Felix Contreras

This week on Alt.Latino, hear an incredible range of Latin sounds from this year's entrants.

Monsieur Periné hails from Colombia, a country known for its Afro-Colombian cumbia, as well as New York-style salsa. Instead, however, the band has embraced 1920s-era, guitar-driven jazz from the U.S. The unlikely inspiration has resulted in a large and international following, as well as a Latin Grammy not too long ...

On Sunday night, the 88th annual Academy Awards will once again gather together the movie industry in a lavish ceremony to acknowledge the year's most celebrated performances and films. For some, though, the Oscars represent just another instance of the cool kids gussied up for prom night, trying to ignore ...

This week, Alt.Latino takes a deep dive into the animated Fox sitcom Bordertown with two of its writers, Lalo Alcaraz and Gustavo Arellano. Alcaraz is also the author of the Latino-themed syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha, while Arellano writes an advice column called Ask A Mexican for OC Weekly in ...

In my mind, there's a magical Mexican restaurant located somewhere in Austin, Texas; it's a place where people of all cultures, backgrounds, ages and languages rub elbows over mouthwatering Tex-Mex combination plates. Aging hippies, Chicano hipsters, old-school Texans in cowboy hats, abuelitas, blues musicians, Western fiddlers — they're all there.

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Richard Blair is from Britain, but his heart is in Colombia. Blair went from producing albums for Peter Gabriel to immersing himself in the music and culture of Colombia — itself a country with deep African roots.

He chased a sound he'd heard in his head; one that mixed the ...

The theme for this week's episode of Alt.Latino is simple: When you're having one of those days, just pop this mixtape into your cassette boombox and groove your blues away.

For some, it's the seemingly unending winter. For others, it's a day that started with spilled coffee, a missed train, ...

It's hard to keep a good idea down. In 1996, Richard Blair and Sidestepper introduced their innovative mix of Afro-Colombian and pop music to a Colombian scene that was about to explode onto the world stage.

The masterminds behind Bomba Estereo and the rappers in Choc Quib Town ...

This week on Alt.Latino, things get emotional quickly. That usually happens when singer Natalia Clavier and I get more than five minutes to talk about her music. The only difference: This time, we recorded it and added songs.

The result provides an insight into how Clavier's emotions and passions ...

Mariachi Flor de Toloache's 2014 self-titled debut album earned a Latin Grammy nomination in the Best Ranchera category — quite an accomplishment, given that the category celebrates an incredibly long tradition of Mexican music. But it was no fluke: The group's members come by their mariachi skills honestly and with ...

What's a New Year's Eve party without music?

This week, Texas DJ Luis Espada (a.k.a. King Louie) of the Peligrosa collective visits Alt.Latino to share samples of the style they created — the one they call "screwmbia."

The music is much more than a bunch of creative types taking liberties ...

Her voice dripping with Southern R&B grit, Moreno and her band never lose sight of the emotion in the holiday classics they perform at KUT in Austin, Texas.

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 ...