NPR Music - New music from Alt.Latino

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras play some of their favorite new songs from the last few months, featuring globe-spanning electronica from Colombian producer Sinego, border-crossing new music from La Doña, nuanced salsa from Spanish Harlem Orchestra and more.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

Felix, I have a really stupid story for you today. What is it? On my bike right to the office. My crutches got run over by a truck. What? What? Wait a minute. Your crutches got run over by a truck?

So, as you know, I have a stress fracture right now. And so I'm in a boot and I'm on crutches, which is absolutely impossible. for me as a human being to figure out because I love being everywhere all the time. And so I was like, I'm going to be so smart and bike to work and then put my crutches on the basket. And they fell off and I couldn't do anything about it. And then I just watched as two trucks in succession. Ran over my crutches.

And that's how I feel today. From NPR music, this is all Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Let the chisement begin. And the chisemes is that my crutches got run over. We should just get right into the music because you can't top that. There's nothing that's going to be better than that.

No. But the good news is I was listening to all the amazing music we have today while I was biking. I was my crutches got run over. So the soundtrack to this week's music is songs to hear your crutches run over to. Nice segue. Thank you. Okay, who's first? I learned from the best.

Yeah, right. Oh, I get to go first this week. So we're going to hear one of my favorite vocalists. I've been listening to Nancy Sanchez for a long time. She's one of these singers who's like she studied jazz, but she also grew up with Mariachi in Southern California. In fact, she was even performed with her dad's mariachi. Well, she was songwriting in her bedroom during college and even before that. Her new EP is called Mexican American Novio,

and it's a play on the title of her 2017 album called American Novio. And this track is called You Are. On this journey, on this quest or unspoken words, there's only you and me. Off the branches of an old willow tree, We're hang gliding from the top so all the world can see that you love me We build a house inside a cloud and call it We'll travel all over the skies and search up Something to do but you are you

This track is more of an R&B feel the rest of the EP has some Spanish language stuff but if you go back over her entire discography and her recorded career She does perfectly span this bridge between mariachi Spanish language and jazz and R&B. I've brought other female vocalists in who span between folkloric music

from their country and jazz. But I think that performers here in the United States, jazz singers here in the United States who are Mexican-American in particular, don't get the recognition that you can do both. Felix, it kind of really reminds me of that conversation we had around what it is

to be a Latino doing country. because R&B is in its own right, a very American styling. And so a lot of times when I listen to an artist like this, what I want to hear, if I know they did mariachi, if I know the rancheras, I'm like, oh, and I'm looking for that vocal. I'm looking for that signature sound. And I don't hear it here. She's sweet.

She's smooth. She's bright. She's open. That voice is gorgeous and amazing. But I didn't really hear a tinge of that. And I think that's exactly a testament in a way to what. you're saying, Felix, it doesn't have to mean that that's present. Like, she has an American right, a birthright, as much to that music as she does to performing Granceras and Mariachi.

So it's really refreshing to me that we don't have to always seek that. And still, she sounds like a perfect jazz R&B artist to me. And she's the tip of the iceberg of so many artists like that. It's there if it needs to be there. But then it's also like having different personalities. You know, the way you present yourself to different people in different social situations, I think vocalists in particular, can do the same thing, especially if you come from more than one tradition.

If you're a straight-ahead jazz artist, you're always going to have that sensibility about you, but if you veer between mariachi and you grew up with R&B here in the United States and then you can also do the jazz thing, it's going to reflect in different ways, and this is a perfect example. Okay, Felix, my turn.

Okay. I am so curious to hear what you think about this. So this is my Anna doesn't want summer to end pick because I'm not ready yet and I have been listening to artists like this all summer. I was really excited when this album came out. It's an album called Alterigo Deluxe. It is basically La Noche version of a lot of songs that were on an album called Alterigo that came out last year by the artist Sinego. Now he is a super well-known electronic producer who's made a name for himself across Latin America. He's Colombian based in Mexico City.

