NPR Music - Alt.Latino's best new music round-up: Omar Apollo, Karol G and Papo Vazquez

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre round up their favorite new tracks, including heartbroken music from Omar Apollo, a mix of jazz and Afro-Puerto Rican sounds from Papo Vazquez and a controversial new merengue electrónico track from Karol G.Songs featured in this episode:•Omar Apollo, "Empty"•Los Cenzontles, "Different Drum"•Mabe Fratti, "Oidos" and "Intento fallido"•Karol G, "Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido"•Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Hamilton de Holanda, "Mandalagh"•Papo Vazquez and Mighty Pirates Troubadours, "Plena Pa'Los Apache"Audio for this episode of Alt.Latino was edited and mixed by Joaquin Cotler, with editorial support from Hazel Cills. Our project manager is Grace Chung. NPR Music's executive producer is Suraya Mohamed. Our VP of Music and Visuals is Keith Jenkins.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

Are you mad at me because I'm chewing my cookie? Can you just do this without us having to hear you smack your cookie? I was hungry. And the cookies are so good. I love a good cookie. Nothing like a way to just brighten up by day with a good cookie, you know? Goes from zero to 100. Cookies are a special thing.

You know what else is special, Felix? New music. Thank you for saving that. From NPR music, this is all Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. I'm Ana Maria Sayer, and instead of making everyone listen to us walk through our favorite cookies this week, we decided we'll walk you through some new music because we've got some really good stuff. Two weeks ago, Felix, was honestly one of my favorite release weeks we've had in a minute.

So what does that say about the releases this week? Well, I guess the people will just have to find out. We've got a mix of stuff. We have some of the stuff that you like to listen. into some of the younger artists. Again, throwing in a little jazz and some other. Jazz, Felix. That's out of left field.

You're up first. I'm up first? Yes, you are. Okay, let's get it. So, Omar Apollo. We love him. He's been around. We've talked about him on the show before.

We had him on the tiny desk. He is like our favorite heartbreak, Garino, Mexican-American, doing the kind of like very cool kid, American R&B pop sound, but also like mixing in some mariachi every once in a while. The Spotify description, like the first line is like, Omar Apollo makes heartbreak a genre. Okay, well, this man, he ain't never been more heartbroken than he is on this new album.

Uh-oh, uh-oh. The album is called God Said No, and I am telling you, when I started listening to this album, I was like, someone hurt this man bad. Like, bad, and thank God, because he made some amazing music out of it. it. So this track is called Empty. God, I need a minute to recover. There's so much to be said about him. I mean, that song in and of itself is beautiful on so many levels, like minimal production, those gorgeous light strings, the piano.

But let's talk about that voice, because the key to Omar Apollo is this man, he carries so much emotion. It's so evocative across every single song. And I have always said that he blends, he communicates something different when he sings in English than when he does it in Spanish. Really? I've always said this.

I've noticed this for the first time when I saw him at the shrine a couple years ago. And I noticed the way that they mixed his vocals when he sang his song in Spanish. And I was like, oh, he sounds like he's going to an entirely different level. He opens up so much vocally. And the key to this record for me, for him,

is it's the most intimate, it's the most vulnerable we've ever seen him. Like the way he sings, it feels as though you're sitting right there with him in the breakup. And I brought this song in, in particular, for very particular reason, because in the lyrics in the bridge, he says,

can't another language, so that no me enthendes. No, I want to sepas what an interesting usage. And I was like, what an interesting usage of Spanish. It's not like he's just throwing it in there because like, oh, well, I don't know, this line came to me. It felt so authentic. Like, I'm going to tell you, oh, you hurt me. And then I'm going to tell you you hurt me a thousand times more, but I'm only going to do it in Spanish. You don't actually know how bad you hurt me. Like, oh my God, what a perfect, like really authentic, innocent, beautiful, like, just multicultural expression, right? Like, this is how it came to him. Is it what it really feels like? There are over the course of history. I mean, when you think about pop. music. There are some voices that are designed for sad songs, right? And we all end up

just like enraptured. I know I do. And I'm like a sad song. I'm sorry, man, that you keep having to get your heart broken, but like, you have to. You have to. There's no other option. That was empty off of Omar Apollo's new album. God said, no, I have had to. I have had this playing on repeat for multiple weeks now. So I like, you know, Felix, you already know. I love to get in my feels. Yeah, it's hard to skip. Happy Heartbreak Girl forever.

