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- [00:01]
Announcer
This message comes from DataIQ. AI is everywhere, but companies struggle to prove results. For that, they need people, orchestration, and governance working as1.Data IQ is the platform for AI success built to bring it all together. Visit D A T a I k u.com NPR
- [00:23]
Felix Contreras
okay, I'm rolling again.
- [00:24]
Ana Maria Sayer
Hello, Felix.
- [00:25]
Felix Contreras
Nothing like technical difficulties, man.
- [00:28]
Ana Maria Sayer
We don't know anything about those.
- [00:30]
Felix Contreras
Please don't tell the audience.
- [00:31]
Ana Maria Sayer
I can't. I can't tell the audience because we can't swear on the air.
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Felix Contreras
This is a family show, and there's
- [00:37]
Ana Maria Sayer
no clean moments of Felix with technology.
- [00:41]
Felix Contreras
Okay. From NPR Music, this is all Latino. I'm Felix Contreras.
- [00:45]
Ana Maria Sayer
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Let the chisme begin.
- [00:58]
Felix Contreras
Okay, Anna. Last week we were able to get through the difficult task of selecting some of our favorite tracks of the year so far. Now that's behind us. Clean Slate. Get to look at the rest of the year. And, Ana, I gotta say, we're gonna share with our listeners that we've got some kind of special stuff going on. A little bit out of the ordinary, but very special.
- [01:17]
Ana Maria Sayer
This is so classic you, Felix. Tease the thing and don't tell them anything. I'm angry for our listeners. We're indignant. The collective we're unionizing against you.
- [01:30]
Felix Contreras
Okay, all right, I'll take it. But let's kick off some new music to soothe your anger. Okay. For some reason, I was in a very country music mode.
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Ana Maria Sayer
For some reason you've never been before?
- [01:41]
Felix Contreras
Yeah, well, I mean, like, all country music. This week, my three tracks are gonna be all country music. And I wanna start with a guy that I completely forgot about. I covered some of his work with his previous band years ago. This is Cruz Cont and the Black Lilies. This is called Golden Roses. Check this out.
- [02:01]
Musical Artist
10,000ft above the deep dark waters There's a land like I never seen With a silver and gold It's a wild earth garden Shining on the hillside for me so I sat down on eastern Kentucky Said farewell to family and home I headed west to seek my fortune Figured I could make it alone but there ain't no gold and there ain't no roses There ain't no sunshine There ain't no rain Only darkness Tols and troubles still my last word down this vein still my last blood Bay by Babe.
- [03:02]
Felix Contreras
So let me just say that right off the top that I'm pronouncing his name Contreras and not Contreras, because I'm going to assume that given that he's Very successful in the country, in Americana area, that. That's how he's pronouncing his name professionally. And it doesn't matter, because either way, the music, I think, is really good. He used to be a member of Robinella and the CC String Band, and CC was Cruz Contreras. They had four very successful albums in Americana. And he started singing back in 2007, and he started his solo career. Check this out. Like, in 2019, right before the Pandemic, he left Robinella, and he started doing his own stuff. And then he was limited to doing these distantly safe concerts and stuff. It was a rough time to start, but it also gave him a lot of time to just spend a lot of time songwriting. And it brings us to now, because this single reminds us of, I think, a very formidable talent in terms of songwriting, in terms of his place in America and in country. I mean, he's been doing this for a long time. He's not a newcomer, so he has already a reputation, and that's a world that we don't usually talk about. So we don't really know his name. But I remember his name from Robinella, and I know that the stuff that I'm listening to now and his solo album from 2023, it's pretty impressive.
- [04:24]
Ana Maria Sayer
You know, Felix, I'm gonna make a general comment on the whole country thing before we. Or as we jump into it with you today, because I have been thinking a lot about this, and I know we've covered a lot. The idea of Mexican music, specifically regional Mexican music and country having this really kind of undeniable relationship. And more and more and more, I see it as. They're the same. Like, there really is not much of a distinction both between the lyricism and then also the musicality of it, in the sense that if you go out and dance La chona in the street, you're dancing, you're line dancing. Like, it is really that same thing. And I always think of, you know, that time I went to the Houston Rodeo, and that really is like the. It's the same thing as line dancing. It's the same thing as country. Like, though that region and the music that it has is better representative of the place than the lines, you know, like, that really does. There is not really much of a difference. We draw, like. We label them distinctly, but they sound so the same, and their. Their races are exactly the same.
