Songcraft: The NuLatAm Sound (PODCAST From Intelatin)

Every year, I put together a Songcraft episode where it is pure music. This year, I created a set list with close to two hours of pure music from mostly Latin America.

As I was born in 1973, I can document that music in my life in the United States revolved mostly around England with seventies bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath and iconoclasts like David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix (professionally but not actually British). In the next era, there was American bands like KISS and Eagles and then we went back to England with Def Leppard, The Cure, Duran Duran, Tears for Fears and Thompson Twins. In the nineties, American bands like Guns n Roses, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Jeff Buckley and Stone Temple Pilots began to dominate again and regardless of whether or not you dig those bands I just listed, young Latinx tend to lose sight of their culture in that dirty white sea.

In 2011, I was living in Los Angeles and entrenched in a certain type of (Emiliano) Zapatista intellectuality that coincided with the concluding year of Rage Against the Machine in LA. I won’t venture into an argument concerning the validity and authenticity of Zach de la Rocha and RATM but I found something that was more my taste when KCRW issued a Top Tune by Chancha vía Circuito. Surely, the Argentine Pedro Canale and his ZZK Records label head, Grant C. Dull, a Texan living in Argentina, weren’t Zapatistas living in the agricultural ley lines of Morelos, or Chiapas, but in this cover of the José Larralde cut Quimey Neuquén, I felt the connection to both the sounds of nature and the profundity of a deep lyricist. It was the couplet/mantra, “Aguas que van, quieren volver...” that struck me in my Zapatista nerve.

I quickly connected with Grant and Pedro and I developed a bond with the majority of the artists releasing music vía ZZK Records. My Songcraft episode features many of them and ends with the latest artist release Mateo Kingman. Kingman’s release coincides with a passion project that Grant has been developing for years to document The Nu LatAm Sound.

This episode shines a light on the burgeoning musical renaissance in Ecuador– from the Amazon to the Andes, into the Quito underground and down to the pacific coast– and introduces Kingman, whose debut album, Respira, was released last week.  I hope you enjoy the music. #ESCUCHEN

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Music performed by Alpine Universe , Apeshit, Borchi, Chancha vía Circuito, Ditch Party, Fauna, Frikstailers, Hammond Classics, Héctor Guerra, Ibeyi, La Vida Boheme, Lila Downs, Los Rakas, Maga Bo, Mexican Institute of Sound, Ozomatli, Planeta Loco, Santigold, Sabo, Seu Jorge con Captain Planet, A Tribe Called Red, Ceci Bastida, La Yegros, Immortal Technique & Mateo Kingman. The next Intelatin episode will be released on the supermoon of September 2016.

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Intelatin is a monthly radio broadcast hosted by Sergio C. Muñoz in Los Angeles, California. It is published on Latino Rebels and Gozamos.com, marketed by Audioboom.com and podcasted on iTunes. You can also find us on Stitcher. Latin American culture is the focus of the program: music, film, food, literature and business. It is in its fifth year of production and is dedicated to the passage of the federal DREAM Act. The radio broadcast for Intelatin was started in 2012 at California State University Long Beach as outreach for their majority Latinx campus. The broadcast aired on KBeach Global and KKJZ 88.1 FM. Connect on Twitter @Intelatin.