NPR Music - Alt.Latino: Portraits of Jazz and Identity in Latin America

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Ever since I heard the Argentine saxophonist Gato Barbieri back in the Seventies, I’ve been fascinated by musicians from South America who found their way to jazz.Lately there seems to be a strong showing of contemporary musicians from various Latin American countries who not only play jazz but also mix certain Latin American folk traditions into their sound.So, this week I spoke with six of them: vocalist Claudia Acuña from Chile, Argentine vocalists Sofia Rei and Roxana Amed, Mexican vocalist Magos Herrera, guitarist/vocalist Camila Meza and tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana.Each has a story about identity, living the jazz dream and how they came to jazz.Hopefully you’ll use this roadmap to start your own journey into jazz, if you haven’t already.- FelixMusic heard in this episode:Claudia Acuña - “Prelude To A Kiss”Sofia Rei - “El Gavilán”Gato Barieri - “To Be Continued”Roxana Amed - “Corazón delator”Mangos Herrera - “Luz de Luna”Camila Meza - “Utopia”Melissa Aldana - “A Purpose”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

From NPR music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. We're finally giving Anna Maria Zaire some days off. So this week, we're going to change things up a bit. We're going to take a deep dive into something I've been curious about and I have talked about on past episodes, musicians from Latin America who play jazz. Now, jazz has been called America's Gift to the World. And this week, we'll meet some South American jazz musicians, vocalists and instrumentalists who occupy a unique space where Ella Fitzgerald, rubs elbows with Mercedes Sosa, and where Argentine Chacarrera coexist with swing. We're going to hear from six different musicians who are each making amazing music and each tell us something different about the state of jazz today. Now, we'll hear some common themes, stories about how they came to jazz, their passion for the rich folk traditions of Latin America,

and the inspiration they find from reflecting their own cultures and traditions into their own unique expression. Let's get into it. Hello. Hello, my name is Claudia Cunia. I am a singer, storyteller, songwriter, composer, bandleader, a woman from the south of the America who was born in Chile. I asked Claudia Cunia how she got started on her journey as a vocalist and her love for jazz.

When you ask me that question, you take me far a long time ago, like when I was maybe 14 years old. I knew always I wanted to sing, and I started with folk music. and then I put my hands everywhere I could, you know. But I fell in love with jazz because the part where you improvise and musicians are in full service of the music and it becomes a really on real-time talk. In fact, it was jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie's love of Afro-Cubian music

going all the way back to the 1940s that inspired Claudia to find her own place in jazz. If this leslie is in love with this music, one day I'm going to sing jazz and Spanish. And I'm in my little mind, you know, in heart as a dreamer. I'm thinking to myself, this is what I really want to do. And this music will be the only style that could potentially allow me to do that. You know, after almost 30 years on her jazz journey, Claudia Cunia is really one of the pioneers in bringing these two continents together. musically. I felt it, I heard it in my head, I dreamed it, and I could hear all those

arrangements that we did for my first album where I'm taking like prelude to a kid, but I'm using a queca in it, you know? Quica is a style of Chilean music and dance. And here's that track she mentioned, an old Duke Ellington classic called Prelude to a Kiss, which she recorded on her album, went from the South in 2000. If like a flower was my heart serenading in you, my prelude to up from my tender sentimental woes I am to come up for kiss, a simple melody with nothing fancy nothing

you could turn it to a symphony, a shoe burns for the tenderness within your eyes. As you said, and I'm going to use your word, pioneers, people that I think we do, a chance to have a sit at the table, you know. But at the same time, maybe this is our role in this section of this chapter of this story, is we are the ones that are going to continue open

and creating spaces for another generation that comes after us, you know. I just can't help myself to not be who I am, and I have done this for a long time, And now, at this age, at this time, I feel like I just need to get more comfortable on that and just put the foot in the accelerator. Or as, as they say in Chile, to rear the caballo. And woo-hoo! Hi, I'm Sophia Ray.

I am a vocalist, composer, producer, educator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Like our other guest this week, Sophia Ray exists in a world that I call musically bicultural. And what we're hearing right now is her rendition of a song called El Gavilan, which was originally written by Chilean folk singer Violetta Parra. My music has been always very related to South American folk. How beautiful to be able to see the world of Violeta Parra. See the world of all these wonderful South American folk artists through the lens of this music. For Sophia Ray, jazz is not a standalone genre from North America.

