This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics with A Magnificent Life. From the imaginative director of The Triplets of Belleville comes a new animated film. Marcel Peño must relive his colorful past by writing about his own childhood in Select Cities, March 27th. From NPR Music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana María Seyer. Let the Chisme begin. Okay, Felix, this week we're doing one of my favorite types of episodes. So you and I, we brought in a lot of amazing records so far already this year that we're really excited about. And there's been a few that we want to spend an extra amount of time with one in particular. It's one that hasn't even come out yet. But we're going to give everyone today a little bit of a preview not only of the music but of the sounds, sights, smells, and inspired the record. The album is called Antonima. It's coming out on April 3rd and it's by the Argentine vocalist, Sofia Ray. It has an incredible list of collaborators including Gabi Moreno, Daimia Rosena, Mireia Ramos, Senia Rubinos, Juana Luna, just to name a few. And we're extremely, extremely honored to have her with us on the line today, Sofia. Welcome back to All Latino. Thank you, Felix and Ana María. This is so, so I'm so excited to be here. I love you guys. I listen to you guys. Oh my goodness. We love you and listen to you and are more fan of you. So what we did was we asked Sofia to bring in some tracks that have influenced her, that she's listening to, that maybe influenced the record, just sort of stuff. For your life. Yeah. Any of it. All of the above. She sent me a super, super long list. We paired it up because I get it, right? How are you going to... Honestly, if I had to do this, I just wouldn't. I'd be like, no, this is my list of 100 or nothing. Super, super difficult to narrow it down. Before we get to that list though, we're going to hear a little bit of the new record. This is the title track. It's called Antonima and it features a group called Las Añez from Colombia, right? Right. Okay, check it out. Sofia. Wow. Casual. Oh my gosh. How did this thing come together conceptually because listening to your records over the years, there's always something a little different. You always have a little bit of an idea, a theme, but this one seems to be completely like realized and very, very well thought out with the layers of the voices and the concepts and rhythms. Like just on that one alone. I mean, like, how do you do this, man? Where does this stuff come from? So I actually realized not so long ago that this whole thing started with a playlist that I put together of all these phenomenal women from all parts of Latin America that are creating music that I love, that are doing things that are related to Latin folk music, but in a very different way. Like some of them are into electronic, some of them are mixing things up with Afro-Caribbean stuff. Some of them are into soul music. Some of them are into experimental pop. Some of them are into and they are just doing something new or something different. And I was like, oh, I want all these folks in the record together. How can we make it happen? So it took a long time, Felix, because we recorded in Buenos Aires, in Córdoba, in Bogota, with Las Añas, this track that you just listened to, in Miami, with Aimee, in LA, with Gabi. And also we started working with my long-time collaborator, JC Maylard, in crafting the sound of this record, which was very, very artisanal in a way. Like every sound you hear, every instrument, if it's virtual or if it's acoustic, was like really, really worked on. And we, you know, I envisioned kind of like the perfect marriage between the electronic sounds that we love for so long, but keeping being able to keep the DNA of these rhythms, it was like a gift to me to have these incredible women on the record. Something that I tell people a lot about music from all parts of Latin America, and this is a generalization, but I feel as though often collaboration is more naturally a part of the process. It's more, you know, accepted, used. You see people collaborating across records all the time, but what I love about everything you're describing is the intentionality behind not only selecting these artists that you deeply admire, but really this very thoughtful, yet natural infusion of a lot of different cultures. I mean, you see perhaps artists from Mexico collaborating with other artists from other parts of Mexico, or you'll see maybe like Caribbean artists coming together, like a very naturally Puerto Rican and Dominican or something to that effect, but the way you tied in a Gabi and a Sonia and a Daime, as if it all makes perfect sense together, because I think it does. There's something, there is something, and in the sonic landscape that you've really built in this record, they do fit beautifully in a way that you wouldn't expect them to. Yeah, it was really interesting to, in the case of songs where I invited them, I was like, okay, where can Gabi shine, or where can Chad or Shine, and whatever we're going to be putting together. And I don't know, I really like that we managed to make something very pan-Latin, like global Latin in a way. I love that you use that term pan-Latin, because pan-Latin is such a, it has a specific association with it, that you've kind of flipped on its head a little bit. And looking at the playlist that you brought in today, also very pan-Latin in the way that you're describing it. I mean, you have clearly influences artists you admire from a lot of different regions of the world in Latin America and outside. So we want to start by playing the first song you brought in today, which is God, one of my deeply personal favorites. This is Te