[music]

Brian Lehrer: No, that's not The Brian Lehrer Show theme music. That's an excerpt of Carla Morrison's performance for El Tiny Desk concert, which if you don't know, is a Latin music hack of NPR's Tiny Desk concert series, series of videos, music videos. This is presented by the podcast Alt.Latino. From September 15th through October 15th, NPR's Tiny Desk is celebrating Latinx Heritage Month with an Alt.Latino takeover. They're calling it El Tiny.

The second year has already featured some incredible acts like Jessie Reyez, Susana Baca, and more musicians from all corners of Latinidad. As Hispanic Heritage Month winds down, joining me now with some musical highlights of this year's El Tiny series and to talk about a very big act left in the series are Felix Contreras, host and co-creator of NPR's Alt.Latino, and Anamaria Sayre, Alt.Latino co-host. Felix, welcome back to WNYC for a second year, and Anamaria, welcome.

Felix Contreras: Hey, Brian. Good to [unintelligible 00:01:16].

Anamaria Sayre: Thanks so much for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Felix, you want to tell us first about what we just heard, tell us a little more about Carla Morrison's performance, and why you recommend keeping a box of tissues nearby?

[laughter]

Felix Contreras: Carla Morrison is a singer from Mexico down along the border near California. We've been following her on the podcast almost from the very beginning, so she's a favorite of ours. This performance that we have with her is coming off of a long stretch where she took some time off from her music career to develop herself again to mental health stability stuff that she's been talking about. The performance is like a re-emergence into the public scene. She's been on tour, but she mentions during El Tiny Desk concert about how the Tiny Desk itself, the series, was a lifeline for her to keep up with music and just to go back and hear some music that she heard.

She was incredibly emotional just being there even before the cameras rolled and then when the cameras rolled because her songs from her new record are about that self-discovery, about that self-healing. There are all kinds of elements there to warrant-- We had to literally bring her a box of tissue onto the set while she was singing.

Brian Lehrer: Anamaria, you want to do maybe one vocabulary word for the uninitiated because we know El Tiny aims to feature music from all corners of Latinidad as you say? Define Latinidad for listeners who may not be familiar.

Anamaria Sayre: Oh, goodness. I would need probably a good few hours, honestly, to get into it. I think just generally speaking, it is everything that is around the culture, around the Latino community in a way. It's really like all those parts of the identity of the experience that reach back into a person's history being from this very large diaspora of people that is all across Latin America. The way we talk about it all the time is just from this musical lens, which is really thinking of Latin music or music by Latinos as a representation of all different parts of that identity and experience.

Brian Lehrer: Latinidad is obviously so broad. Let's take another example. This year you took viewers and listeners to a bookstore in Lima, Peru to record Susana Baca performing. Let's take a listen to some of Susana Baca's Afro-Peruvian music.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: I'm just going to end my portion of the show right here and go listen to that CD now till twelve o'clock. Felix, for people who aren't familiar with Susana Baca, she's a 78-year-old Peruvian singer-songwriter and ethnomusicologist. Can you tell us a little bit about her influence on the Afro-Peruvian genre?

Anamaria Sayre: She almost single-handedly not discovered it but brought it back up to the surface because, in a lot of these cultures and societies around Latin America, the African heritage has been swept off to the side and not really considered part of the mainstream or legitimate form of expression. Susana Baca early on has always been promoting and adamant about maintaining the history and the culture of that music within Peruvian society. She was really helped out, encouraged, and lifted up by David Byrne, of all people, on his Luaka Bop label in the '80s. That's where a lot of people heard Susana Baca for the first time when she did a recording for that label and for that project.

There's a mixture of things going on with Susana Baca. She eventually became Minister of Tourism for the government a couple of administrations ago. She's a cultural legend gem, and just watching her-- We had to do this one remotely, what we call our home concert because of travel and she's in Peru and all this stuff, but just watching it, you still get a sense of her, the regalness, and this deep spiritual sense of all the stuff she's doing. She's such a presence. It comes through, whether you're watching on the phone or laptop, or any other device. It's so strong and powerful.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you want to call up and talk to the El Tiny Desk concert co-host, Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre, we could take a few phone calls. Any fans out there of this series or anybody want to just tell us what music you're listening to these days from any corner of Latinidad, 212-433-WNYC. We've got some more music sampling to do, but we can get a few phone calls in here if you're fans of these guys or you just want to shout out your music. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Many acts on El Tiny, I should say, are either earlier in their careers, much earlier than Susana, who's 78, and sometimes even up-and-coming. Do you have a philosophy, Anamaria, on using your platform to elevate younger, maybe lesser-known musicians, and how do you balance that with someone like Susana Baca who is so established?

