NPR Music - Alt.Latino: New Music + Violeta Parra

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

This week Alt.Latino hosts Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre balance their passion for new discoveries with reissued music from an iconic Latin American songwriter. Featured artists and songs:• Ezra Collective, "Body Language" (feat. Sasha Keable)• Patti LaBelle, "Teach me Tonight (Me Gusta Tu Baile)"• Teri Gender Bender, "SANAR"• Kevin Kaarl, "recuérdame x siempre"• Violeta Parra, "Cantores Que Reflexionan"• Ben Aler, "Honest"• Jose Luiz Martins, "Cravo e Canela"See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Okay, so here's my new TikTok passion. Your new TikTok passion? There's this woman. She's a mathematician. She's doing all of these algebra equations. She does them in English and in Spanish. And she does it on a whiteboard. Let's solve this problem. I watched like 10 of them in a row.

I didn't think math was my thing, but apparently it is. My reluctance to embrace math and fully accept it is the only reason why I'm not an astrophysicist right now instead of doing a podcast. Oh, really? Oh, really. That is the only reason why. I love all the universe and the stars and stuff. Uh-huh. From NPR music, this is all Latino.

I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Let the Cheesmith begin. So, for today's first song, I'm very excited to share something. British jazz quintet. Quintet. Quintet. As a collective, do you know them?

Yes. Amazing. Just released a track featuring Sasha Keebles, who is one of my favorite. She's a Colombian artist living in London. She's been there all her life. She had like a pretty big project a number of years ago. She kind of took a little bit of a break. But this song, Felix, it's called Body Language. As a collective, not a Latin band, said that this particularly was their attempt to celebrate the different. Latino communities around London and so of course they brought Sasha Keeble on the track. It's amazing. I love that rhythm. Did you like it, Felix? It's Mambo, straight ahead dance mumbo. You can't go wrong.

And it reminds me of a track, this really obscure deep catalog track that Patty LaBelle did. God, I don't know, maybe the late 70s, early 80s where she did, it was a salsa backing like this, but she's singing in English. And Sheila E and her dad and her family are on this track. I want to play a little bit, because that's what this song reminds me of. Tell me if you don't think it reminds you this. Hold on. So I played a little bit of that just to show that this cross-fertilization of

African music and English language and R&B. It goes back many, many years. And, God, I wish I could do the research on this, but it's probably late 70s, early 80s with Patty LaBelle and Me Gusta Tuvae with Pete and Sheila Escobito back then. And that's what Ezra Collective and Sasha Keeble are doing on this. One is not better than the other. They're equally good.

I'm going to play a track from a musician named Terry Genderbender. She is the lead singer for the Mexican punk band Le Butchrette's. And I'm a big Terry Gender Bander fan, man. I saw her about three years ago, maybe so at Fillmore here in D.C. Silver Spring with her band. And she's just so ferocious, so fierce, live. She's going to release her first all-Spanish album. It's coming in the summer. We've got to preview a single track.

It's deeply emotional. It's musically multi-layered. It's a very, very big departure from her punk roots, but not really, and I'll explain why. The name of the track is called Sanar. This is Terry Genderbender. That got your attention. And why am I a fan, you may ask, of this punk musician?

You don't necessarily hear the trappings of punk. You know, all the guitars, all the loudness. The message that she's singing about, the message of confronting toxicity. It has the ethos of punk because it's so raw. She's been with Libbyteret since 2008. That's when she started the band in Mexico. Always been challenging the notions of gender, the role of women in Mexican society, her performance art presentations.

There's just so many ways that she does this. I was never a big, you know, sex pistols punk fan. But guys like Alejandro Escobedo that were taking a different approach to punk and even some of the earliest Los Lobo stuff, I don't know if it would call it punk, but they were part of that punk scene back then with all the Los Illegals and all the other stuff coming out of East Los Angeles.

That punk ethos is still like challenging authority, talent, challenging conditions and norms. And this new track, man, I just, I really like it. I can't wait to hear the rest of the record. That is Terry Genderbender. The name of the track is Sanaj. She's got an album coming out in the summer. Can't wait.

Okay. So speaking of things that we can't wait for that we're excited about, this album snuck up on me. So I didn't have to wait. I didn't even have to sit there, Felix, and be like, oh, I can't wait till Kevin Carl releases an album. Because he released it like magic, out of thin air on Valentine's Day, because obviously this man is the most love music, lovey love song singer ever. The album is called Ultra Sodade, and this track in particular is called Recuerdame for this record

my this record to me is a this record to me is so cinematic I was listening last night with my roommate and I was like, it's almost reminiscent of this kind of like very early 2000s movie soundtrack, some of the texture of it, the effect, the production. I played in that really famous track from the Little Miss Sunshine album,