Altarigo was his debut album, and it's a really interesting project that I didn't get to talk about at the time. So I'm using this as a moment to talk about it now. Here's a track I loved called Gamma. Okay, so the vocals you hear right there are a beloved Mexican-American artist. We've talked about Al-Anjelika Garcia. And she is one of the many collaborators he used to bring this. record to life. Now, it's almost like he was doing an anthropological survey of Latin America. I mean, generally speaking, electronic music is predominantly male, white, European. You don't see a ton of

really big Latino producers in the space. It's becoming more and more popularized in Mexico City. But generally speaking, you don't see it all the time. And if you do, it's a lot of people conforming to what are more traditional sounds. And what he decided to do for his debut album is to literally travel around Latin America, working with different vocalists, bolero guitarists, and basically pull traditional styles from all over, different countries, especially countries that are really underrepresented in the dance music space, and use that as a way to uplift, elevate, and create something different with those sounds.

So he went to Peru, he went to Ecuador, Mexico, out of his music space. Venezuela, Cuba. And I'm amazed. I've never seen a producer, a DJ spotlight, indie artists like this. I mean, you have like Pajua from Mexico. You have Pausa, their duo from Cuba. I mean, it's really unique to me. And let me ask you this.

Do you hear a little bit of each of those countries in the different tracks? Or is it just like an essence, a sense? Or just what did all that traveling bring to the record? Oh, absolutely. It's front and center. What is really effective to me about this record is that you have bolero tracks, you have samba moments, salsa moments, tango moments, and you can hear certain instruments being kind of like the leader in that moment.

I'm thinking of a track called Sol, where there's this really beautiful guitar instrumentation that feels almost reminiscent of like an Imanos Gutierrez type of moment, where you have the guitar really singing, really shining, really having its moment. That is so crucial to being authentic, to being honest in using these styles because he could just use them in a way that's like,

whatever works for my beat. But it really was about using traditional sound, using artists who are making this music in these countries, and then building an electronic sound, a synthetic sound, around that. You know, I just spoke to a group of people this weekend about this exact same thing, talking about artists who are using technology to be able to break down genres and incorporate so many different things,

he could be the poster child of that talk I just gave. Absolutely. I find him really exciting. Speaking of exciting, I'm going to take it old school because there's nothing wrong with old school while we're talking about new stuff, but I am going to take it old school. There is a band called a Spanish Harlem Orchestra. I'm going to go out in the limb and say it's one of the best salsa bands out there.

Yeah, it's led by a pianist named Oscar Hernandez. This is their seventh album, and check out this old-school salsa sound, straight ahead. There is so much going on with this track, and when I say old school, because it harkens back to the golden days of Fania where not only are the rhythms, so much fun to dance to,

and the singing. and everything. But one of the things that the Spanish Harlem Orchestra and Oscar Hernandez in particular specialize in are the horn arrangements because they're so vibrant.

They're so rhythmic. They're so sophisticated. You've got to be a good player to play in this band. You have to be able to read this stuff, not just read it, but feel it, and then make all of these parts fit in between the kongas and Tbilis

and bongos and clavir and everything. That's what makes this band one of the best out there. And horns are sexy. Horns are cool. Horns are in. Okay. Thank you. So said the youth. It says the official statement on behalf of the youth.

We love our horns. And those are absolutely gorgeous. I mean, Felix, question master, I, sir, will flip. I have a question for you. Because you said to me not too long ago, you'll remember, we were sitting outside in the depths of the heats of Miami. And you said you thought salsa was dead. There was no contemporary artists making true straight-ahead salsa. This is what I'm here for. I got to watch out what I say.

I think it's easy to look past and kind of not remind ourselves of just what a great band this is. Because they're one of these bands that are out there. They're working. They're working a lot. And yeah, I will say that there's not a lot of salsa that excites me, having grown up, listening to salsa and listening to Fonja. and listening to Fania, rather. And, you know, I think even the most hardcore salsa fans will tell you,

like mid-80s on, certainly during the 90s, there was not a lot of salsa that was doing the same kind of thing that the stuff that Fania did. And I'm not going to be one of those guys. Like, if it's not Fania, it's not anything. But there were not a lot of bands that were doing that until this band came along and a few others, but in particular this band.