Anamaria Sayre: It's definitely one of those things where there's no perfect recipe or science to it. I think for Felix and I, we understand that the Tiny Desk has this incredibly large global audience that truly, truly does reach all different corners of Latin America, of the Latino experience. A huge thing for us is that we want to make sure to bring on as many artists from as many different places and also as many different experiences to represent that. I think that a diversity of age and of gender and of genre, those all are a piece of that.

Susana's experience, not only being Peruvian but also growing up in an era where she did and coming into music in the moment when she did, is going to be extremely different. Then Trueno, who's 21, I think, 22 maybe, coming out of Buenos Aires and his experience really coming into this rap and trap space. I think, for us, we try to find a diversity of not just where they're from or who they are but really thinking about all the corners of what makes an artist's music unique and then go from there.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Moving right along to another corner of Latinidad, let's get into what you call Mexican regional music or as I think you wrote, Felix, cowboy hats and accordions. Here's a bit of Carin León's performance.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Felix, you're right, this is not your grandparent's Mexican regional. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Felix Contreras: I'm Mexican American from California. I'm 64 years old, so I grew up with a certain kind of-- Back then, it wasn't called Mexican regional. That was something that the industry put out eventually. As kids, we just called it Mexican music to separate it from the Jackson 5 we were listening to at the same time. It's basically Mexican conjunto music that has its origins around the Texas-Mexican border. That's where Flaco Jimenez's dad helped invent this type of music.

Again, it really is accordions and cowboy hats because it's based from the rural lifestyle and existence along that Texas-Mexican border that interestingly enough has German and Austrian influences in plain waltzes and some of the other more traditional forms. What a guy like Carin León has done is that he's taken it-- As you can hear, there's a steel guitar player in there. The drummer is playing with brushes like a jazz player would play. He's really mixing a very organic and natural mix of the influence of country music if you think about it, Texas, South Texas country music, and Mexican music or Mexican conjunto music.

That's what this thing is all about. That's what fascinates me about his music, why we really wanted to get him on Tiny Desk to elevate that particular part of Mexican music that he's doing. The whole genre, in general, is going through this resurgence, this incredibly young gifted artist doing these great things with it. This is stuff I played in my uncle's conjunto in high school. What they're doing with it now is just completely mind-blowing and so innovative and so, so attractive and great to listen to. I'm just constantly fascinated with this particular thing only because of that personal connection.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think about that kind of thing too, Anamaria? When do you leave your parents' and grandparents' music behind as dated and irrelevant, and when do you go to it out of a love of roots or to update it?

Anamaria Sayre: Oh, man. My initial reaction is you never leave it even if you think you do. It's been really interesting. I think Felix and I, in the new iteration of the show that we just relaunched on Alt.Latino, we've been having a lot of conversations with younger artists who are revisiting or drawing inspiration from a lot of these "older sounds" or more traditional sounds or whatever you want to call it. I think no matter what kind of music you make, your grandparents and your parents are there always. They're present. That music is present because that's where we're grounded.

I think the value in a Latino home and in a Latino community of music really does lie in the way that it connects you to this massive history, this massive global community of generations and generations of people. I know that, to me, I hear bolero and I feel grounded in my ancestry. That's just a feeling and an experience that you can't really find, I think, in life in a lot of ways. In those moments when life is really hard and you're seeking to feel grounded and you're seeking to feel like you're a part of something larger than yourself, I think that it's such a natural place to go is to the music because there's so much richness of history and struggle that exists there.

Brian Lehrer: We've got one more piece of music to sample, but before we get to it, let's get some phone calls in. Here's Janelle in Brooklyn calling to speak to the co-hosts of El Tiny. Janelle, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Janelle: Hi. Number one, I love Tiny Desk concerts. Thank you so much for making that happen. I've learned about so many new artists that way. I also just wanted to share one artist that I'm particularly fond of recently. Gabriel Chakarji is a Venezuelan pianist and composer. He's pretty young. He grew up in Caracas and then did a lot of training, including at Manhattan School of Music here in New York City.