Well, you know, the song that I brought in is similar in a way. Okay, this is a band called Los Sent Sotlis. And we've played them on the show before. They are a Mexican folk group from the Bay Area. And not only are they a band, but they have a cultural center where they teach young kids how to play. dance and all that stuff. The leader of the band, Eugene Rodriguez, has been doing these series of records called covers, covers one, two, and three. On their third edition, where he's doing covers of not just Mexican music and Latin music, but also the classic rock songbook. He did

an amazing version of Joni Mitchell's both sides now a couple of albums ago. On this album, he's doing a thing called Different Drum. You and I travel to the beat of a different drum, right? So it's similar. It's a sad song. But they'd do it in their own way. This was the public's first glimpse of Linda Rodstad, and a band that she had called The Stone Pony's. And they had a radio hit with this.

This is their version of it. And it's a nod to Linda Ronstadt because she's been very supportive of them financially, emotionally, and just always been there for them over the years. It's part of why they're so successful. This is their version of the Stone Pony song, Different Drummer, on their new record covers three. In order to have an

appreciation of just what they do and how they do it, let's play the original 1964 version. Check this out. Linda. Every time you make eyes at me. You see how they do that little thing where they just, he changes the arrangement and it's still the essence of the song.

I love Linda's version. and I'll always love that version. Cannot. That voice. Oh, my God, that voice. So it was already there, already, like, developed. And I think that Los Cent's Sautilist's version of the song is an homage to that. It's a recognition of the influence that she's had on music over the years and on their own particular cultural center,

but also just her presence in general and that voice. I mean, it's just that voice. You know, Felix, I love that you brought this in for a couple of reasons. One, those lyrics could send me to heaven. I love them. much. They're so beautiful, the instrumentation. But beyond that, you have talked to me so much about, you know, what is right now a current loss of this type of music in the Bay Area that I think it's important to remind people is very much authentic to and real to the San Francisco

Bay Area. Like, Mexican folk music has a history. It has a foundation. It has, you know, a beautiful legacy in this space. And I think with the shift in the area and the shift, the change, the demographic change, obviously a lot has happened there over the past few years. It's becoming harder and harder to find musicianship and musicians like this. And so I think them being able to do this so beautifully and obviously originally, but then at the same time, maintain really that core that Linda brought to it is really something special. And also the way that they share it and they pass it on to the next generations with their classes for dancing and performing. Hats off to L'Censsela in the Bay Area. Eugene Rodriguez and his crew, man.

I also want to add that Eugene Rodriguez is publishing his memoirs called Bird of 400 Voices, a Mexican-American memoir of Music and Belonging. It is going to be published in August. Be sure to look for that because it's a fascinating story about him in the center and about Mexican music. So please check it out. Okay, you're up. Mabe Frati, everyone's favorite Guatemalan cellist. I mean, my favorite Guatemalan cellist.

