Alt.Latino: Mon Laferte's captivating coda
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Okay, Felix, I have something to tell you.
Ana, you have many things to tell me.
Okay, but the most important urgent thing I need you to know is that yo volé. But don't tell my mom, please, because then she would fly here and kill me.
Just so everybody knows, you are in Mexico City, and it's all about football right now, y la copa.
Eat, sleep, breathe.
I can't imagine.
Before we get going, volar, Felix, for those who don't know. Let me give the technical definition. It's when you're in the streets. Okay. And everyone starts chanting, se quiere volar, se quiere volar. She wants to fly. And literally a bunch of people come and pick you up and throw you in the air and you do indeed fly.
All right, let's distract you from all the celebration. Calm you down a little bit before you head out on the streets again today.
Before I head out on the streets because the party starts at noon every day.
From NPR Music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras.
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. I said my last name. Wait, I was supposed to. You're supposed to? It's been so long.
You've been molando.
My head is molando, Felix. My head never came back down. Let the chisme begin. Besides the chisme being that next week I'm dead because my mom definitely heard that I voló. O sea, let's talk about some new music. So first song that I have today.
All right.
I think you're going to like it, Felix. I hope you're going to like it. I don't know. We'll see. It's from the Chicago-based artist Sparkle Mami. And this first track is called No Te Vayas.
You're listening to Sparkle Mami Radio. We're here, anything is possible. Your dreams come alive, and your fantasies too.
So, Felix, we're in the mode, even though it's summer and it's the Mundial, to contrast all the energy when we're not out in the streets. It's time for some like smooth cruising music is where I've been at. And Sparkle Mommy is like the perfect representation of an artist who does like a very place-based thing, right? Like a lot of her sound is kind of like... Very Chicago, Chicano, like sounds straight out of Pilsen, but with like this really nice jazzy tone to it. She has some tracks on this album that are even like Brazil jazz oriented. She grew up singing in the church. I think you can hear that in both her vocals and her stylings. I want to play you another track from her and it's called Quisiera.
Ay, madre, sí
You've been busy, and I don't know if you had a chance to hear last week's show, but we featured a band that was from D.C. and recorded an album in 1971. And the tape was rediscovered. That sounds very much like the music they played back in 71. I'm not going to lie.
Well, and this is what I mean by an album that's grounded in place because Chicago, Chicano, same with Chicanos in LA, Chicanos in other parts of the country, like there is a very specific musical tone. It's almost sangre, like it's almost its own roots. And she, you know, she's from, she was born in Texas, but raised her whole life in Chicago. And What I really love about this record is, I could play you another track that's pretty Brazilian jazz, Brazilian funky. There are moments that really do depart from that energy, but this track felt so quintessentially what it means to be Mexican-American in Chicago. But with her own spin, I've heard a lot of, obviously, we've talked a ton about Revival Soul.
That's all over the map right now. It's super popular, like what you said, you know, that music from the 70s coming back. But she does something that's very distinctly her own and it makes it feel even more present because it's not just revival. It's actually like a distorted, interpreted, put it through a couple filters, be more global, be more, you know, exploring musically, but still have that.
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