Latin music

We lost Armando Manzanero this past December in Mexico City to COVID-19 complications at the age of 85. This week, we present our tribute for Valentine's Day, a day when his profound words can help us express the inexpressible.

For over a decade, arts journalist Betto Arcos has been a familiar voice to public radio listeners, bringing them the sounds of the world — be it from a samba school in Rio or an amphitheater in Colombia, profiling artists who play unusual instruments or create cross-cultural mashups. More than 140 of those reports are collected in his new book, Music Stories from the Cosmic Barrio.

Break Everything — Rompan Todo in Spanish — begins in the early '60s in Mexico, where bands like Los Teen Tops started covering American hits. Others, including Mexico's Los Locos del Ritmo and Uruguay's Los Shakers also inspired many young musicians across Latin America to play their own version of rock.

Global superstar Ozuna performs five songs in quarantine for Tiny Desk. For someone whose work often operates at galactic proportions, this performance of five songs makes room for Ozuna's sweet tenor to take center-desk in a love letter to the global communities that supported and streamed him to god tier status.

One of Cuba's best-known singers and songwriters, Rodríguez says this pandemic-era album — whose title translates to "For the Wait" — is all about dealing with uncertainty.

Cuban-American pop star Gloria Estefan may have one of those game changing albums on her hands with the release of Brazil305, a re-examination of some of her most familiar songs through the lens of her life-long love of Brazilian music and rhythms.

Santana had a brush with major success as a member of the band Malo, and made significant contributions to the breadth of Latin popular music.

On this episode of Alt.Latino, we pull an interview from the archives with the great Cuban percussionist. From Havana nightlife in the 1940s to the pulsing streets of New York just after World War II, he reminisces about the seminal recordings and jam sessions that took place.

Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras offers a playlist of music that's comforting him and his listeners amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Spanglish Fly is one of the pioneers of the boogaloo revival scene happening on the East Coast. For about sixteen minutes, they turned the NPR Music offices into the hottest Latin dance club in D.C.