Felix Contreras

When I tell people, "I saw Jaco play," I'm sometimes held in the same kind of reverential wonder that I shower on those who saw John Coltrane. Such is the reverence for his prolific, genre-busting vision and killer chops (jazz speak for an intensely creative display of technical prowess).

Between ...

Every year the Latin Grammy Awards go BIG when they present their annual ceremony on the Spanish-language, television network, Univision: big productions, dancers, special collaborations, splashy sets, lots of pop stars and musical icons. Often, the Latin Grammy voters reflect that approach with their selections. But every now and then ...

You either get The Grateful Dead or you don't, to the point where it's virtually impossible to explain. So why bother?

For starters, because history was made over the summer, when the band played three 50th-anniversary "Fare Thee Well" concerts at Chicago's Soldier Field. For fans who've lived and ...

Latin America planted its flag among fans of world cinema with the release of 1959's Orfeu Negro. The film was also a catalyst for the popularity of the bossa nova, the then-new song form taking the country by storm.

This week, Alt.Latino looks back, and listens back, at a handful ...

Carla Morrison's music exists in a private emotional space where she can address joys, heartbreaks and secret desires. But her words also speak to larger pursuits in life: family, career, child-rearing, friendship, lifelong relationships. There are lessons in her delicate voice if you listen for the deeper meanings.

With ...

David Greene speaks with Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras about Grupo Fantasma. Its new album, "Problemas," can be heard in full on our website this week, as part of NPR Music's "First Listen" feature.

Grupo Fantasma's raucous, good-time mix of funk, cumbia and soul emerged from the clubs of Austin at the start of the century, bringing with it a fresh sensibility for Tejano music. Now, the band faces a challenge: How do you make that great idea even better?

Problemas answers the ...

Maria Concepción Balboa Buika, the vocalist known simply as Buika has an extraordinary voice. It's based in flamenco, which she heard as a child on the Spanish island of Mallorca. But layered on top of that are a whole range of popular influences including jazz and R&B (she ...

Kid Frost is a bit of a pioneer in Latin rap, and his 1990 track "La Raza" is also a ground breaking track, sampling the El Chicano jazz/rock classic "Viva Tirado." All of that is a given.

What blows my mind is that it has been 25 years since that ...

Rita Moreno will receive the Kennedy Center Honor next month for her career in show business. With a new gig as a voice in an animated TV series and a new album, there's no way she's done performing.

In an era of segregation and base stereotypes, Richard Durham brought a different tone to broadcast radio. On Sunday mornings in the '40s, he told nuanced stories of history's great black Americans.

It only makes sense that a listening party led by twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz, who make up the duo Ibeyi, would turn into a cool singalong. The two seem to have music pouring out of them at every second: As soon as they sat down in the ...

I am old school — I still get my music mostly from CDs, and I had a stack to play for this show.

Sometimes the music speaks for itself. So that's what we're doing on Alt.Latino this week. As they used to say in the radio biz, it's all about ...

Much has happened for Gina Chavez since I first saw her at an unofficial SXSW showcase about five years ago: two albums, fan and industry recognition, this year's Austin Music Award for Austin Musician Of The Year. Chavez's music has developed over the years, just as it should.

...

My Alt.Latino co-host, Jasmine Garsd, has never shown much interest in an episode about children's music. She doesn't have kids, so the magic of the idea is lost on her. So I enlisted two of my fellow NPR dads, Eyder Peralta and Rolando Arrieta, for a discussion of what we ...

How do you go back to the well after 40 years spent drawing up buckets and buckets of creativity? Where do you find the inspiration? How do you get motivated? How do you stare down that blank page one more time?

That was the dilemma Los Lobos inevitably faced ...

Have you ever spent hours in a record store and come home with so much great music that you didn't know where to start?

"Record store? What's that?"

OK. To get a feel of what that was like, take a look at the list of songs we play in this ...

We listen to a lot of different kinds of music at Alt.Latino. Every now and then, we like to play material that falls outside of the Latin Alternative vein. So we asked our colleague Anastasia Tsioulcas to bring in tracks that she's collected for her blog, Latitudes, and help ...

Few of us get to witness a true historical moment — the kind that can change the world. On August 14, the moment the U.S. flag was raised over a newly opened U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Arturo O'Farrill witnessed one of those moments.

The Cuban-American musician was one of ...

Last December, the night before Barack Obama announced that he would seek to update U.S. relations with Cuba, Arturo O'Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra played a gig at Havana's U.S. Interest Section.

O'Farrill took the ALJO there to record an album in the hopes of illustrating that, ...