Felix Contreras
Felix Contreras is co-creator and host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering program about Latin Alternative music and Latino culture. It features music as well as interviews with many of the most well-known Latinx musicians, actors, filmmakers, and writers. He has hosted and produced Alt.Latino episodes from Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, and throughout the U.S. since the show started in 2010.
Previously, Contreras was a reporter and producer NPR's Arts Desk and, among other stories and projects, covered a series reported from Mexico on the musical movement called Latin Alternative; helped produce NPR's award-winning series 50 Great Voices; and reported a series of stories on the financial challenges aging jazz musicians face.
Contreras is a recovering television journalist who has worked for both NBC and Univision in Miami and California. He's a part-time musician who plays Afro-Cuban percussion with various jazz and Latin bands in the Washington, DC, area. He is also NPR Music's resident Deadhead.
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Rapper Cardi B's song "Bodak Yellow" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This marks only the second time in history that a female rapper has topped the charts unaccompanied.
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Alt.Latino goes mining for new sounds in the less prominent categories of this year's Latin Grammys.
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Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras shares some classic gems and some new tunes that both pay tribute to Puerto Rico's traditional sound and expand the island's musical tradition.
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Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras teams up with NPR classical music maven Tom Huizenga to talk about composers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Brazil, delighting host Linda Wertheimer.
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As the host of a weekly public radio program pairing conversation and duet performances, McPartland brought many jazz greats to an audience of millions. For more than 40 years, she offered an intimate perspective on the elusive topic of improvisation.
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Though you may not know him by name, you certainly know his work: Mitchell produced a string of hits by Al Green in the early to mid-1970s.
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Ken Burns has drawn criticism in the past for omissions to his PBS series on baseball and jazz. Now the documentary filmmaker is drawing fire for leaving Hispanics and Native Americans out of his 14-hour World War II story.
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The nation's largest Spanish-language media company has been sold. A consortium of investors has agreed to pay about $13 billion to acquire the company, which reaches into the homes of about 98 percent of Spanish-speaking households in the United States.
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Last year no fewer than eight bands from Monterrey, Mexico, were invited to play at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. Some have called Monterrey the Seattle of Latin Alternative music, in reference to Seattle's role in the early 1990s as the incubator of grunge rock.
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Meshell Ndegeocello has released five critically acclaimed albums since 1993 that featured socially provocative lyrics driven by a solid groove. On her latest CD, Ndegeocello leaves her husky voice behind and lets her bass guitar take center stage. Felix Contreras reports.