I hope she's your favorite Guatemalan cellist, too. She may be the only one I know, but she's. She would still be my favorite if I knew others. This is a record from her. It is her second studio album that she has made by herself. It is really quite something special. She is known in Mexico City for being integral to the experimental music scene. I've seen her play a couple times there,

and every time it's like an ethereal, insane, incredibly beautiful experience. So I was really excited to see what she did here. I'm going to play a little bit of the track, from this new album Sinti, that you know there is so much

just kind of like broiling, bubbling at the surface of who she is at any given moment. I mean, you meet her and she is like the sweetest just like laid back fun

fabulous person ever and then you listen to her music and you're like there's something deeply haunting and I don't know where you store that but it's there and I think that's what's really interesting about her is one it's actually pretty funny she started doing cello improvisation because she would play at this really gothy kind of old school cathedral and they would be like play while we talk and so that's where her improvisation came from so it's always been religiously rooted I did an interview with her last year, and she talked a lot about that impact on her. So I was really curious to see where she went with this new album, and she goes a little bit poppier. There are some moments where it feels almost borderline.

She is the queen of dissonance and discomfort and making something beautiful out of discomfort, and she gets a little more, like, easy sometimes. It makes you feel a little less unsettled sometimes, but she's never losing her really. authentic, weird, spooky touch. She's one of my favorite artists that you have introduced me to over the years. Because, yeah, because of this unique place

that she holds, she's exactly the kind of artist that, you know, forget about genres, forget about boundaries, forget about descriptions. She's a cellist and she's going to mix all this other stuff in with her music. Contemporary influences, classical influences, her voice. I'm such a fan of what she does.

And what I've heard of the record so far, it's another level up for her. To me, it is her most grandiose and ambitious yet John Perelis did a profile in her in the New York Times that I really loved. And he said, Frati is one of the few artists working with field recordings and tape manipulation who can also cite Britney Spears as an influence. And that is absolutely her. She is like, let's go out dancing. Let's have fun. Like that is her energy. And yet, this is what she sits with.

This is what's really in her head. Mabe Frati from this new album Sintir, You're listening to Alt-Latina. We're playing new music. We're going to be right back after this break. And we're back to Alt-Latino's new music. And I think I'm just going to say I have to go again, Felix. Yes.

You're letting me? Yeah, I want to hear this. I thought I would just try it. Okay, so I've been pretty excited about this one because we've got some real piping hot cheese me for everyone at home today. And you know I love to follow and try. with these things, Felix. So Carol G. released a song of the summer. Everyone's been listening to it. It's a total bop. It's called, If Anteis de Uviera Conocido.

It's been celosa And even She's hermone She's She's been To try to She'll be

It's been really fascinating to follow kind of the reaction as it's progressed through the song. Obviously, a lot of people just love it. It's a great song. It's fun. It's a song of the summer. But beyond that, people begin to notice that it has a bit of a similar sound to Rosalia's Despecha. Maybe one of the biggest song she's ever had.

Let's hear a little bit of it. Now, the way people can't see. characterize the two songs and the reason they see them as similar is because they say it's kind of like electronic mid-angay sound with a little bit of a backwards mombo popped in there. And it is true. There is definitely a sonic similarity that has made people on both sides, Rosalia fans and Carol G fans, be, I don't know, questioning whether or not there was a bit of like a copying situation going on. It was produced by our favorite Edgar Barrera and written by him. But more importantly, I think it's opened up a larger conversation about who has a right to perform merengue.

Now, people are saying, well, Rosalia's not Latina. So, you know, who cares if Carol G is coming in and making a super similar sounding merengue song? Because she has more of a right to it than Rosalia did. Rosalia actually added fuel to the fire because she posted on Instagram. This is where we get really beefy. She posted on Instagram photos of herself flipping someone off and playing Despecha. I know. I know. So people really were like, oh, she is responding. She is upset about this. Other people are saying Rosalia is the first person to do electronic merengue, so she has a right to this. It's her song.