- [05:28]
Felix Contreras
Yeah. And the whole storytelling aspect of it in. In very visual, very expressive terms. You know, the certain key points that you hit on when they're writing these songs like Location, Family, you know, Whiskey, you know, suffering, you know, all this stuff, man. All the stuff that happens in. In. In Rex and Regional you even.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Right, exactly. But also, all of these songs are made to be played in community, to be danced in community, which suffering in community is not really suffering at all.
- [06:02]
Felix Contreras
Where's my pen? I want to write that down. Another Ana is a suffering in community is not really suffering at all. Okay, let's remember that. You know, I got to say before. Before we go. My mom was a country music fan, and I think that she would be tickled.
- [06:17]
Ana Maria Sayer
My mom is a country music fan,
- [06:18]
Felix Contreras
and I think that she would be tickled to know there's a Contreras singing country music. And it's doing pretty well. That is Cruz Contreras and the Black Lilies. Golden Roses is the name of the single. No announcement yet for an album, so standing by for that. That single's out right now, so check it out. Tag, you're it.
- [06:38]
Ana Maria Sayer
Okay. So much like you have given us country today, I, surprisingly, am giving us Brazil. I don't know where that came from. It's really bizarre. I never do this. So I'm gonna play a song called Astronata from Brazilian artist Joao Caravay.
- [07:17]
Musical Artist
Sam.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Felix. So this is Joao Caravallo's first album. It's called Uma Festa no Centro do Vasio, which means a party in the center of the empty, basically. And he wrote that, actually, the entire name of the album is named after this poem by Roberto Juarez. He's a poet from Argentina by the same name. That's about, basically a party in the center of emptiness. And this whole record is kind of playing with empty space like that. I love it because it's representative to me, one of just the absolute diversity. I mean, I bring all this Brazilian music, right? Quotes Brazilian music, but it's like none of it really sounds all that similar. What I'm going to bring later sounds completely different from this. And that is to remind that Brazil is absolutely. It's like the US in some ways in that it's. It's a many, many, many worlds within what is described as one country, one language, kind of necessarily Portuguese. But I mean, it's like a sweet soft indie record. I want to play the title track called Uma Festa no Centro do Vas.
- [09:46]
Musical Artist
Utra.
- [10:15]
Felix Contreras
So is he an ambient artist or all of the above?
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Ana Maria Sayer
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. I don't know. I mean, do you remember when I brought that Dominican band Solo Fernandez on yes, the percussion of it is all really kind of related. And I said at the time, when I brought them on, I was like, this is a type of. A specific type of indie that you don't hear on the island. That often referring to the Dominican Republic. Like, it's just not something that you hear. And they're very much like the kind of promoters of that scene there. And then to hear this, like, the indie quote, indie alternative scene in Brazil doesn't sound like him at all. Like, this is very different from an Ana Frango Electrico or something like that. Right. Like, he doesn't fit into what is like the burgeoning indie scene that I keep talking about. I think it's just everything. I think Brazil, much like, let's say Argentina is liberated. Brazil is liberated by its isolation in a lot of ways. And so when I talk about Brazil being so expansive, part of that expansiveness is that you can't see the border and you can't see what's around you. And so you can make whatever you want. And that. What I found, the shared thing of a lot of the countries that have impressed me, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, musically, is that you can't. There's no related border that's gonna impact what you create, I think, which is different from a lot of Latin America and especially places like Mexico, let's say, that's always. Can see the US but, you know,
- [11:40]
Felix Contreras
at the same time, you know, they certainly have access to technology and being able to pull in music and influences from other. From other parts of the world, even not just their neighboring countries. And in stuff like this, you know, I hear there was a. There was a genre of music that was a big fan of and still am, developed in the 70s with electronic instruments and stuff, this ambient music. And it's really just floating stuff. I really just was a big fan of that stuff. Brian Eno, some of this stuff, he's a pioneer, you know, but there were. There's also a guy, Jorge Reyes, from. From Mexico City, who made ambient music with. But with pre Columbian instruments.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Yes.
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Felix Contreras
And so, like, this kind of stuff, it's. To me, it sounds ambient, but from, like you said, but from this isolated part of Brazil that has a whole different set of percussive foundation, background hints, you know, flavors. It's fascinating to me.
