Adventures In Spanish (Aventuras En Español): NPR's Alt Latino Portrays Diversity Of Latin Music

In my quest to become fluent in Spanish, I recently stumbled upon an excellent site: NPR's Alt Latino, which can be accessed at http://www.npr.org/blogs/altlatino/.

I came across this site while listening to an interview with Carlos Santana on NPR's Morning Edition (outstanding African-American journalist Michel Martin conducted the interview). At the end of the interview, there was a promo stating that more with Carlos Santana was available at the Alt Latino site.

Santana's 42-minute interview with Alt Latino's Felix Contreras is fascinating. Santana is currently promoting his autobiography, The Universal Tone, and in the interview he discusses his early years growing up in Mexico and San Francisco. Billed as a "guest DJ," he shares audio samples of his early musical influences.  

Just as Santana's music is a unique blend of blues, rock and traditional Latin music, so are the sounds that inspired him as a young musician. During the Alt Latino piece, he plays everything from traditional Latin music to The Doors' "Light My Fire."

One of the most interesting parts of the interview is when Contreras asks Santana why, when he was starting out, he chose to venture beyond the mariachi music he was raised on. Santana relates that while he appreciates the traditional music of his culture, it's not what stirred his soul as a young guitar player: "I knew it was best to respect it and leave it alone" (paraphrased).

Santana knew from a young age that he wanted to rock out.

Alt Latino appears to be primarily a music site and features shows in which musicians and music journalists discuss and play music by Latin artists that listeners may not come across anywhere else.

By perusing some of the shows on Alt Latino, I discovered a song that instantly became one of my favorites: Mia Maestro's "Llovera," a hypnotic ballad that appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Breaking Dawn in the Twilight series.

This song is so entrancing that I didn't even realize until after listening to it a couple of times that the lyrics are in a language other than English (I believe it's Spanish). You can listen to the song on YouTube at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo0DRMQW1Ls.

I also learned that Latin music and salsa dancing is huge in certain parts of Japan. Who knew?!

A big part of mastering a language involves learning about the culture from which the language originates. By visiting the Alt Latino site, you'll definitely get a diverse sampling of Latin culture.