Largely, Felix. I think the real conversation on the table is merengue is not Colombian. Which is where Carol G is from. Which is where Carol G is from. And it's definitely not Spanish. From Spain. Which opens up this conversation again. I mean, we've had it a million times. And people love. to do this in our space, which I find really interesting. It's like only certain people can make certain music up until X, Y, and Z point, and everyone draws a different line, right? And Felix, when I obviously called you all excited to relay the facts of the drama, you said something really interesting to me. What did you say? Tell the people. You know, I think that, I think

there is no beef. I think that bigger picture, longer picture, brighter picture. I mean, you can go back to Let's use the most recent example, hip-hop. African-American and Latino originated here in the United States. Does this mean that Anitiju can't sing hip-hop? Because she's not from the United States? You know, or Residente? Here's part of the United States in Puerto Rico, but any other hip-hop artist, right?

I mean, even going back to the blues and rock and roll, other people have used that 12-bar blues format to create a whole genre of music. Did they not do it because it was an African-American music coming out of the South? I mean, no one has brought up the word appropriation, but it doesn't apply here as far as I'm concerned. Same with reggae.

Like, there's great Mexican reggae bands from the 90s, right? That's Jamaica music. So I don't see the beef. I don't understand, like, oh, she can't play it because she's from Spain and she's not from Latin America. That don't make no sense, okay? It just doesn't. Nobody got time for that.

Seriously, that's my position. It's like, it's all about the, individual artist and what you do with that. It's like a piece of clay, right? Meringue is a piece of clay. And what are you going to do with it? Everybody is going to have a different approach, going to make a different piece of pottery out of it. It's a piece of clay that matters. And they're paying, I think, paying respect and homage to this merengue, which is, by the way, from the Dominican Republic. We should say that. So, like I said, nobody got time for that. The question I always ask is, can you express? Is this, are you using merengen?

or whatever it might be and is, does it feel authentic to what you're expressing? I love the story here that she has. Like, oh, if you had met me before her, it would be us dancing. And that's how it feels to do a merengue. It's fast. It's up tempo. It's light. And it's like, it feels a little flirty.

It feels a little, like, mm. And I would love to point everyone, I read a great Remezcla article about this, actually, that points people to a number of electronic merengue artists. And I think it really lays up pretty clearly what is kind of like this history of merenge, merengue house, merengue electronic, which Merengue House is an entirely different thing, which has roots in the 80s in Venezuela and in the 90s in New York, which if we're going to talk about where things are from, I mean, we're like re-exporting across the border, across the ocean. You know, so it's, it's, all of these sounds have been taken in by diasporic communities.

They've been created. They've been reworked, remolded, and they've been used as new forms of expression and for younger, newer artists. So it's really hard to draw a line when everything's this blurry. I don't have a problem with it. So there. Okay, great. Case closed.

Fight me. Fight me. On my social media. I think everyone needs to know. Felix claims he doesn't start fights on social media. And I went to go check him on this because I was like, that is absolutely not true. I go to his Facebook, his last like 10 posts and didn't fight me.

Because I'll make a statement, you know. The sky is blue. Fight me. You know, it's like obvious stuff. Yeah, Felix's the controversial case. People don't know it, but it's true. Thanks for bringing the track in. And thanks for, I think that conversation is always worth having and renewing and reconsidering.

Maybe one day we'll actually agree with the masses. Who knows? Yeah, well, that'll be the day. Felix wants to be quirky, fun and different. I want to be my own man, my own man. All right. What do you got for us? Okay, we're going to finish out with a couple of tracks of mine.

I brought in a track by a Brazilian musician who plays the mandolin. His name is Hamilton de Orlando, and it's a great collaboration with the Cuban pianist, Gonzala Rubalcaba, two fantastic musicians, two amazing musicians in their own worlds, and are coming together to collaborate and to create all this new genre-busting stuff that's on this fabulous record. And this is the track called Mandala. This album reminds you of another album that was, made by the jazz pianist, Chick Korea,

and the banjo player, Bella Fleck, and how they take these two very, very different disparate instruments and create almost like a mind meld. When you listen to the intricacy of what they do and how they do it, throughout the whole thing, even when they fall back on Brazilian folk rhythms, Gonzalo's a master. He's played with jazz masters.