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Ana Maria Sayer
And also, I mean, if you think about it conceptually, it was literally an entire album inspired by an Argentine poet in a different language. Like this. This poem. And I'll read it to you, it's Quite beautiful, it says, or I'll read the English translation. Sometimes it seems as if we're at the center of the party. However, there's no one at the center of the party. At the center of the party is emptiness, but at the center of the emptiness is another party. That is an Argentine poem written in Spanish that this Brazilian artists took and converted into Portuguese and wrote an album around. So clearly there is conversation, obviously. That was a couple of songs from Joao Caravallo's new album. Debut album, Unafesta no Centro Duvasio.
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Felix Contreras
I wanna play a track from Raul Malo. Last December, we lost Raul Malo, and he was really one of the greatest voices of any genre from here in the United States. He was with the band the Mavericks. He had an exhaustive solo career. Almost four decades of making country music in Americana, and toward the end, even some Spanish language music, he dipped it back into his Colombian American roots. There's an upcoming recording of his last solo performance of earlier in 2025. This is a sneak preview of this. This is called Forever and Ever, and the album is going to be called Bella Chow. Live from Nashville, this is Raul Malo.
- [14:06]
Musical Artist
Ever and ever. Forever and ever. You'll be the woe that shines in me like the morning sun. Ever and ever, forever and ever. You'll be my spring, my ring Rainbows and the song I sing take me far beyond imagination. You're my dream come true, my consolation. Ever and ever. Forever and ever you'll be my dream, my sinful knee, my own Glo.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Oh, my God, Felix.
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Felix Contreras
Yeah.
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Ana Maria Sayer
That is so beautiful.
- [15:18]
Felix Contreras
Especially we consider that he may have, you know, he may have already known that it was coming close to the end when he performed that. It's from a Father's day concert in 2025. And then he passed, what, six months later in December, in 2025. You know, posthumous albums are tricky because back in the 70s, man, what comes to mind is Jimi Hendrix, and they just put anything out that was left over. But nowadays, I think that musicians legacies are curated and managed and controlled by family members, by people who really care about the artist. And in this case, Raul Malo, you know, his family was a big part of his career behind the scenes and moving it forward and keeping it going. And they're not going to put out anything that just to make money. They're going to put something out that's going to continue to cement his legacy as one of the greatest voices out there and one of the greatest interpreters of songs like that. I mean, I could go on and on about Raul Malo. And I have, of course, here on the show. But if you are new to country music, this is a great place to start. You cannot go wrong with Raul Malo. And also, you know, check out their tiny desk concerts. They we brought them in December of 2022. Powerful performance. It was really something else to be in the, in this space with that voice.
- [16:44]
Ana Maria Sayer
I think you're exactly right in the, in the sense that usually posthumous albums for me are like, kind of icky, but this one feels like he did know. Like, that vocal is so clean and clear and emotive, but in like a peaceful way. It feels like something people deserve to hear and almost like understand where he was mentally before he went is how it feels to me, honestly, like there's a, there's a calm confidence in that, in that vocal from him. That's really, I mean, that made me. It's beautiful.
- [17:16]
Felix Contreras
The track is called Forever and Ever. It's a single coming from an album called Bella Chow. Live from Nashville, the great Raul Malo. I think we'll take a break with that one. We'll be right back.
- [17:28]
Announcer
This message comes from Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is designed to make language learning intuitive. It mimics how people naturally acquire speech as children, helping users read, write and think in a second language.
- [17:41]
Felix Contreras
More@Rosetta Stone.com this message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Carvana makes car buying easy. 100% online prices down to the penny, delivered to your door. Why make car buying hard when it could be easy? Visit Carvana.com today.
- [17:57]
Announcer
Terms may apply Support for this podcast and the following message come from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your Corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry MenPR. This message comes from Integrative Therapeutics, makers of Cortisol Manager. Daily stressors come and go and heightened stress can affect sleep and focus. Cortisol Manager helps support a healthy response to everyday stress. Available at Amazon.com, use code STRESS2026 for 20% off. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [18:57]
Felix Contreras
Welcome back to Alt Latino. We're talking new music here in what the seventh month already.
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Announcer
Wow.
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Felix Contreras
Of 20, 26. Okay, your turn.
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Ana Maria Sayer
Okay, I'm going straight to party. I'm going back to Brazil and I'm going to party.
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Felix Contreras
Okay, let's go.
- [19:11]
Ana Maria Sayer
This is like, this album. Ugh, it's so good. This is by an artist called Rincon Sapiencia, and the album is called Un Corpo Preto. This song in particular is the first track on the album, and it's called Diaspora.