It's more like a connective tissue that can bring together North and South American traditions. I feel that jazz was never confined to this one single sound or tradition. Sometimes we try to identify that whole world with one thing. I don't think that a lot of people think of somebody like Violeta Parras as an experimental artist, right? for me, she is. Maybe some of her most known work, not so much, but if I think of something like El Gavilan or pieces where she was really listening to so many other folks out there, contemporary classical music, I think there are those artists like Cucci-Lay-Isamon in Argentina or Carlos Aguirre, I don't know, I can think of so many people that kind of like we're always navigating a more open space. And in this open space, I think is where some of us live, where we can find the beauty of this folk music that's so

connected to the soul and that has a strong relation to perhaps a specific geographical space. Like we think of Chacarera, well, okay, we're thinking of Argentina, we're thinking of a very specific geographical point, or thinking of Violeta Parra, it brings us to Tide or to Queka or to, but I think just has this more universal, like, a spirit that can make. Make it easier for us to connect all these different dots and make it easier for us to navigate throughout. kind of music we should make us just artists where sometimes electronic music maybe doesn't have a place or singing in other languages, like my case. I sing in Spanish, mainly, also in Portuguese sometimes, sometimes in English, but maybe sometimes feels like, oh, this is still,

sometimes it feels like even though Latinos were there from the very beginning, it feels that we're still somewhat foreign to the art form. Okay, at this point, I have to point out an artist who was a precursor to this current movement of musicians from South America playing jazz. In the early 1970s, the Argentine saxophonist Gato Babieri was way ahead of the curb when he made a series of albums that matched up South American folk instruments and rhythms with his signature robust sound on the tenor saxophone. He remained creative right up to the time of his passing in 2016, but I don't think he really got enough credit for those records back then,

largely because I think the jazz audience didn't understand them. And now more than 50 years after he made them, those albums also predicted a desire by musicians from South America to be recognized as part of the Sound of Jazz. Fellow Argentine musician Sophia Ray says he was both groundbreaking and prophetic. You listen to these records and you're like, oh my God, there is a Wino there. There is Indian music that was not really part of jazz.

at all until he, you know, like, kind of incorporated that or also other folk styles of music from Argentina. I think he really opened the door for all of that so early on. And it's interesting because still to today, I think we're still like kind of like, hey, here we are. We do have something to say. We're also part of this. Next up, we're going to talk to another musician from Argentina. I am Roxanna-Amade. I'm from Buenos Aires. I am a vocalist first. Depending on how good I do, I might call myself a composer. Okay, now we're going to dig into the DNA of what makes jazz expression from South America just slightly different than North American jazz. Roxanna Ahmed is going to explain. If I do something like, my heart is sad and lonely, there is nothing

jesse there, but the song, maybe. My heart is sad and lonely. Some things in the timber start showing the roots of the style, the African roots of the style, then the swing, then the way you articulate the consonants. All that is something I built. It's not only about the values, you know, the rhythm in the values, but the articulation. So if I have to do and I do

Sabu, sap da-ta-da-du-be-up that articulation, those accents and notes that are more muted, those are the ones that are matching the swing. Earlier this year, she focused her jazz chops on another Argentine folk tradition,

rock. This is Corazon de la Tor written by Gustavo Cerati. When he was a member of the band Soda Estereo. It's from the album Todos Los Fuegos by Roxanne Ahmed. We are Argentinians,

we are far from everywhere. We are, like, lost in our own crisis, with our own traumatized political life. So music is very ours. It's very

important because it really reflects who we are. Rock was the language of my generation. I had this epiphany last year. I said, like, before I die, I need to make finally this album with rock, Argentine rock. I had to do it. So I called, in September, I called Leo Genovese, our Argentinian, amazing pianist and everything.

And I said, Leo, before I die, I really want to record this. And I think you'd be the right person because I wouldn't have to explain to you many things. Right? You will know the drama. You will know the darkness, you will know the poetry, you will know everything. And he says, let's do it. So far, we've been hearing about the connective tissue between jazz from North and South America and also the ways that those two traditions differ.

We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, three more musicians who use their voice and instruments to tell their own jazz story. And we're back. And we've got conversations with three more prolific jazz musicians from Latin America. And the first is Magos Herrera. a Mexican singer who, like many artists, moved to New York earlier in her career. So she sees the influence of Latin America on jazz from the other side of the push and pull between the U.S. and the rest of the hemisphere.

Well, I've been singing for three decades, and as all jazz musicians, I started singing, you know, like the traditional jazz repertoire and, you know, like trying to incorporate the language and the vocabulary. But it was quite early on when I understood that I wasn't a traditional jazz singer in the sense that I didn't feel that my heart was in singing jazz standards exclusively in English. And I guess when I moved to New York, 18 years ago, this call was even stronger. I guess with the distance from me.

Mexico and my Latin American blood and my roots just sounded natural and organic for me. For you, is there a place when you're performing, when you're composing, where the folk music of Mexico and Latin America and jazz, are they on equal footing? Do they coexist together? Or is it you that brings them together for your own particular expression? I mean, in my case, I think it's me putting things together. Because again, I don't think in terms of definitions or generous, like, okay, this influences is from a, you know, like Latin American folk song. I just get, I think after so many years, there is a way, a natural way for me to, the way I

phrase, the way I write, the progressions that I use, the kind of interplay I search with the musicians. So I think it's more like bringing all these things to do. and putting them through a very specific way of how I envision music. Listen, I think in my case, I'm very lucky that I have been able to develop a career in the United States where I find resonance in the audience, and it could be a mixed audience. It could be like Latin American audiences, but also American audiences. And I've been lucky enough to say this.