He's played with Cuban music when he was on the island. He's his own entity. And the way that they mix this thing together, every track, you're not going to be disappointed because the entire record is just fantastic. It's a high watermark for both of them. I really like it. Felix, thanks for bringing in another great jazz cut.

Honestly, more and more every single week, I get more indoctrinated. I'm going to make you a jazz fan. I'm going to make you a jazz fan. It's working. I'm going to make a jazz fan out of you one way or another because I got another track here that's going to introduce you to Bomba Jazz from Puerto Rico.

Okay? Check this up. Bapo Vasquez is a trombonist. He has this great band called Mighty Pirates Trubadors. He is deftly, expertly, seamlessly mixing traditional music from Puerto Rico with jazz. And he's played with everybody. He's played with Tito Puente. He's played with Dizzy Gillespie.

He's played with Ray Barreto. He's played with all the greats. And he's led this band just busting down genres and doing really, really great music. The name of the album is Bapo Vasquez, Mighty Pirates Trubadors. songs De Luka This song is called

Plena for the Fort Apache band featuring Jerry Gonzalez that Papo used to

be a member of. Check this out. You know, Papo Vasquez his former boss Ray Barreto

who was an icon in the music Salsa Star jazz side man playing congas and all this great

bebop stuff Ray Barretto used to have a phrase he didn't call it Latin jazz he called it

jazz Latin because it was jazz first it was bebop. It was horns. It was Coltrane. It was Miles. It was all that stuff. And then everything else was layered on top of it. That's the music he did in his later career.

That's the music that the Fort Apache did. And that's what Papua Vasquez does. Jazz Latin. Every single one of his records is full of this kind of exploration, this kind of genre busting, this kind of vision that he has. Yucayakee, by the way, is a taino word for village.

Taino are the indigenous people from the Caribbean islands there, especially Puerto Rico. And what I admire about Papua Baskin, is that the entire musical world is his village, right? He's absorbing influences and collaborating with other like-minded adventurers. Big fan of his, big fan of this music. That is Poppo Vasquez. Felix, I just like, the more you teach me about this world, right?

Every single island, every single community has their respective brand take on jazz. Like, you're looking at, you know, Afro-Cuban jazz, you're looking at what this is, which is like indigenous to Puerto Rico jazz. I mean, how distinct does jazz coming out of Cuba to jazz coming out of Puerto Rico feel to you? The rhythms are all different. Like the Cuban Wawanko or Santaria music is a different feel. It's without getting to technical, it's on a different clave.

It's a different time feel compared to Bamba and Plena from Puerto Rico. So it's distinct. But what these musicians do, though, is they, like I said, They use that as a bass and then add all this other stuff on top of it. That's what's distinct to me is how they interpret jazz and not the other way around. And Papu is a trombone. There's a long tradition, Slide Hampton, and people used to play with Dizzy Gillespie. It's a big band instrument that became a solo instrument.

So then he's in that tradition. He was part of big bands. He played with Dizzy's band. He played with Tito Puente. He's been part of a big ensemble. But when you take that slide trance, bon out and do something different, it creates a whole different atmosphere. And Fapo's one of the best at it. He's been doing it for a long time. He's bicultural, jazz, Latin.

And that's, to me, that's what stands out. Cool. There you go. You have been listening to Alt Latino. We've been playing new music for you, which is some of our favorite things to do, right? Our most, most favorite things to do. We get editorial support from Hazel Sills. Our audio producer for this episode is Joaquin Kotler Sarah Mohamed is executive producer of NPR music

The person who keeps us on track is Grace Chung And Keith Jenkins is our Hefe in Chief Vice President of NPR Music and Visuals We want to give a special shout out to Joaquin Kotler The most amazing, incredible, Absolutely responsible for the amazing sound of the show Thank you so much for all your hard work We're really going to miss you, man

I'm Felix Contreras and I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Thank you for listening.