And I think it's because the band itself is the focus. They have various lead singers that, they perform with, but it's the band that's the star, the music, the arrangements, all that stuff underneath. So yeah, I did say that I thought that salsa was dead, but I will amend that. I'll eat my words and bring it back a little bit and say that there are some bands out there, and we're going to cover some of those in the future because we're going to talk about salsa. But I think that this band in particular, if you want to find great quality stuff that's out there right now, Oscar Hernandez and Spanish Haller and Marcus Schro is the way to go.

Well, I'm curious because obviously a band like this is so crucial to preserving, making, creating, innovating even, you could say, by staying strict, by saying true to the authentic straight ahead traditional styles. But what do you hear in what they're doing that does feel fresh, that does feel like it should exist in a modern space? It's the arrangements. It's where he places the horns, where he places, the trumpets where he places, the trumpets where he places the act. accents, that to me is where the magic of this band is. And that's what makes it pop. And maybe that's me sitting in the conga chair, hopefully imagining myself being surrounded by all of these amazing great horns and all these great parts.

If you're a rhythm player and you're holding the stuff down and you're playing rhythms, playing Mambo-chat-cha-cha-cha-cha, you're playing certain things, when the horns pop up in little unexpected places that play with or against the rhythm that you're playing with, and it's so melodic and so friendly and so fun and so danceable, there's a thrill to being part of that sound. And I'm envious, man. It's such a great band. And it goes back to

you know, Ray Barreto, who Oscar Hernandez used to play with during his Fania days. It goes back to even further back to Machito in the, you know, the 40s, 50s, 60s, right? I mean, Dito Puente, it's the horn arrangements that can make or break a band. And in this case,

Oscar Hernandez, who really is a musician's musician, he's done a bunch of of different things. In fact, he was a piano player and horn arranger on that band that I really loved that had an album out last year called The Latin Dead, right? That was him. That was him making it sound Latin. So Oscar Hernandez, man, can't go wrong. He's the one of the best out there. This is my official pitch, Spanish Harlem Orchestra. Please let my friend Felix get to have his moment, let him audition. I'm going to audition and then I'm going to have to leave the show. Well, that's okay.

We'll hold it down. Oh, that is cool. I'll sit in a song, man. But I'm not getting rid of me that easy. But thank you. I appreciate that pitch. The record is called Swing Forever, the Spanish Hallam Orchestra. This track was Jago El Maballero, featuring Iberto Santa Rosa.

We'll be right back with lots of new music right after this. And we're back with our favorite new music. Okay. Take it away. Oh, wow, we're already here. I'm far too excited about this album, which comes out September 6th, but we're giving a little sneak preview of two tracks that are going to be on it. This is Ladonia.

This is her debut album, and she's really been drumming up a lot of energy in the last few years. She really made a name for herself in 2020, but wasn't able to go on tour in the way she wanted to, and she's been hunkered down working on this, honestly, a masterpiece of a project. The album is called Los Altos de la Soledad, and this track is called Corrares. And the song is the Mujas This album to me is This album to me is truly emblematic.

of what it means to actually blend cultures, generations, and, like, represent being Mexican in this country. I think we talk a lot, Felix, on this show, about, oh, blending of cultures or breaking down of borders. And this, to me, not only was it so genre expansive. I mean, she plays with bolero, son harocho, cumbia, band, bolero, regettone. I mean, it does everything stylistically.

But the way that she is able to talk about issues, that are meaningful to her as a Chicana in this country is just, I don't know, it's hopeful. It's hopeful to me because we've talked about, right, the way that protest music exists in Latin America and some of the limitations around that, especially in Mexico. I think we don't hear a lot of explicitness oftentimes in how people express frustration or concern or pain. And the fact that she's employing these traditional genres to be able to talk to. about issues that are meaningful to her as a Mexican American in this country is just like, it's almost healing in a way to me.

I mean, she has this beautiful song. It's called Corredo para Palestina, where she actually addresses and talks about her feelings around the conflict in Gaza and is using what is a traditional communicative form of songwriting in Mexico. And the fact that she's able to Israel. In the months that they're seeing Israel,

Israel, she gave to Palestine for women and periodista. And the fact that she's able to employ that from her position of power here, right, existing in this country, I mean, there's something really refreshing and unique and beautiful about that.

