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Brian Lehrer: No, that's not the Brian Lehrer Show theme music. What you just heard was the Dominican Italian singer Yendry, performing Nena in a Tiny Desk home concert, a Latin music takeover of NPR's Tiny Desk concert series, presented by the podcast Alt.Latino, another NPR presentation. For Hispanic Heritage Month, they've lined up a whole host of performers, from emerging talents like Venezuelan-born Miami singer-songwriter Maye, to well-known bachata performer and son of the Bronx, Prince Royce. With me now to talk about the takeover of El Tiny and to listen to some more of the performances is Felix Contreras, host and co-creator of NPR's Alt.Latino. Hey, Felix, thanks so much for doing this.

Felix Contreras: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me, man. It's an honor to be on your show, [crosstalk].

Brian: An honor to have you. Listeners, we have time for a few of your calls. We can hear from you, what you're listening to this Hispanic Heritage Month, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Do you want to tell us a little bit before we hear another track, about what we heard in the intro, introduce us to Yendry and her song Nena?

Felix: Sure. As you mentioned, what we've done is take over all month from the Hispanic Heritage-- the Hispanic Heritage Month is September 15th to October 15th. What we've been able to do is work with the Tiny Desk team to do a takeover and present Latin music the whole month. We have 10 artists from 8 different countries and cultures. The emphasis is on youth. Some of the younger artists, some blockbusters, some A-listers. Like you mentioned, Prince Royce, son of the Bronx, I love that, but also some discoveries from Havana and Eme Alfonso, different artists from different countries.

We try to put together like a 30,000-foot view of a little bit of what's happening in Latin music today.

Brian: Let's go now to Miami and hear a little bit of the singer-songwriter, Maye, performing the Descifrar.

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Brian: Felix, I gather that was premiere of a brand new track. Do I have that right? How cool was that?

Felix: Yes. We were very, very fortunate. Some of the artists decided to save some stuff for us, but it's a very special series. We're very excited about some of that stuff.

Brian: Do you want to talk more about that performer and that song?

Felix: One of the things that we try to do with each presentation, we have a production crew, Bobby Carter and Anamaria Sayre, who are part of the Tiny Desk production team. What they do is they have long conversations before the people even roll tape, before the artists roll tape on anything, about what the presentation is going to look like. We're not dictating anything, but we are taking ideas and making suggestions. One of the suggestions is, how are you going to represent your culture, your background, your music visually. In Maye's case, she performed it at a Venezuelan restaurant, one of her favorite Venezuelan restaurants, but she also includes some traditional Venezuelan instruments.

The Venezuelan cuatro is performed at one point in the video. Everybody has a different pick. There’s a band from Columbia who record in Bogotá, they're using traditional alegre drums mixed in with their kind of electronic rock thing. The whole idea is to be able to represent, again, visually and musically, where these folks are coming from.

Brian: In the description of each Tiny Desk concert video in this series is a note that El Tiny, the project will feature performers from all corners of what you call Latina [unintelligible 00:04:24]. Are there specific overlooked corners that you're especially interested in signal boosting for this project?

Felix: Let's see. We have Colombia, we have Argentina, Venezuela, Havana, I'm looking at my list here, Dominican Republic, as you mentioned, Prince Royce. I think mainly the countries themselves are not overlooked but maybe the artists themselves. It's a tricky thing, Brian, because somebody like Prince Royce, who's going to be popular in New York, is maybe not as popular out in the Southwest with Mexican Americans, for example. The idea is to spread information and enlighten people from within the Latino cultures as well as from outside of Latino cultures about these artists.

Going back to the individual artists, there's a great rapper, hip hop artist from Argentina. She slows her flow down a little bit, and there's more of a ballad or [unintelligible 00:05:31] type approach to stuff, but she's still delivering her very, very strong message, socially-conscious message, feminist message within her music. She also has a bandoneon, like the Argentine accordion that’s used in Tango, within her electronic thing, man. It's really a spectacular combination of the past and the present.

Brian: I want to ask you about a controversy. Nominations for the Latin Grammys were revealed this week, as I know you know. Genre of reggaeton was all but overlooked. J Balvin who stepped by El Tiny said the lack of acknowledgement. Because of that, reggaeton act should boycott the ceremony. Do you want to tell us about the controversy?

Felix: We talked about that recently with Ari Shapiro, and all things considered. I think there are points on both sides. I think J Balvin has a point in that the academy is not giving reggaeton its due, given the influence that it has in the Latin music world, in terms of streams, in terms of video views. All of that stuff is where the value is determined, at least financially, monetarily. Even this is a thing, where even culturally, the genre, it just filters through, filters down all through all these other genres we hear. If you listen closely to a lot of the artists that we're playing, there are hints of reggaeton, that little [unintelligible 00:07:04].

There’s some of that in a lot of these performances. The influence, it’s just like hip hop around the world. It's the same thing, some of that stuff is filtered out. There is a strong presence. Culturally, musically, around the world, they're locked out of some of the major categories in the Latin Grammy. Yes and no.

Brian: You, yourself are a musician, Felix, a drummer, I see. Are there particular acts or artists who inspired you to play? Do you hear those influences in some of the artists that you're spotlighting?

