NPR Music - Alt.Latino's favorite songs of 2024

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Felix Contreras, Anamaria Sayre and Isabella Gomez Sarmiento run through their favorites in a crowded year for excellent songs, from innovative Spanish hip-hop to distinctive jazz.Songs featured in this episode:•Çantamarta, "MOTORIZADO"•Mala Rodriguez, "Casi Nada"•Zaccai Curtis, "Maple Leaf Rag"•Ca7riel y Paco Amoroso, "DUMBAI"•Melissa Aldana, "A Purpose"•Residente, "313"Audio for this episode of Alt.Latino was edited and mixed by Simon Rentner. 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

From NPR music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. We have with us today, Isabel Gomez Armento. Hello. Okay, we did albums last week. Now we're here with a bunch of songs. We are talking songs, man. That was most excited I've ever heard Felix be. What? Yay. Yay. Yay, yeah, yeah. Songs. We're going to talk songs. Songs.

Nice to see. Nice to see you. I see it. Isa, you get the honors. You get to go first. Thank you. much. Okay, I'm very excited for what I brought today. This is a song called Motorisado by the trio Santa Marta. They're a Madrid-based trio. Their singer, Luislo, is Colombian and Venezuelan. And again, this is off their debut album Pasarela, which is really rooted in the migrant experience and sort of like holding your head up high and the positive aspects of what it's like to be a migrant. But yeah, this is the song Motorisal. This was a song that really caught my ear, and I keep coming back to I love the throwback salsa vibe.

Lyrically, I love that it's sort of rooted in like riding a motorcycle around the city at night and finding solace in that. And it really kind of reminds me of like Rue and Blades, Maestra Vida, like Catidian life in a city, the everyday experiences of Latino immigrants, Latin migrants, like, I just love the feeling and the way that they textually capture that with the motorcycle sounds, the percussion. Like, it's so Caribbean. And the singer Luislo, his voice is just.

so silky and is really giving me this like 90 stropy pop vos vees feeling. I think it works so well with the instrumentation. They're one of those bands that I've been like waiting, waiting, waiting to see what happens because they really do love embracing that Caribbean spirit. They both have Caribbean roots as well as Andalusian roots. And last time I saw them, actually, I was thinking about this this morning was I want to say over a year and a half ago. And I, there was something special about them.

There's a spark to them. there's an energy to them that I was like, oh, this is going to be something really cool, but I don't know if they're there yet. And then they released this album and I was like, okay, they found their sound. Because they were looking, right? They were looking for a way to fuse all these things together. And they've always had this quality of no two songs sound the same. And now it's working so well for them.

I love this record. They really, really found their voice. Yeah. And the singer's voice to me sounds a lot like dropy pop, like Vosface, like 90s group. of all these men harmonizing, like, it's just so silky, smooth, and it, like, works so well with all of that instrumentation. I really love this song. And he himself, as a mezcla, he's Colombian and Venezuelan, but totally puro-carriwe.

Like, that's his energy. And I think it's, like, the double migrant experience, too, of, like, having a Colombian family that growing up in Venezuela and then moving to Europe, like, you carry that sort of double migrant lineage. It's really powerful how they explored it on this record. Like, sorting that identity out through the, through the record. Totally. So cool.

Ruben Blades referenced to Maestroveda, one of his unheralded, no, seriously, one of his unheralded albums that really was way ahead of its time mixing in all the sound effects and all that stuff. One of my favorites of his that just doesn't get enough attention. So thanks for the shout-out, man. That was cool. I knew I was going to get points from you for that one. She literally said to me, we're walking in here and she goes, Felix is going to love this song. And that's motorizedo by the group Santa Marta off of their debut album, Passarela. Okay, Anna, your turn. Me already? Yes.

Are you sure you want to do that, Felix? Okay, so this is an example of an artist where I liked the record, didn't get to talk about it, but this song in particular, like, truly knocked me off my feet. Felix, I don't know if you remember because I do believe I brought this to you earlier this year, but you probably forgot. So congratulations. I'm bringing it to you again. This is Mala Rodriguez, Spanish rapper. innovator, really a pioneer in the Spanish hip-hop space, especially for women. Felix, you know her, you remember her, right? You saw her at Southby or something a lot of years ago.