You know, I focused a lot of attention on California and the Bay Area, and I've seen her name in performances. Maybe some of my friends have played with her. I don't know. But it just seems like, you know, when you see that name, Laonia, it's going to stand out, and it just feels like it's been around for a long time. And I've listened to some of the other tracks on this record, man.

And you're absolutely right. Totally agree. Such a, such a strong record. Well, and she clearly took her time with this. I mean, you can track by track. It'll be, like, a conversation she had with her student-inspired one record. And, you know, something that she saw in a protest inspired something else. She actually went and collected.

sound from protests around the world. You know, she used and incorporated all these styles really intentionally. Like there is just an underbed of intentionality throughout this record that was her saying, I want this to be representative of a lot of people's experiences and also very specifically, my experience as a Mexican American in the Bay Area, what is culturally unique to that? And there's nothing like that, right? there's nothing like a sound that is explicitly that, and she is creating, quite literally creating that sound with this record.

And I'm so glad because it was disappointing that the pandemic stopped her right as she was about to launch or at least put things in her way, as it did with many musicians during that time. So it's very, very refreshing. It's very exciting to be able to hear her bounce back from that and move forward with this great record. All right, Felix. Hit it. Okay. I wanted to so geek out on the history of this thing, but I'm going to cut it short, okay? I'll believe it when I see it. This is a track called Manteca 2.0, and it's a tribute to Chanoposo, Dizzy Gillespie, and Cayu Weasel.

It's from an artist named Andres Levin. Let's just hear it first, okay? You got to check it off. Wow, Felix. Okay, here we go. I'm going to try to get through this without making it a lecture. Chanoposo was Luciano Poso. He was an Afro-Cubaner and performer in Havana in the 40s. He's one of the first guys to move to New York from Cuba in the 40s.

He started performing it with Cuban bands in New York. This is that magic moment, Anna. This song, Manteca. this is where Latin jazz started, Afro-Cuban jazz started, because Chano Poso was performing around, and the trumpet player, Dizzy Gillespie, who by the mid-40s was already a big deal. He'd already been working with bebop, helped create B-Bop, right?

He and Charlie Parker, I'm dropping all these names. Don't be a quiz at the end. But anyway, Dizzy Gillespie, who's African-American, he heard that, and he heard Africa and the African-Cuban music, and he says, let's match that with this B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Ws. that we're doing, which was like small group jazz, breaking all the rules. And he was the first guy to be able to bring those two together. He brought Chano Poso in the band.

Chano spoke no English, does he didn't speak any Spanish? He would hum out melodies. This is what the song should sound like. Let's mix it all together. Their song, Monteca, like I said, is credited as being with like the first Afro-Cuban jazz, Latin jazz thing. You want to hear a little bit of it? Yes. Okay, here we go.

Check it out. So you hear that iconic bass part. You hear all these horns coming in. Like we were just talking about horn erasements, right? And Dizzy's just screaming on the trumpet on top. And Chano Poso's playing like a straight-ahead mommel on one drum that was very, very typical of what that sound was like. And they married the two together in this song, and the rest is history.

What immediately stood out to me on Manteca 2.0 was that horn. And you have the horn, right? That sounds so amazing. It's so vibrant. And it goes straight into what? Andres Levin replaces with a more synthetic percussive beat. Do you notice that? Yeah, yeah.

And, I mean, he has all of these crazy contemporary credits, right? Andres Levin has extensive production credits. He had this killer band. When I first started doing Alt Latino, there was a band called Yarra Buena. They were way ahead of its time, man. They were, like, Afro-Cuban, they were funk. They were all kinds of stuff based in New York. In fact, the conga player,

musician Pedrito Martinez was in Yerba Buena. He's on this track. He's got his own career. He's done a tiny desk. Andres Levin, that's the kind of guy he is. He's always been making music, doing stuff on the side. But this record that he's got out, I think it's really going to bring more attention to what he does and what he's done and this track in particular. Because this track, Los Van Van, Pedrito Martinez, Alain Perez, Gonzalo Rubalcabha, Gisi Garcia. Gonzalo, Gisi, and Pedrito are also from the Havana neighborhood called Cayo Wesso,

which is where Chano Poso was from, which is also the name of the song. Remember, I said to take notes, because there'll be a quiz. I'm failing this quiz. There's no way. But I will say, the music speaks to all of that, right?