He released an album called New Beginning. It came out during the pandemic, so I'm not sure it got the hearing that it deserved, but it's an amazing blend of Venezuelan traditional music, including a lot of Afro-Venezuelan rhythms and that distinct percussion tradition. He plays with the percussionist Daniel Prim and Juan Diego Villalobos on a lot of the album. It blends it with jazz and translates those traditional rhythms to contemporary instrumentation. It's a beautiful blend.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds great. The name is Gabriel Chakarji?

Janelle: Chakarji, yes. It's C-H-A-K-A-R-J-I, Chakarji.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Felix Contreras: Thank you so much. Could you hear me taking notes in the background? I was busy writing that down, man. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Next month, Chakarji on Tiny Desk. I want to hear it.

[laughter]

Anamaria Sayre: Don't be surprised.

Brian Lehrer: Kazuko in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kazuko.

Kazuko: Hi. Thank you so much. We love, love, love Tiny Desk. It's just amazing. I wanted to do a shout-out to a jazz composer and trumpeter, Shunzo Ohno. He's been working on compositions and performances for global healing. It's amazing whenever I'm sitting in the audience all the Latinx communities say, "Oh, that's music from my country," or "That's music from my home." It's global music that unites us for healing and resilience, and it's such an uplift. I just wanted to do a shout-out to that global music that touches each of us and we feel rooted and we feel progress for our own healing and connection. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Anamaria, it's calls like that that make it worth it, right?

Anamaria Sayre: Oh, 100%. I think that the reach of this series and these concerts is so much beyond Felix and I. We're just the people who get to help facilitate it, which is a gift, but it's taken on such a beautiful life of its own and then people get to connect with the music and the artist in ways that otherwise wouldn't be possible. That's really a gift.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Yes, go ahead, Felix.

Felix Contreras: [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:16:22] very quickly, so we never get a chance to talk to the audience directly. We always do it through social media, so this is really cool to have this complete [crosstalk].

Anamaria Sayre: Yes, seriously.

Felix Contreras: [unintelligible 00:16:34] one on one.

Brian Lehrer: Well, here's one more. Howard in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Howard.

Howard: Hi. Good morning. I'm just calling with a virtual fan mail. I'm a very big music fan, and what I discover trying to share music with people is that most people only want to hear music that they've heard. Introducing new music to people is difficult, but for me, Tiny Desk has been a way to really discover music from all around the world and it really supports my vision of learning new music every week, hearing somebody every week that I haven't heard before. My Tiny Desk fandom goes back to Gina Chavez and Jenny and the Mexicats, groups that I've now seen. I've seen Gina Chavez now four or five times. I know her, I've chatted with her.

That connection that you make with these bands is just sublime. To be able to discover and hear new music in Tiny Desk really is the best way to do that. There's been a lot of discussion, if you read various things, about how old music is pushing away new music, that people are stuck listening to music from years ago, not leaving a lot of space for new music to be discovered and to be purchased. Tiny Desk, I think, is the principal way that people can really discover up-and-coming new music, new talent, new ideas, and not just American but from all over the world [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. For people who don't know the Tiny Desk series, the El Tiny portion of it, or any other part of Tiny Desk, it's so intimate. The videos are so great. They literally are recorded in what looks like a tiny office behind a desk, even with some pretty big bands being squashed in there. They're just so great. I was happy to see that after a lot of the videos came from recordings from musicians' homes last year at the height of the pandemic, this year, folks are back at NPR's Tiny Desk in many cases as well as some are still sending in videos.

As we start to wrap this up, we should plug that coming up at noon, there's going to be a big premier in El Tiny. You'll have Farruko. People who live in New York City, chances are very high that you've heard Farruko bumping through some car speakers, but for listeners who aren't familiar, Felix, you want to give us just a 22-second sound bite on Farruko?

Felix Contreras: Farruko is one of the biggest names in what they call Latin urban music. He had this amazing transformation, sort of a personal switch to a more spiritual perspective on what he's doing. His Tiny Desk performance reflects some of that. We'll also have a podcast tomorrow published with a long interview with him talking about that conversion, that switch, so it's a double punch whammy about Farruko this week.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there for today, and we thank Felix Contreras, host and co-creator of NPR's Alt.Latino and Anamaria Sayre, Alt.Latino co-host. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your work with us. I think you've gotten a sense of how much joy you're spreading out there.

Felix Contreras: Brian, thank you so much, man. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, and thanks to everybody for calling in. We're truly touched, man. Thank you.

Anamaria Sayre: Truly. Yes, it's amazing to hear from people.

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