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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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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Felix Contreras offers an appreciation of Cuban vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, who died over the weekend. Ferrer played a starring role in the Buena Vista Social Club, a group of musicians re-discovered by music fans around the world. Their recordings, concerts and a popular documentary helped revive a classic Afro-Cuban musical style called son.
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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.
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The rise in the Hispanic population in the United States has meant an increase in Hispanic media outlets: radio stations, newspapers, and television. The boom has implications for the country's diverse Hispanic communities and for advertisers.
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Chip Taylor is a music business vet who penned "Wild Thing" before Carrie Rodriguez was born. But the unlikely duo are critical darlings and staples of adult album alternative radio. -
Henry Grimes was an A-list jazz musician in the 1950s and '60s. But then he dropped out of the music scene and fell into emotional isolation. Now at 69, the bass player is making a comeback. His story concludes a series on the plight of aging jazz musicians.
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Reissues are the bread and butter of the jazz record business, but the artists whose talents made the records possible often miss out on the royalties that could help sustain them in old age.
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Organizations such as the Jazz Foundation of America and Billy Taylor's JazzMobile are striving to help older jazz musicians in need. Another group supposed to help musicians is the American Federation of Musicians union, but it has been criticized for failing to cater to jazz artists.
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When saxophonist Frank Foster played with the Count Basie Orchestra in the 1950s, the band took out deductions for Social Security and a union pension. But the retirement benefits don't cover his expenses and a debilitating stroke left him unable to earn a living. -
Spoken or sung, the Portuguese language often sounds like music. NPR's Felix Contreras profiles Brazilian bossa nova singer Rosa Passos. Her new album, Amorosa, preserves the traditional style of Brazilian jazz and pays tribute to a bossa nova great: Joao Gilberto.