Like, you can hear so much of every single thing that you just named. In the original, of course, in Manteca 2.0, and that's what I meant by Andres bringing his sensibilities, his contemporary sensibility,

and it's like his little signature there, you know, but the horns are still just as soulful and vibrant and loud and colorful across the versions because you can't keep that, like, that energy. You know, that is the soul of this song to me. And Anna, you were with us in Havana, in January of this year. You walked those streets.

You know what it felt like. That's these rhythms, that Konga part, the base part, the essence of that street scene. And there's a video that goes along with this. that won some video awards in Cuba, you should really check it out. I think all people should check it out because you'll see stuff

you recognize from what we saw, but just the essence, the spirit of being on the street in Nevada and the life force that's there, it's in the video and it's in this track. There you go. Boom, mic drop. Mike drop.

Monteca 2.0 from Andres 11, the album's called Regresso or Gondwana. Check it out. It's a great, great record. Okay. Is it too excited, man. I get too excited, man. This is the getting too jazzed about the stuff corner.

That record, that song, that was like, that launched me into this thing that I'm doing now. I heard that as a kid and just launched. It's just... Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. All right. Well, you finish tripping over yourself.

I have one more track. It's not off an album. It's not off an EP. It's just something I heard that I really freaking loved. It's called Carmarron. And it's by Nico Soren with Projecto Gomez Casa and Lucy Patan. Okay. So this guy, Nico Soren, is actually classically trained at Berkeley.

He's Argentine. But he went to Berkeley. and then became a renowned symphony composer. He's conducted symphonies in London, Mexico, and Bulgaria, to name a few. And he releases this really fun, rocky, indie anthem. Like, I was so surprised to hear his origin story, but it makes sense because he's from this tradition, right? Like, he comes from this great lineage of obviously rock in Spanish in Argentina.

He goes, he leaves, he gets all this classical training, and he comes back and he says, you know what, I want to pay homage to my tradition, to my culture, to my culture of being from a history of roqueros. And I love this contemporary energy that it has. It's just fun. That breakdown at the end is really nice. And it feels like a really good modern twist. I'm so glad you brought this one in because I was hooked as soon as I heard it.

And you're right. I mean, it does all these echoes of rock in the Spanish. You know, and can I just say? You may just say. Another controversial statement. You know, the way rock and Hispaniol sort of morphed into the Latin alternative for a lot of different reasons, I always appreciated it when it was called Rock in Spanish. Because they used to say rock in Western Oridiyoma, right?

That's when it was like in the early 90s when I was producing these shows and these in California and hearing all this music. And man, rock in Hispaniol to me is like a statement. It says a statement of identity, a statement of culture. statement of like this is who we are. And, well, I appreciate the term Latin alternative, but man, rock and Spanish just carries a deeper meaning for me. So I'm glad you said that. Oh, it's a culture.

It's a lifestyle. It's a vibe. It's a tradition at this point. You hit it out of the park again, man. I think this is a really cool episode, Felix. Like, this is cool. We'll leave it up to the listeners to decide. Right in.

Let us know if you, too, thought it was cool. Alt.latino at NPR.org, the dot is very important. Because we're old. Because we're cool. Periods are back. The early odds period is back. Oh, really? No, it's not. But I wanted you to think that.

And I figured you weren't going to check. You have been listening to Alt. Dot Latino from MPR music. Our producer for this episode is Taylor Hainey with editorial support from Hazel Sills. The woman who keeps us on track is. Grace Chung. Suria Mohammed is the executive producer of NPR music. And thanks as always to our Hefein-Chief, Keith Jenkins, VP of Music and Visuals. I'm Felix Contreras.

And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Thanks for listening.