Yes, I did see her in South By. She came back with her first album in four years. A new album this year, Un Mundo Raro, and this is the song off of that called Cassi Nara. To me, what's my I'm mad, I'm too too much Or that they're to say,

For me, nothing, I'm not, if you're all, to me, what more me that's

too, No, copes, the destiny of your MIRDA, do what you take to do, and do what you

we're doing, coming to a tient, with you, I just trying to be what good that's always with a story of behind the

constructors associated in almodas like a t'em a t'em in the costa

vision no t'cunas t'em burrado that's miras furtive mal

conduct ventriloquo for all the medium for me coo I'm

I'm to middle to talko and I go I just I love one of

hip hop artist or rapper comes back and they say, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to do all my like super intense spirit, my like dropping all these really incredible bars, whatever. But first, the first thing you're going to hear from me in four years is you're going to hear me singing like this. I mean, her voice shines so beautifully, so deeply on this track. It's one of those tracks that I play like over and over and over and over again. And also to come back with indifferent. Like her entire evaluation, I've spent time away, and what I can tell you is, no me import da cacina. It's really chilling to me.

Yeah, that wasn't what I was expecting to hear at all. As you were setting that song up, like, I didn't expect it to be this like soft, vulnerable intro. It was really moving, really, really beautiful. Like, I have goosebumps from that. I'm a fan. I've always liked her stuff. Even going back to what I saw her in South By, the story was that I saw her in a restaurant.

I had left my umbrella. And she was just the nicest. person after I had seen her the night before, be so ferocious, so intense on the stage, right? It's like this duality of these personalities sometimes because she's just so present when she performs. I think

that that makes a lot of sense, though, Felix, with this song, specifically because it's so, it's such a soft side that I personally don't remember ever hearing from her. There's like a serious vulnerability. And it feels as though taking space, having all these years in this industry

allowed her to finally be at a point where she's like, actually, this is how I feel, which is really, it's incredible. I don't know. It makes me think, Felix, you always talk about, you're like, young artists don't have that much to say. I'm putting you on blast. But when I hear an artist like this who has, like, years and years and years under her belt and is pioneered in the space, then coming out with a song like this, that's when that really clicks for me. Like, yeah, it took this many years for her to get to this point. Yeah, Malo Rodriguez is one of the names I associate with the earliest days of Alt Latino.

I'm going to call one from the line. I'm going to play a track that's not on the list. It's called Maria Cervantes, and it's by pianist, Zaki Curtis. And I picked a track that goes all the way back to the earliest days of jazz. This is Maple Leaf Rag from the earliest days of New Orleans Jazz, and this is what he does with it. He puts some Afro-Caribbean spin on it. Check it out.

Zichai Curtis is a piano player based in New York. He's part of this Curtis family of a Maine. amazingly talented musicians. Lucas Curtis, his brother, I just saw him play with Eddie Palmieri a while back. He put out this great record this year called Cubop Lives, and it's a reference to the earliest days of Afro-Cuban jazz in New York. It was Bebop and Cuba. Initially, Latin jazz was called Cuba, believe it or not.

I could do my whole TED Talk PhD lecture on the connection between Cuban music and New Orleans music and the way it's coming out in New York. But I won't. Let me just say that this whole album... Oh, Felix. Do it. The whole album is this really wonderful collection of songs and tunes, solo piano, great group and ensemble playing.

That's just a nod of reference to the earliest days of Africanian jazz coming out of New York in the 1940s and 50s. Felix, I'm not going to lie to you. I wasn't sure. if I could see the vision until we got to that one part and I was like, oh, this is really cool. Okay, I had the opposite feeling because I was going to be like, the piano alone is so beautiful.

It doesn't need anything else. And then the other instrument started, and I was like, whoop, never mind, this is incredible. Also, we should call it Kubeop again. I was in a band called Kubeop for a while. The album's called Kubeop Lives. Way to go, Sakai. Okay, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back.