Felix: I'm of the age, where Santana was probably the biggest influence back then from the very first album. His influence is felt, it just filters down like a piece of ice on a radiator. It just filters down and seeps into just about all of these different things. He and his band opened so many doors in terms of the music industry, in terms of the audience listening to things that are different and accepting things that are different. While he may not be a direct musical influence on any of these artists, any of these folks who are making music now, I think, they have a lot to do.

They have a lot to be grateful for, for the work that they did back then, in terms of what they call crossover, but just influence on the music, the music business itself [crosstalk]--

Brian: Well, I'm curious, actually, I'll follow up on that. Have you had a chance to play much yourself during the pandemic?

Felix: Thanks for asking, man. With some former NPR employees and current NPR employees here, we have a band that we do Beatles covers with Latin rhythms. It's called Los Daytrippers. Initially, we didn't play anywhere. because everybody was locked down. Then, we were really nervous about even being outside. We're following very closely the reports about where things stand. Then, the virus, I mean, the variant just really set us back, as well as musicians all over. I have friends, musicians in LA, in New York, all over the country, all over the world. Everybody's doing the same thing.

Everybody locked down for a long time and then gradually started getting out. You just follow the trends. We played a lot during the summer, outdoors. We were playing in the fall a couple of times, and then, after that, we're not going to go inside. Some places here, in the DC area are allowing people to perform inside buildings, but we're not going to do it. We're going to hold off, and we're just going to lock down until the springtime. I'm hearing a lot of that from a lot of musicians. I'm fortunate in that I don't make my living playing music, so we have that option. But some of these musicians, man, they get hit hard, when you can't perform, as we've been reading about it, hearing about it all around the world really.

Brian: You've been name-checking artists from all kinds of genres in the context of our Hispanic Heritage Month conversation here. The Beatles, Weather Report, Queen, does everything influence everything?

Felix: You know the short answer is yes. I'll use that Queen example. Carlos Alfonso who's from Havana and lived in Havana his whole life that’s-- one of the things, when I interviewed him for the show, it's like, "What are your main influences?" I expected some traditional Afro-Cuban [unintelligible 00:10:44]. First thing out of his mouth was, "Queen." Freddy Mercury and all those vocals, the way they stacked the vocals. I think that that's one of the things, if I can do anything with this show, with Alt.Latino is just to enlighten folks with like-- we listen to everything all over.

Everybody. Latin America, you’re in the United States, we just listen to everything. There's a great new record out right now, where Elvis Costello re-imagined-- he retook This Year's Model album from ‘78. Same tracks but all Spanish language artists. They had younger artists, older artists, [unintelligible 00:11:22] all of these different people who were in love with Elvis Costello's record, from here in the United States all through Latin America. It's a reminder that musicians don't really hold two genres. The record industry or the radio industry, the commercial radio industry, they need to know where to put the records in the record stores.

But musicians all over the world, all over Latin America, in Spain, anywhere, anywhere in the Spanish speaker world and, really, all over the world, they ignore genres, man, especially these young kids now, Brian, my God. Anything is possible and it’s just-- I get my mind blown musically at least once a month, and that is no lie.

Brian: That is a good thing.

Felix: It's crazy.

Brian: We're going to play one more track before we go, but just tell people, because I think some of our listeners right now never heard of Alt.Latino. Don't know about the El Tiny series for Hispanic Heritage Month and may not even know about the ongoing NPR series. These little concert videos called Tiny Desk Concerts, so just tell people, how they can hear all this stuff.

Felix: Go to npr.org/music or npr.org/tinydesk, look for-- we have a special Youtube channel for Tiny Desk. I think we've been doing it 10 years, maybe 11 years. I don't remember now, well over 1000 videos of all kinds of genres. Everything under the sun. My job is to book the Latin artists, so I've done big names. I've done folkloric music, all kinds of stuff from all over the place. It's really a source of music discovery and it's-- warning. It is a rabbit hole, man. You start and no telling, where you're going to end up or how long you're going to be there.

Brian: It's so true. The format of the Tiny Desk concerts, it’s so fun and so compelling, and so intimate because it really is in the small space. I'm always amazed at how some of these bigger bands, how many people you can fit into the Tiny Desk concert space. How many musicians are there in the band Snarky Puppy, and on, and on, and on?

Felix: [crosstalk] Yes.

Brian: All right. Last thing--

Felix: Yes. One of the things we did is like, these are all home concerts. These were concerts recorded from home, because Bob Boilen who basically runs the Tiny Desk, and it was his idea along with Stephen Thompson, "What do we do during the lockdown?"

Brian: Right. Felix Contreras is hosting and co-creator of NPR's Alt.Latino. It's been great to have you. Just set us up, give us like a 15-second setup here for this last track. We're going to go out on by Bronx-born Dominican American Prince Royce. The genre is bachata, right?

Felix: Yes, definite bachata. You got to go see the video because, in his presentation of Dominican culture, he recorded it sitting in a Dominican hair salon, man. They nailed the performance. The ambiance is so perfect for this thing, man. It's really a highlight of the series.

Brian: Felix, this has been great. Thank you so much.

Felix: Thank you, Brian. Thank you, man. Thank you so much.

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