and I was like almost like that, that sound to me is very reminiscent of this. To me, he's musically such an old soul. I talk all the time about how the netherance. new era, the new generation is like incorporating 10 different genres in one album and they're switching between all these different sounds. And Kevin is almost like the antithesis to that in a way that I find really refreshing. No, you have to sit there and lay on the floor for an hour and just soak it in and it's going to move slow and you're going to be waiting for the hook,

you're going to be waiting for the jump and maybe you don't find it. And that's something that I think people of my generation actually are not accustomed to sitting with. And yet, this man will fill out literally auditoriums, Felix, of people my age crying and being obsessed in a way that they would for some big pop act. Somebody like Carla Morrison, I remember the first time I saw her perform in Mexico City during a Viva Latino festivals years ago. people just really are emotionally invested. I think that's a really apt comparison because part of what I think is so striking for him is some of those really like intense lyrical moments

that shine through. Like he'll hit you with a really beautiful hook and all of a sudden the whole song makes sense. Like everything kind of falls into place. There's this song on the album and it's called Siento Tanto Aki. And there's a part where he hits you with that hook and he says, No, I'm going to existid

sin thee. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, it all fell into place. Everyone loves to talk about him and Ed Maverick. They're two guys both from Chihuahua who are both doing this kind of like, You know, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's kind of indie, almost like American-leaning sound.

And Kevin's is the love voice. Like if Ed is gutted, heart-wrenching, just absolute, on-the-floor broken little Corazon, Kevin is the like, you're my son, my moon, and my stars voice. Like even when he's heartbroken, he's in love. I just, I love it. That song was Recurdame for Sienpre, and the album is Ultra Sodade. It's curious, you know, we're going to remind people that, you know, when we put these shows together, a lot of times we don't know what we're going to bring until just before we come into the studio.

And then once again... You're really exposing us, Felix. We're stylistically very in tune with each other. Okay, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, and when we come back, I have some more emotional lyrics to play for you. Welcome back to all Latino. There's an album out right now called Las Ultimas Canciones of Violeta Parra.

This album is a chance to revisit the glory that was Violeta Parra. It's from my favorite reissue label based in Madrid, Vampi So. There's also a biography out right now. It's called Thanks to Life by the UCLA Professor Erica Verba. The music that she made in 1960s, ignited the new

Cancion movement all across Latin America. This song is called Cantore's Que Reflectiona. Okay, for people of a certain generation, let me just put it that way, Violeta Barra is like the patron saint of acoustic folk music from Latin America. For everyone, Felix, for everyone. She was born and raised in Chile as a child. She and her family were playing Chilean folk music and composing Chilean folk music.

She went to Europe, continued to play music, and then came back to Chile. Just shortly after she came back in 1966, she took her own life. and since then her legacy has grown and I brought it in because I hear so much of her in the music that you bring in. The female vocalist in her the female vocalist I admire the most, they really consistently keep her music alive,

I think because of the magic that she possesses. She seems to be having a moment with a biography and just more general interest in her music. Again, that's Violeta Parra. The album was called Las Ultimas Cansions of Violeta Parra. That track is called Cantore, Okay, Anna, what do you get to follow that? Okay, pivot.

Ben Aller is an artist from Mexico City that has come in with a number of shows that we produce, Rahuayana, Alvarodias, Nati Peluso, he's played piano, he's played guitar. So we've gotten to know him, to love him. He's produced on all of these projects, but Felix, and I don't know if you know this, he has his own personal projects, and he just released a single. It's been years since he's released music. I've personally been excitedly awaiting this one for a while. And I love it.

This song is called Honest. Once again, to be fair, you know to Berkeley, he's some time here. So you can really hear the influence of that R&B pop sound. And I love that he switches languages here. It moves, it grooves. It's like just a really nice, light, fun track. Okay, we're getting in this episode with some more jazz.

Another jazz lesson. Okay. This next track deals with physical healing. Jose Luis Martins is a pianist and composer who's originally from Sao Paulo, and now he's living here in the D.C. area. He's played around. He travels all over the place. He released his first album in 2014, and then a while back, he developed the debilitating neurological condition

called focal dystonia, and that's involuntary muscle contractions and made it impossible for him the play. He had to take a break away from this music. This new album coming out mid-April was called the Odyssey Mix-Tape, and it's his musical journey through healing, all told through instrumental music with a little bit of vocal, and I brought in the cover, the first single from the album. It's called Clavo and Canela, Cloven Cinnamon. It's written by Milton Nacimento. This is Clavu and Canela from Jose Luis Martins. Felix, that flute. Yeah. That's actually his wife.

Her name is Alex Hamburg, and she lives also here in the D.C. area, plays around a lot. I've seen her. I've seen both of them play a little bit. It's called Odyssey Mix tape. The artist is Jose Luis Martinez. The singles out now and the album's coming out in April. You have been listening to Alt Latino,

our audio editor, Simon Rentner. The woman who keeps us on track is Grace Chung. And Soraya Muhammad is the executive producer of NPR Music. And Keith Jenkins is the VP of Music and Visuals. I'm Felix Gonzo. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Thank you so much for listening.