA World Cup songs to the chants fans shout in the streets to the music circulated between friends on social media.

Herrera is currently in Argentina, where his fieldwork will focus on Argentine fan practices, including how supporters experience the remaining matches. If Argentina advances to the finals, he’ll study the team’s reception when they return home.

Impress your friends and family while you watch the next game with 10 fun facts about the soundscape of the World Cup, straight from the IU expert:

1. The first official World Cup song predates the first official World Cup mascot.The rockabilly-style song “El Rock del Mundial” was a hit during the 1962 World Cup in Chile, while the lovable lion mascot, “World Cup Willie,” debuted at the 1966 World Cup in England.
2. Official World Cup music is as international as the competition. Since 2022, FIFA has released a full album of official songs in addition to the official song of the World Cup. This year, the album includes the official Shakira/Burna Boy song “Dai Dai” and music from the artists of the host countries, as well as places like Thailand, Brazil, Nigeria and Colombia.
3. Shakira didn’t write the famous hook in “Waka Waka”; Cameroonian soldiers did. The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Song’s chorus comes from “Zangalewa,” a 1986 hit by a band called Golden Sounds, made up of presidential guardsmen in Cameroon.
4. New Zealand player Tim Payne’s social media following is larger than the population of New Zealand. The defender went from 5,000 to over 5.8 million followers on Instagram in only a couple of days after an Argentine influencer declared him the World Cup’s “least-known player” and a song comparing him to Ángel Di María went viral.
5. Ricky Martin owes his global stardom to the 1998 World Cup. His song “La Copa de la Vida” marked the first time a Latin artist headlined a World Cup song for a European tournament, helping launch the Latin pop explosion of the late 1990s in the United States.
6. Only one official World Cup song is entirely instrumental. Spaghetti Western composer Ennio Morricone’s 1978 song “El Mundial” is the only World Cup song without lyrics or singing.
7. The Argentine soccer stadium is the world’s most exported soccer soundscape. Argentina’s chanting tradition is so influential that it has been adopted and adapted in Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Japan.
8. Country-specific chants are often a mix of global influences. The high-energy chant “Vamos Nippon” blends Japanese- and Spanish-language phrases. The chant, used by supporters of the Japanese National team of this World Cup, was adapted from an Argentine soccer chant that uses the starting melody from the 1987 song “Pop Goes the World” by the Canadian band Men Without Hats.
9. Teams and their supporters add new songs every year. This year, the Argentine national team incorporated a new song into its repertoire called “La Cuarta Estrella” (“The Fourth Star”). The melody comes from a well-known song by the late cumbia singer Gilda, and it is now a central part of supporters’ musical practices during this tournament.
10. World Cup players feature in Colombia’s unofficial anthem. Two Colombian players, Luis Díaz and Juan Fernando Quintero, sing on Ryan Castro’s 2024 reggaeton-and-cumbia-fusion hit “El ritmo que nos une.”