Guardo by Silvan Estrada. Pienso es diferente te guardo un poquito de fe para abrir los ojos y verte pero si un día tu me encuentras y ahora piensas diferente te guardo mi luz de mañana mis ojos mi amor y mi amor Okay, so I'm curious, okay, Anna and I have talked a lot about Silvan Estrada on the show. I bet. About why we like her and what appeals to us. I'm curious about what do you hear, what attracted you to her music as a fellow musician? Like, how do you filter that appreciation based on your own creativity? I find Silvana to be the best representation of the things I love in music and in folk, Latin folk music in particular. I think she's the present of Latin folk music. Literally, I cannot think of anybody else that could be at that level of beauty and creativity. Her poetry is just incredible. Her voice is to die for. It's just like she opens her mouth. I saw her live multiple times and I'm like, you can't breathe. You need to wait until the end of the phrase to even attempt to breathe again. It's just, it's just mesmerizing and I really like as a musician her musicianship level, you know, I appreciate that. I appreciate how great she is playing multiple instruments. She also has a connection to jazz, which is part of my background and something very important in my music and a major influence in everything that I do. And she, you know, she listened to her influences, Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday. And I just, I couldn't stop, you know, listening to her. If she would do a four hour show, I'd be happy to be standing and clapping and dancing and dancing. We were listening to the voice of Silvana Estrada with the track Tenguardo from her 2022 album, Marchita. We're going to continue with the next track. One of the things I discovered when I think back about how long we've been doing the show, one of the connective tissues is my fascination and appreciation for female vocalists of all kinds. And one of the ones I remember very distinctly hearing Juan Molina for the first time and just being completely mesmerized and blown away. And it's fortunate enough to have her on a tiny desk and also in every who are on the show once. Let's play a little bit of the track that you brought in. It's called Sing Donnes and then we'll talk a little bit about her. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh well well well I like to think of Juana Molina as, and get it correct if I'm wrong, as the Madrina of women who do amazing things with their voices, either naturally or with electronics. I love her. I love how odd her choices are. The song forms she creates are completely different from what you would expect of a pop song. The way she also uses live electronics is very specific, very particular. She's always being herself. And I don't know if you know, but Juana had a major career when she was in her 20s as a comedian back home. In Argentina. The most incredible stuff you've ever seen. She had a show called Juana y sus hermanas, where she would play multiple characters. And it was also very much herself because it was a very, very weird type of humor. It was on public television. Everybody was watching this show, being like, oh my God, this is hilarious, this woman. She's so talented. She's a very talented actress and comedian. And when she was at the peak of her career, she's like, yeah, you know what? I just want to play music. And all of a sudden, people started to recognize that she was kind of a genius and she was doing something really new and very, very innovative. And so she's really a pioneer. She's very experimental in her way of approaching music. And that's what I admire of her. When I had her on the show, I surprised her at the end of the show and I had her, disperidivinos, to say goodbye in one of her TV character voices. Her voice and her character and her whole being, she took a second and she went into that, I guess, her zone. And it was like a little kid's voice almost, right? And she was this little kid. Right in front of me. And it transformed. It was, I'll never forget it. Her voice, her being, everything about her became this like little, little person, little kid person, this character. She's an incredible actress and her mother was a phenomenal actress, super famous actress and her father was a tango musician. And I think she got the best out of both of them. It's a good DNA, good DNA that she got. And she did something spectacular with it. We're in the studio talking to Sophia Ray about her new record, but also about some of her favorite records. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. And we're back from break. We're sitting here with Sophia Ray talking about some of her favorite music. Is that fair to say? Most influential, perhaps. Right. All right. We're going to move on to this next track, which I was surprised and excited that you put on here. This is a track from two yards and the song is called business. Okay. Another song that I had not heard in years. This was like an amazing reminder of things that I love. I was like, I forgot I love this song. I mean, I said it didn't make sense until it really did. I think that there's a really clear through line to me of some of the things that it's clear that you admire. And what about this song specifically? And I'm noting the vocalizations, especially here, really draws you in. The first time I heard teen yards, I think this was the first song I heard. I was like, oh my God, she's like my American sister. What's going on? I never met Meryl, but I would love, would love to do a collaboration with her one day because again, I feel like, hey, we should, yeah, it's like a sister from the north that I should meet sometime. Okay. We're going to put it out