But many times I asked myself, I ask myself, who am I talking to? An American person would be sensitive and open enough to understand a piece like, Grasias Alaida, in the same way than someone in Mexico City or Buenos Aires or Madrid. I mean, obviously, obviously it's a different, I mean, our references are different. We all grew up with these songs, but you will be surprised that also in the United States, even non-Spanish-speaking people, they are incredibly sensitive to these narratives. But I'm not. I think it's a challenge. It's a constant challenge to understand who are we talking to, who is listening, and who are we're talking to. But at the same time, we just need to do it because that's, that's what we do.

I'm a singer-gitarist composer from Chile. You know, I've discovered over the years of covering Latin music that it is in Latin America, South America and the Caribbean, where the mix of cultures and traditions is much stronger and ever-present in the music than it is here in North America. Camila Mesa says that historical match-up is one of the sources of her creative voice. Music from Latin America and the guitar in Latin America,

is just so broad and the polyrhythmic beauty of Latin American music, it's really like this heritage of so many cultures coming together in a specific geographic place, you know? Sometimes I'm writing and I'm like, oh, I can't even explain where this is coming from, but then I like, I realize it's, oh, I'm like playing this particular rhythm from like West Africa even, you know, you know, that kind of like, it's definitely in Latin American music, you know. So it's very fluid and it's beautiful to realize how music is so, it's so liquid, you know. It's so hard to say this is, this stops here and this, you know, because it just keeps traveling.

This week we're featuring three musicians from Chile, each from a different generation of jazz musicians who are commanding attention here in North America. Mesa, Claudia Acuna, and coming up in a minute, Melissa Aldana. So what's in the water in Chile? What makes it turn out so many talented jazz musicians? Honestly, I feel like it's such a beautiful coincidence because, like, the three of us come from very different backgrounds in a way, you know, like thinking of, because sometimes it's easy to say, oh, yeah, there's a school there.

There's a school there, and it's like, there's one incredible teacher that it's, like, making all these people like fall in love deeply with the music. But no, like in Chile, there's incredible musicians like everywhere. And specifically the jazz scene, it's such a high level. You know, you go to the clubs and you really like, you're listening to as if you go inside a New York club. You know, like they're super studios. I think that's one other thing. You know, they become very nerdy about it so they know all the records and, you know.

There was Camila And her track Utopia. Our final conversation is with another musician who came out of that beautiful coincidence of jazz in Chile, Melissa Aldana. She's a tenor saxophonist whose life and family background would be very, very, very typical of a modern jazz musician. She is the third generation of her family to answer the call to play jazz after her father and her father's father. She knew who Charlie Parker was when she was just four years old. And she worships both John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter,

two towering figures in jazz history. Except all of this took place over 5,000 miles from the jazz capital of the world, New York City. Melissa Aldana is from Santiago. I grew up listening to my grandfather and my father listening to jazz all the time you know so that was the only music that was being played at home so in a way I was very lucky to you know to have somebody like my dad telling me like the source is Charlie Parker that is all what you need to learn

my grandfather was one of the first jazz musicians during the you know 40s and 50 I think in Chile And back then he had an orchestra that was very famous during that time that it was called Iwambalie. So my grandfather was obsessed with big band arrangements. He was a baritone player. He loved train. He played ten or two. And also he was doing a lot of touring around Europe back then taking a boat.

So they will travel for months and months. And actually one of the first saxophones that I played was a saxophone that he bought. on one of those tours. And my dad, he made me love music and saxophone and the process of practicing. So I was very lucky to have somebody's like, no, Charlie Parker's the only person that you need to be checking out right now and practice with me like hours, hours and hours all day. As she moves forward in a jazz journey, Melissa Aldana, like our other guest this week, is finding a way to bring together North and South America and her music in a way that is organic

to the traditions of all the Americas. It all to me has to do with like, yeah, I'm Chilean and I have a Chilean identity in the way that I play because that's where I'm from, and those are my experiences. It doesn't mean that I have to play Queca, but the way that telling my story is as a South American woman, and I think that just was always about being able to tell your story, and that is the one thing that I love the most about it.

That is the track of Purpose from Melissa Aldana's latest album, echoes of the inner profit. My thanks to Melissa Adana, Camila Mesa, Mago Serrera, Roxana Ahmed, Sophia Ray and Claudia Cunia. Thank you for your time and your music. You can find out about the music we played this week on our website at npr.org slash alt Latino and go out and discover for yourself the magic of jazz in Latin America. You have been listening to Alt Latino from NPR Music. Our audio editor is Noah Caldwell. Surreal Mohammed is executive producer. of NPR Music. So Nali Mehta is executive director of NPR Music.

Anna Maria Sayre, we'll be back next week. I'm Felix Contreras. Thank you for listening.