NPR Music - As the Latin Grammys turns 25, how much has Latin music changed? (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre continue their discussion on the 25th anniversary of the Latin Grammys and the industry's changes, featuring insight from Nathy Peluso, Rauw Alejandro and more.Songs featured in this episode:•Fuerza Regida, "TQM"•Fuerza Regida, "Que onda"•Fuerza Regida "HARLEY QUINN"•Latin Mafia, "y como te digo que"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

I still have lots of leftover chiseme. It's a week of just puro, puro chiseme, literally. And it's stuff we can't even say on the air. I know. Oh, well. That's for the bonus episode. The after, Alt Latino After Hour. From NPR music, this is Alt Latino.

I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Let the Chisme begin. This is part two, Felix, of my grand thesis on the state of Latin music. 25 years into the Latin Grammys. You know, I get to say that you're very, very good at keeping your ear to the ground. Last week was the first part of a roundup of some of the things, of some of your, what do you call it, your intelligence gathering. Okay, so last week I told you I was on a mission to figure out

what is happening with the explosion of Latin music. So this week, I'm bringing you a few more voices. I got to catch up with Armenta, who is basically, I was kind of geeking out when I first met him because he is kind of like the ultimate brainpower behind the explosion of regional. We've spoken with Ergar Barrera before, obviously, who produces in songwrites for a lot of these guys. Armenta is kind of the other side of that. So he makes music for Fuerza Regida bands like this, who are a little bit more, I don't know, for every group of Frontera that are like the nice guys, they're kind of like the bad boys of the Musica Mexicana scene. So it was really interesting to talk to him

and get a sense of what his vision is and how he sees things being headed and how he got into it. And these guys are all of them, the guys and gals are all so young. And they're still really, in a sense, just fresh from the reverberations of discovering music as a teen.

They're not that far away from that. So all of these things are just vibrating and everything that they do. What are some of the things that Armenta told you that has led to this incredible success as a songwriter? Yeah, I mean, he's 24 years old, and he's in many ways already, like, the godfather of this industry. He's, like, talking about leading kind of younger artists, trying to guide them and then help them figure out their place in this industry.

But he provided for me what was a really interesting contrast to Juanis, who, if you'll remember, he said his house was his algorithm. He very much just listened to what his mom and dad listened to. and Armenta talks similarly, right, about having an origin in Mexican music, very traditional corridos, things like that, Mexican music in his house. But then by the time he got to high school in Tijuana, he talks about his world of music really opening up. He explains that he got to high school and it wasn't just his world in front of him. It was a lot of different worlds, and he started listening to Bad Bunny, and he'd go to the parties, and there was R&B, and the girls like to listen to R&B, and he liked the girls.

And that's just life, literally life. I started to be shown other music, and I started to open my ears. There's nothing in particular, Felix, about Armenta's experience that I think is honestly that unique. And in some ways, I think that's what makes it so special, because he, is really like an amazing representation of what is this younger generation that they don't he's not sitting there being like I was looking for all this music I was digging so hard and I found X, Y and Z and I wanted to represent that it's like no I just I don't know it just kind of came to me and and that's how I kind of started making music the way that I did it's very natural the other thing

I found across the board Felix in a lot of this younger music and especially in music like musica mexicana is there's very much a collectivist approach to how they're doing it. It's kind of like what you would find, I think, in, you know, earlier regettone, earlier hip hop even, is like this really intense desire, labels aside, industry folks aside, amongst the artists themselves to collaborate, to make music together, to really like, Arriba la Vandera Junta. They wanted to really come together and make something that represented their community. And you can hear that in his approach. to even what he values in music.

Never was so amante of what he said to he's not concerned about music made about himself. He's really more concerned about looking at other people. And it's exactly that approach, Felix, that makes musica Mexicana shine because it's about telling stories about your community, about your family, about people you care about.

Storytelling is the most important thing. Let's listen to a little bit. bit of forcea regida. Here's TQM by Fuerzaa regida. That's Ferebo-M when they're in V That was partying the KUM by Fuerreau-M by Fuerza Regida. Let me tell you, Foursa Regida to me is spearheading the next wave of music. Mexica, really, like, very seamlessly playing with electronic music, with all different types

of styles. And the reason is that it's all just about the stories. He said that literally when he went to Job, who is the lead singer of Forza de Réjida, to talk to him about changing the style, he's like, yeah, let's do it. I just want to keep the songwriting the same, the actual story's the same. Everything else can change. It was a risk, no? The people never accepted it.

don't get it. The first of a sudden not but with the time, it was maduro. You know, maurro it made, we did most things well. So let me paraphrase and translate what Edmonda told us.

When he first approached Job, Jop said, great, change the rhythm, but the lyrics have to stay the same. And so they went for house. They went for a huge world, places that people hadn't explored before. Possibilities people hadn't explored before.

At first, people didn't accept it, but it matured really well with time. The tension sometimes of changing that sound, of introducing new work, I think especially when you're working with more traditional sound, there's always that holdup. And what a lot of these young artists aren't afraid to do is change the sound, whether people are ready for it or not. I mean, I even heard Grupo Frontera after they got their victory on stage. They came back to the media center. They're doing the earnings and they say, yeah, we'd love to collaborate with Carlos Vives because we see a synergy there, not necessarily because that's what the audience is asking for, but because the lyrics themselves

have a similar heart. And at the core of all of this for this generation is it's joy. It's having fun, it's being joyful, it's creating joyful music. And Armenta really did emphasize that. At the final you want to say the message is that. Disfrutte the life. You know, disfurta the video. Vibra, tranquilo. You know, vive your What it's all about is to enjoy yourself, enjoy your life, enjoy making music, is what you're saying. Let's hear a bit more from Puerrejida. I want to show you this song. I think I've maybe talked about it before, Felix, that is definitely on the higher end of

they're really pushing the genre boundaries scale. This is Harley Quinn by Fuerza Regida and Marshmo. That was harleyous That was Harley That was Harley Quinn by Fuerza Regida and Marshmallow. You're listening to Olatina, and we're going to take a real quick break. We're talking about some of the things that Anna saw

while she was on the ground in Miami and the Latin Grammys last week. Anna, tell us a little bit more about this great interview you had with these guys called the Latin Mafia. Felix, these guys, probably some of the artists that I'm personally most excited about right now.