What? We're going to take a break. We're going to come back. I'm like a dad at a baseball game. Okay, way to go to guy. Stop it. Stop it. He gets it.

He feels me. Come on. We're taking a break. We'll be right back. Okay, who's next? Issa, you're up. I'm next. Yeah.

Issa. All right, because it's so cold and it's freezing outside, I'm going to keep our music today very Caribeo. The song I'm bringing today, this is a well-known song for the Alt-Latino fan, is Dumbai by Catriel and Paco Amoroso, off of their album. Bano Maria. That song is just so good. It's so fun.

And I am obsessed with the vocal differences between Paco and Catreel. Paco has this old Spanish man, like Alejandro San's rasp to his voice. And then Catriel is like moving from these like really delicate little falsettos to like this baritone. Like the way that they both manipulate their voices and play off of each other. And the beat is just so much fun. Like, I cannot get enough of this song and I cannot get enough of these guys. The only thing I will say is that everyone really likes to talk about how the instrumentation on the tiny... It's like, oh, it's so different from the recordings, whatever.

True. And of course, I hear this song and I immediately, the instruments from the tiniest fill my brain. But that is not to say that the recorded version doesn't have something special to it. I think that the contrast, there's a difference in the richness, obviously, of the live instrumentation versus the original recording. But the original recording here really, to me, does stand on its own as something unique. Totally, which is why I pick this song, because I think, again, I love all the discourse that their tiny desk started around electronic recorded music versus live instrumentation and what are we looking for and do we need more organic live bands and, you know, all of those discussions, which these guys have proven they can do both and they can pull them both off really well. But I think this song in particular, like, it shines both ways. You know, I was talking with a friend who's a producer over the weekend and he was saying.

saying like you have to know what the rules are before you, before you strip it back. The music has to have the bones before you can do, you know. And let's say he's like people in Mexico who are playing with R&B, maybe don't have all the tools to understand the roots of R&B in that same way or whatever. He's a Mexican producer. And I think that for them, they have all the bones. Like they proved themselves so well in that tiny desk, like very clearly. They have the classical training.

So to pull back and do the electronic version feels not empty to me in the way that could have if they didn't have that. And I think you can hear that in the track. Okay, two things. First of all, that's something I always say. You've got to know what the rules are before you can break them. And so you're credit. Oh, my gosh. Like, and you're crediting somebody. How long have I been saying this to you? What's that word? My friend who's a producer, you guys might not know him, Felix. What's the word? Carma? I think it's karma.

Payback? I don't know. So anyway. This is what it feels like. How's it feel, Felix? Oh, my God. And the other thing is about this particular recording in the song, it all comes back to the song. If the song is great, it's going to work if people deliver it in the proper way. And they did it on the tiny lasque with the instrumentation.

They're doing it here. If you start with a great song, I think that's what your friend is saying. If you start with a great song, you can't go wrong. That's exactly what the Argentine duo. Catrieli and Paco Amoroso did on this song, Dumbai, off of their album, Banja. All right, I'm going to keep it Southern Cone, but a little further, maybe West is it? I don't know, my geography. I'm going to go to Chile by way of New...

Someone get this man a map. No, you're right. Chile, a little bit west of Argentina. Thank you for that. By way of New York. This is saxophonist Melissa Aldana. She had a really, really great record. I was called...

Oh, I remember her. Echoes of the Interprofits, the Name of the Record. This track is called A Purpose. Melissa's been in New York. She's been making a name for herself. I think this is her strongest, strongest statement ever. Check it out. A member of great, great jazz albums out this past year from Latinos,

people from Latino just said all over Latin America. And Melissa is at that point now where, you know, with the whole jazz thing, it's like, you've got to be able to hear, like, two notes, and know who the player is. And that establishes you as, you know, as someone significant on the scene. And she's at that point now.

