Jasmine Garsd

There are as many versions of the New Orleans standard "Iko Iko" as there are arguments about what it means exactly. A traditional Mardi Gras Indian call-and-response, it was recorded as "Jock-A-Mo" by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and the Cane Cutters in 1953. A decade later, the Dixie Cups, ...

One of history's greatest engineering feats is one you rarely hear of. It's the Inca Road, parts of which still exist today across much of South America.

Back in the day — more than 500 years ago — commoners like me wouldn't have been able to walk on the Inca ...

One of the most sensuous songs in all of Latin music is not about sex or love; it's about fruit. That's my opinion, but it's also the suggestion of dozens of Alt.Latino listeners who wrote in for this week's fruit-themed episode. The song in question is Rubén ...

I was recently on assignment in Los Angeles, where I was fortunate to stay at a nice, classic old Hollywood hotel. It sure beat the assignment where I had to stay at the "Banana Motel" in a border town in Central America, but that's another story.

So I did what ...

Faithful listeners of Alt.Latino will recognize Ceci Bastida her unique musical style. The Mexican singer became famous in the ska-punk band Tijuana No! She then joined pop icon Julieta Venegas, and in recent years has embarked on a stellar solo career. Bastida, who combines elements of nortena with ...

It took only a few minutes for Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo to escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico earlier this week. It took only a few hours for musicians to start uploading songs, mostly corridos, about that escape.

Corridos are a narrative style of Mexican music that ...

Summer is here, which means it's time to shed clothing, shed inhibitions and start dancing. To set us off, we invited two of our favorite NPR people, Sami Yenigun and Otis Hart. Both are experts on dance music, and both have a soft spot for beats from Africa and Latin ...

DJ Oscar Nñ is one of Alt.Latino's favorite guest DJs: We love the music he spins so much that we invite him to hang out at every opportunity. We're right in the middle of LGBT Pride Month, so we invited Nñ to assemble a mixtape of songs; in addition to ...

I'm not going to lie: One of the worst things that can happen to you on your vacation is sitting next to me on an airplane. There is nothing I hate more than flying, and as Alt.Latino co-host Felix Contreras can attest, I sometimes take out my anxiety on whoever's ...

Bomba Estéreo has always been associated with fiery, trance-inducing dance songs like "Fuego." But one of their lesser-known sweet spots is in the more mellow, breezy songs, the kind you want to listen to after a full night of hard-partying, while recovering on a beach, watching ...

Early in Lisa Gornick's Louisa Meets Bear, not long after the title characters run into each other at a Princeton University library in 1975, Louisa tries to explain her father's job to her schoolmate. She can't quite articulate what it means to be a geneticist: "I can't explain what it ...

Summer is finally here, at least in spirit, so Alt.Latino returns with a cool mix engineered for maximum soothing. We've got Cuban soul remixed, some fluffy Mexican pop and a great little song about an Argentine who falls asleep in the Paraguayan jungle.

So tune in — and, as always, ...

Updated June 4 at 11:30 a.m. ET

Nobody expects an internship to make one rich — but for many, the entire experience has become simply unattainable.

Reynaldo Leal tells NPR doing an internship was impossible. "I was going to school on the GI Bill, and when it came time to ...

On Alt.Latino, Felix Contreras and I often discuss how much we love celebrating things that mix the old with the new. As Latinos, we constantly receive marketing messages from Hispanic and non-Hispanic entertainment industries alike, each desperate to tap into our ever-growing population. As a result, there's a lot of ...

On a gusty Friday evening in Manhattan's Union Square Park, Francisco Ramirez is setting up his chairs and a big sign that yells, "FREE ADVICE."

The park is packed with street musicians, chain-smoking chess players and preachers yelling predictions

Ramirez just wants to talk.

This seems like an unusual place ...

We are exhausted, but it's the good kind of exhaustion — the kind that comes from singing along with live bands, dancing and laughing hard with friends. And, if your name is Felix Contreras, it's the kind of exhaustion that comes from getting on stage and killing it on the ...