- [20:32]
Felix Contreras
I mean, there's so much. There's so much going on and. And again, the influence of hip hop from North America and how it is interpreted in so many different places around the world, especially in Latin America. Oh, my God.
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Ana Maria Sayer
That's one thing. Part piece. Where I might actually push back on you, Felix. I don't know. Undoubtedly. Does this sound like all kinds of American hip hop? Absolutely. Is it influenced by. Or does it just come from the same place? I'm gonna play you another song before we get into anything else. It's called Casino. Super.
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Felix Contreras
So when you say you push back because you're suggesting it all comes from the same place. Elaborate
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Ana Maria Sayer
is the name of this album. Do you know what that translates to?
- [22:44]
Felix Contreras
I'm assuming a black body.
- [22:47]
Ana Maria Sayer
A black body. And I mean, that's what this album is in every way. Like, it is more than. I mean, Brazil obviously is a country that has a really, really rich community of black people. It is extremely. I think it's. It's perhaps one of the more linked, closely linked to Africa, Latin American countries, percussively, culturally, everything. Right? And I think that this record, I mean, this artist, you know, he is. He's been active since 2000. Like, he is one of the big ones. He's a legend. He's a rapper who's been nominated for, you know, MTV Music Brazil awards and all kinds of various things. And I think. I guess the reason I question it is because I don't know. Like, I don't know. And I really. I don't know if this is him looking towards, you know, examples of 90s US hip hop, let's say, because it's obviously. That sound is very present. It's present in the first track to me. And then the second track, it almost feels like a Sema funk thing in a way, or he does. So it is very African in that sense too, in that it's a review of all these different types of sounds. But I don't know if that's him looking at the US or I wonder if that's just native to the Brazilian hip hop scene and what he comes from and what he's a pioneer in that we don't know enough about. And so, to our ears, being more familiar within American hip hop and rap history, that's what we see is we see an influence there. But it's possible. But that those two things really were never in much conversation with each other.
- [24:17]
Felix Contreras
You know, I think that just given the amount of time that hip hop has been part of the world's vocabulary, musical vocabulary. I mean, my reference was, you know, to North American hip hop, started by African Americans, Afro Latinos in New York, but that was so long ago that there is. Maybe there's a trace there. But I think you're right in that these societies, these countries, these musical scenes are developing their own. So it started somewhere, but they're taking it to their own place. And the other thing I want to think, I want to talk about is the idea of syntax and how, you know, the flow is impacted by the language. Because the. The lyrics may be different in Spanish because of the. Because of the flow. And in English because of the flow. And listening to it in Portuguese or Brazilian. Portuguese, it has a whole different feel to it. Still very, very melodic, too.
- [25:13]
Ana Maria Sayer
I've always thought about Portuguese rap feels closest to me to French rap. The flow specifically, like talking about syntax and the way it flows even more than Spanish rap, I would say. But that's the thing is then when you take it out and you zoom out to a larger context of Brazil, and I've talked a lot about its history and its value for songwriting, like, really beautiful songwriting. And then you look at the streets of Sao Paulo where you have artists like this who came up, and there is a valuation, I think, of the story as part of the rap experience that is unique to, let's say, an American hip hop. I love this whole album. You have to listen to it. It's insane.
- [25:54]
Felix Contreras
I'm going to. I'm going to add it to a playlist. I'll make a playlist special for it.
- [25:59]
Ana Maria Sayer
That was a couple of tracks from the Rincon Sapiencia album, Un Corpo Preto.
- [26:05]
Felix Contreras
Okay, so continuing with our thing of going back and forth, I'm gonna finish my last track today with. With a young artist to become one of my favorites and a favorite to watch and watch him develop. I've played his music quite a bit before. Wyatt Flores has a new record coming out in July. The album's called Scared of Heights. This track is called Half the Man.
- [26:29]
Musical Artist
There's an old song that says, you're always 17 in your hometown at the age of 24 I know what they're talking about As I fire up the diesel I'm surprised it even starts Take a spot, six pack to my sister's Christmas lights on her carport Same old the mayor's smile we sit down and talk for a while Every conversation makes me feel like I'm still a child says it's funny how you show your face every other holiday but when they put grandpa into his grave, you were a thousand miles away I wanna be half the man as my father stands Be confident in who I am if only I could be more like him I wanna give half the loves my mother does make her proud I have a son but after all I've done I can't pretend I'll never be half as good as him.