She has her own sound, her composition, are just something that can only come from her. And I'm just happy to bring this in for one of my best songs of the year. Felix, you stole for me. I was so angry when I saw on our NPR best songs of the year list, which everyone can go check out at npr.org slash music. You had chosen the Residente 313 track off of his new album. He released a new album this year, Las Letters,

Yeah No Importan. And this song, when I heard this song, I literally, I mean, this isn't that surprising. But I cried. I seriously cried, and then I cried again, and I cried like 50,000 times when I listened to it over and over and over again. I think it's literally poetry. It's so beautiful. I go back to it all the time.

So this is my moment of retribution. This is 313 by Residente. It includes Penelope. Cruz, Sylvia Perez Cruz, who we love, one of our favorite, favorite Spanish vocalists, and Residente, we're just going to listen to that Residente part. I want to do that Residente part. Your brasos and your piernas are my ramas. The playa that's her spalded, with the

with the pello of your solas with the arena of your back and the rumbos are in

the mirabes in the eyes because never they're you're you're I'm

strasions and I start you don't know and I when I went because

are like the sky are because never is so they're

so they're full of corriently as when when it's

over the you're one a one one a

You're, like a pistol. You're of those who they're all the labos that my besos know- We discover us as a solo of requin' Like the sun, discover at the ma'anas for instinct To give the world to planet

With the strenas, Cometa, Solted the freno of the bicycle While the sky-mobile While the sky-creata with a Paleta, The Colore Violet, Coges the Ola Completa With all that's

to be the book and that the the new areas that derrits in my language and I'm what will be and what I'm going to the year's on today

I'm what I felt say, I'm of the places that I'm because every second is

prophet of what the horizon you promise that the time not perciga you know what the moment

say and I want to that's I want to that's the This is clearly a piece that has come out of years and years of trying and creating and living and falling and getting back up. I mean, it's like all of these things to me encapsulated. And it's really, it's a reflection in many ways on the essence of life.

It's poetry. It really is. Yeah, he's the Pablo Neruda of our generation. Like Residente is one of our deepest thinkers, most beautiful writers. Yeah, I had a really amazing opportunity to interview him in front of a live. audience in New York and April. And we talked about some of the things that led up to this record. And this particular song is about, it's a reflection of someone who he lost.

Very, very dear friend who he lost. So it has all of these deeper moments, all these different, deeper meanings. And something you just said right now, he said, the Pablo Neruda of Latin music. I've always called him the Eduardo Galliano, the sociologist-right. right? But he's transitioned on this particular cut, and maybe in general, from absorbing the world and now just reflecting in poetry. You know, he was angry. He was angry, rightfully so. Like, he was angry and he wanted to talk about problems. And he still does. But in a way where he's also like, end life flows. And so much of this song is, yeah, I mean, he says, he's like, we have to end so that other things can be born because the world always continues. It's interesting to watch him and Anatijou put out a statement of that capacity at the same time when their careers have both followed very similar arcs in that sense of like the political, social war that they've grappled with in their music. The chaos doesn't stop. You just learn to manage it, right? And then just like learn to absorb the world. So these two musicians who are younger than I am, but they're growing and becoming these really amazing people. And it reflects in their music.

music. All the music this week for the songs looking back over the year. And we just touched the tip of the iceberg. There's so much, so much great stuff out there. It was difficult to do, but somebody had to do it. We had to narrow it down. Thank you guys for trying to make this representative of the great year of music, man. You have been listening to Alt Latino from NPR Music. Our audio editor is Simon Retner, and we get editorial support from Hazel Sills. The woman who keeps us on track is Grace Chung. Soraya Mohammed is executive producer of NPR music and is behind the knobs and switches.

Say hi, Sarah. Open your mic and say hi. Hello. Our heffane chief is Keith Jenkins, VP of Music and Digital. As always, thank you so much. Isabella Gomez, Sarmiento. You guys for having me. Issa.

Yes. It's been a good. year. We've got maybe a I think we have one more show to do, but then we're going to take some time off, but just take some time. Go back over your playlist. Look back over all the great music that was out there. Stuff we don't even know about.

And write in. If you have some stuff that you say, how in the heck did you not hear this song this year? Alt. Dot Latino at NPR.org. The alt dots. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Thank you so much for listening all year. How fun. Thank you.

Thanks.