What they're doing is a really interesting mix of, I don't know, electronic, indie, it's soulful, it's beautiful. The music itself plays in this electronic space, but the lyrics, I cannot tell you how many of their songs I hear them and I cry the first time I hear them. This is one of those songs that immediately had me very emotional, Felix.

It's called And It's Off Their New Album, Tos Los L'Iyas, All day. I actually told them this made me cry. The authenticity of these young artists, the way that they're really interested in putting all of their genuine emotion and feeling at the forefront of what they do. and no one really does that better than Latin Mafia. And I got to talk to them too

and really liked what they had to say about how they make their sound. They're not trying to ascribe to any one particular genre, but they like to say... We like to say, if it sounds cool, just live it like that. There's not really for them a particular genre bending that's even taking place. It's just about being who they are.

Everything you hear in our music is real stuff we feel and because we like to make those real connections between the music, us and the listener. In a world full of empty things, I think we need to be more human and more real. So we're used to have a lot of just like I said, empty things and empty songs, empty lyrics. So I think we're just trying to be humans, we're just trying to be real while our making. our music. So we're just talking about real things, real things that we're dealing with. We're feeling that. And if there's someone that feels the same, I think that's the connection we want with the people that listen to our music. It's fascinating to me, Anna, how bands like

this, and in particular this band, some of these projects are so calculated, so intentional. And these guys, after hearing their interview, they're just living their lives. And then if it sounds good, like they said, if it sounds good, they use it. And then it creates this whole buzz. It's such an organic process. It's really them being able to be on platforms like TikTok on Spotify and all these places where the right people, the people who feel them, can find them. And that works too in representing everyone's individual country to the highest degree. Okay, Anna, one of the most fun parts about attending the Latin Grammys, at least the years that I've gone in the past, is hanging out on the red carpet because it's so chaotic. It's

so much fun. Was it also a chance for you to do even more research by talking to people who are walking by? Oh, absolutely. In a way, I felt kind of bad. I felt like I was trapping people into being part of my little investigation. Everyone was like, oh, what are you wearing? How are you feeling? And I'm like, so can you tell me? I'm usually not that much of a buzzkill, Felix, but I was really in deep at this point. Like, I felt like throughout the week, I had been having these conversations and I was like, okay, this is my opportunity to talk to artists that maybe I normally wouldn't speak with who have some nuance takes on what's happening. And this guy, best pop song nominee, Leon Leiden, from Mexico, he gave me what I thought was one of the best

summaries of exactly what it is, the power of what's happening and why it's special in each individual country. I hope that the music Latin is expressed a through many new genres of new formats that every more talent

to appear to start the voices of the places more reconditos of Latin America and that Mexico every more has heard

so he says here that he basically hopes that Latin music continues to express itself through new genres and new formats and that more and more

talent appears but the thing that I liked the most is that he hopes that we hope that we get to hear voices from the most remote and lost places in Latin America? Where can we find the lost sounds? Where can we find indigenous sounds? Where can we find sounds from our community, from our parents, from our grandparents? And then how can we take those sounds and bring them

with pride from our own country to the rest of the world? And that, to me, is really, really special. You know, there have been some artists who have been trying to push the envelope a little bit and maybe weren't completely understood when they were first trying to do it. And the, in the broader world of the pop world and the broader world of the people who pay attention to things like the Latin Grammys. And you talk to one of those artists on the red carpet, somebody were both big fans of, Argentine vocalist Nati Paluso. She is such a great example

of an artist who really has stayed true to her sound. She was celebrated this year more than she has been in the past. She won three Latin Grammys and really the music deserves it, Felix. of having had the valentia to have been to have been a kind of

well, no, it's not the whole or maybe not me has put the way so much.

But at the long, it's all right it's like in house to have have been for what one wants, for what

one thinks, and for the palpito that one has the music, the music is sensibility

if you don't you're not you're so you're disconnected. So I'm am sure and I've

She essentially attention that connection, and today is to recogian the fruits and putting to put my granito of arena.

She essentially explains that she's really proud to have stood by something, to have bet on her own music

that wasn't quite understood, that she hasn't had the easiest path of it, but she feels at home, really, to have bet on

what she believes in, because at the end of the day, music is about sensitivity, and if you don't have that, then you're disconnected.

So she's, she's proud of it all. And she's finally reaping the fruits of what she's made, and, was able to contribute her little grain of sand.

So Nati is the living embodiment of staying true to what you do and then letting the rest of the world catch up, even up to the point of being considered alternative. Because she was nominated and won for Best Rap and Hip Hop Song, best long-form video, and also Best Alternative Song. And let's hear that one. It's called El Diyahe My Juventud. Again, this is Nati Peluso.

Go into the day and to Go into parties and red carpets and doing all the other stuff at the Latin Grammys. Good job, Anna. Thanks, Felix. I really needed it. After all that hard work, I needed to be told. I've done good. You've been listening to Al Latino from NPR Music.

Our editor for this week is Simon Retner with editorial support from Hazel Sills. The woman who keeps us on track is Grace Chung. Sorrel Mohammed is the executive producer for NPR music. And our hefein chief is VP of Music and Visuals, Keith Jenkins. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Thanks for listening.