Cross-cultural vision came naturally to Latin Grammy winners Jesse & Joy

Jesse & Joy had a huge head start on seeing beyond borders, both musical and cultural.

The sibling pop duo’s mother is from Wisconsin and their father was from Mexico City.

Their next single, “More Than Amigos,” is mostly in English, and they’ve followed the Spanish versions of recent hits “Ecos de Amor” and “Dueles” with bilingual performance videos.

And when they were songwriting with friends from Cuba or other Latin American countries a few years ago? The two realized they had covered so much ground, “some of the flavors that were outside of the Mexican area were actually brought by us. It was pretty funny,” says Joy Huerta, the lead singer.

“The fact that we’ve traveled for 11 years in different parts of Latin America, we feel we are kind of like chefs and we’ve picked up some different flavors from very different places, and we’re bringing them to our cuisine.”

Jesse & Joy’s Las Vegas travels usually involve the Latin Grammy Awards, and “celebrating something,” notes Jesse Huerta, the multi-instrumentalist brother.

In 2007, the duo won the Latin Grammy for best new artist. In 2012 — the second year the ceremonies were broadcast from Las Vegas — Jesse & Joy took home four awards, including record and song of the year (for “Corre!”)

On Thursday, they return for the Latin Grammys at T-Mobile Arena with four nominations: record and song of the year (both for “Ecos de Amor”), and album of the year and best contemporary pop vocal album (both for “Un Besito Mas”).

“You just wait for the first letter. I hope it sounds like a ‘J’ …” Jesse says of waiting for the moment the envelopes are opened.

No guarantees this time. The diverse competition includes not just smash hits — Enrique Iglesias and Wisin’s “Duele el Corazon” and Carlos Vives and Shakira’s “La Bicicleta,” both up for record and song of the year — but also Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli’s “Cinema” album and a likely sentimental vote for the late Mexican superstar Juan Gabriel (the “Los Duo 2” album).

But Jesse, 33, says this year’s nominations chart the duo’s career progress by putting the siblings “up against a bunch of badass artists that we grew up listening to and aiming to be, at one point, up there with them. Now that’s actually happening. It might sound like a cliche, but that itself feels like an award.”

Jesse & Joy’s ballads on “Un Besito Mas” sound as if they are only an English lyric and an arrangement tweak away from the country pop coming out of Nashville these days. “Ecos de Amor” was co-produced by Fraser T. Smith, who has worked with Adele and Sam Smith.

“I think as the years go by and the world grows smaller,” Jesse says, “you go to the charts and you see 10 different artists in the top 10 from 10 different genres, and the only thing they all have in common with each other are good songs.”

“It’s kind of like borders,” the 30-year-old Joy says. “Borders are there, but they don’t really mean anything if you really look at it from a different perspective. When it comes to music, it’s just about the song really meaning something to you. It doesn’t have to be the best song; it has to be the song that speaks to you.”

The duo were on the phone before Tuesday’s election, but they had been encouraging first-time voters on Twitter. Last month, they also took part in Univision’s “Rise Up as One” concert on the Mexican borderline near San Diego.

“We really believe that music has the power of bringing people together,” Joy says. “The reason why we make music is we really think we can add a little bit of peace to the world with our music. We might sound super corny or extremely romantic, but we really believe in the good in people.

“We keep forgetting it’s been years of history that have taught us that segregation, racism and hate lead to disaster,” she adds. “So we would think that long down the road we’d learn, and we would actually rise up and be better. So the only thing we can do is bring our music and really try to use music to unite people, not separate them.”

The awards show is set to kick off with Juanes and Pablo Lopez performing with the cast of Cirque du Soleil’s “Mystere.” The Univision broadcast also promises performances by Fonseca, Mon Laferte, Gente de Zone, Pablo Lopez, Manuel Medrano, Wisin and Alexis y Fido. Actor Sebastian Rulli and singer-actress Roselyn Sanchez are the hosts.

Jesse & Joy say Thursday’s Latin Grammys will come with memories of their father, who died three years ago but encouraged them to sing and write songs as teens. Odds are strong the “special surprise” that Jesse promises could be a duet with Dominican superstar Juan Luis Guerra, performed on the album as a tribute to their father.

It can’t be any more nerve-racking than their 2007 debut on the broadcast. Joy recalls that a minute before they went live on the air, “I’m putting on my guitar and the strap wasn’t put on properly. As soon as I let my hair down, the guitar falls on the ground. I can hear in my ear, ‘30 seconds’ … I pick up the guitar and me and my brother try to tune it as fast as we can. The curtain comes up and everything is OK.”

But, she says, “I’d rather have a disaster with the microphone than people thinking that we do playback (lip-syncing). We believe that the reason why this is so real is that we get to do it the way we do it, and that’s the all-natural way.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.