- [27:52]
Felix Contreras
You know, we're coming up on. On year 16 of doing alt Latino, and there are a handful of artists that we've been able to. That I've been able to. To watch and grow and develop over the years and. And Wyatt FLOTUS is one of the. The newest ones. And, you know, one of the joys of doing this work that we. We get to do is watching an artist develop and, like, come in. Like, you bring in so many young artists and we watch them grow and develop as people, as songwriters, as, you know, record producers, everything. And one of the things about watching Wyatt Flores is, as you know, he says, you learn some Wisdom at age 24. You know, there's so much for him to experience yet in life, but what he's already experienced has come out in this amazing songwriter and this record. I can't wait to hear the rest of it, because I'm sure that everything that's happened since the last record, it comes out in. In his songwriting, and this one in particular, really, really hit me because this song is about the one that leaves home and the sacrifices that you. That you make. You know, you miss birthdays, you miss weddings, you miss funerals. You know, you have to hear the whole track to hear how those tensions are resolved. And it's really gonna break your heart in a really good way. But that's the magic of his songwriting, is that he saves it to the very end. And you're like, oof, man, let me listen to that again, because I wanna. I wanna experience that. The track is called Half the Man. That's Wyatt Flores. He's got an album coming out in July, 31st singles out now. Keep going, Wyatt. We're still listening. Okay. Anna, take us home, man.
- [29:42]
Ana Maria Sayer
All right. Last track. We're finally leaving Brazil. We're going to Spain. This is an artist called Cupido and this song is called Maldito. Cupido
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Musical Artist
tampo cocaine of 30.
- [31:08]
Felix Contreras
Is not having a good time.
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Ana Maria Sayer
No, he's not having a good time. Maldito a la mor. Maldito Cupido. Did you write this song, Felix? I can imagine you in your room
- [31:24]
Felix Contreras
in another lifetime. Sure. Yeah, of course.
- [31:28]
Ana Maria Sayer
It's just one of those simple, great love tracks. He wrote that song with Cuco.
- [31:32]
Felix Contreras
I mean, it's Southern California guy that
- [31:35]
Ana Maria Sayer
we really like who has that very classic heartbreak, bedroom pop tone. And that's the thing about a lot of these Spanish artists, and again, I talked about this a little bit earlier is having a blank canvas. You know, this has been a source of a lot of controversy, the way that Spanish artists flow in, what they produce and the ways that they incorporate lots of different Latin American sounds. But I heard this song and I was like, wow, there's so much of Cuco in it. It almost has like a bolero esque tone to it, but very contemporary and has the bedroom pop kind of thing going on. And so this album is that, again, it's an exploration of tapping into a lot of different genres, not even within a song, but in different, you know, small moments in different songs. And some people might have feelings about that, but ultimately it creates for a really interesting, you know, musical exploration of what is what different sounds, the kinds of emotions that they can bring out and how they do that. And this is just a simple heartbreak track, which we love here on Aunt Latino. Not that Felix and I are ever heartbroken, but hypothetically, theoretically, that was the track Maldito Cupido off of the album Amor Compartido by Cupido.
- [33:00]
Felix Contreras
You have been listening to Alt Latino from NPR Music. Our audio editor is Noah Caldwell.
- [33:05]
Ana Maria Sayer
The executive producer of NPR Music is
- [33:07]
Felix Contreras
Soraya Muhammad and executive director Sonali Mehta. Do us a favor, drop us a line. We want to hear from you. We love to hear from you, actually,
- [33:16]
Ana Maria Sayer
especially if you have bad things to say about feelings.
- [33:20]
Felix Contreras
What's the email that they can send those bad things to? Alt latino pr.org you have been listening to Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras.
- [33:29]
Ana Maria Sayer
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer.
- [33:30]
Felix Contreras
Thank you for listening.
- [33:49]
Announcer
This message comes from Rosetta Stone, offering an alternative approach to language learning. Moving past rote memorization, the app guides users to intuitively think in a second language using images and contextual audio, mimicking how people acquire speech as children. The platform also includes advanced speech recognition technology that compares a learner's pronunciation directly with native speakers to refine accent precision. Learn more about their new Rosetta Stone Sapphire app@Rosetta stone.com this message comes from Bombas from sharks to burnt hot dogs, comfy footwear is the last thing you want to worry about this summer. Bombas sandals and slides are perfect for beach days, barbecues, and everything in between. Go to bombas.com NPR and use code NPR for 20% off.