there. Hopefully she's listening. I was going to say noted. Before we move on to the next track, you mentioned JC Maylard at the beginning of the show, just a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about your creative relationship, the association that you have with him? Because I've seen you guys live. He's on all of your records, just about where did that come from? Where's he from? Because he's got an interesting backstory. But then how do you guys work together? What's that chemistry like? That's a really great question. JC and I met at the Montreal Jazz Festival and I was introduced to him by my friend, Malika Zara. I think it was 2011, 2012. And I went to see them play. And I was like, what? What's going on? He's a multi-instrumentalist. He's from the French Caribbean. He's from an island called Guadeloupe. And he is one of the most musical humans I have ever met. And he's really skilled in piano and guitar and bass and percussion. And he's a great songwriter and a great producer as well. So he was very essential in the making of this record. The way we work, typically I do write and then I bring the ideas and the writing to him and then we start to bring storm about, okay, how are we going to bring this to life in the studio in particular? And he's an incredible producer. We produced this record together and we worked hours and hours an end for each song to have, as I was saying at the beginning, the type of sound and the cohesiveness that we wanted. Because again, we're mixing so many different things here. It's like it could very easily turn into a spoiled soup with sugar. And we work together super well. We get along really well and musically we understand each other super well. So it's like really a pleasure to have a musical partner like that. You can see it too when you guys play live. There's like this unspoken thing. When I saw you, I forget, I don't remember who else was in the band, but I know you had Hortke Glem in the band with Venezuelan cuatro player and then JC and you and I forget who else. But like all these amazing musicians on the stage, but there was something between you guys, man. It just works. And here's the thing also, we worked as a duo. We worked as a trio. We worked in a sextet. We have managed to create music in so many different formats that really worked for us. And again, he sings really well. I'm like, so lucky I was able to fire everybody after I met him. I'm like, okay, that's it. That's it. It's just easy. That's with one guy you have your orchestra. So that's it. Okay. More music. More music. Oh, okay. This last one too. Oh my goodness. I need like an expanded version of this playlist, whatever your original 100 songs were. I'm gonna send it to you. No, please. I'm super, super serious. Okay. So last song we have for today. This is another amazing legendary deserves to be in the Hall of Fame Rita Indiana. This is her song Mandinga Times. She is to this day, I think one of those almost to me a best kept secret in a lot of ways of the kind of like independent alternative scene where what she did and continues to do is instrumental, I think in defining some of the sounds that we hear today, some of the most exciting sounds that we hear today. And yet maybe has not fully gotten her flowers for how innovative, for how brilliant she is in manipulating sound. I mean, you can hear it in that song, right? I could see Felix with that percussion absolutely losing his mind as he does. What about her specifically really, really has inspired you, I would imagine? Well, I agree with you. She's brilliant and not enough people know of her music and her, actually her overall, she has a career as a writer. A novelist. Yeah. Latin science fiction. Are you kidding me? It's amazing. It's like, it blew my mind and her lyrics are just out of this world. The sound of her music is kind of like a perfect marriage of analog and digital. And this song in particular is as a Dominican merengue on steroids. Super steroids. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, this is it. This is it exactly because she again, she takes tradition and she pushes it to the very extreme present or the future actually, because she's a futuristic, this is futuristic folk. Like I like it. You know, like this is it. That's it. And I started this project calling it folk confuturism. And I think Rita represents that in the best possible way. So of course she needed to be in my short playlist and she's definitely my long playlist as well. Former All Latino Co-host Jasmine Garz introduced me to her years and years ago, right after we started the show. And I was just checking right now, we had her on as a guest DJ, like we're doing right now in 2011, right after this track came out. I remember talking, spending a lot of time talking about the mechanics of how to play merengue so fast. Exactly. There is something, it's not easy to keep the groove alive when you are also bringing the electronic component and she does it super well. And it's the whole package also, you see her performances and there is a very well crafted image, her style, her clothing style, the way she presents herself, the storytelling. It's just brilliant, brilliant. Before we close out, that wasn't exactly the last song. We want to close out the show with one of your songs. But before we do that, we wanted to thank you for taking time to share this music with us and talk to you a little bit about your record. One of the things that I was taking notes to one of the things that I just, I think it's a statement. I mean, it's like a statement of pan-Latin female creativity is what, when I think of whenever I think of your work and then all the musicians that you work with at the same time, it's just, I'm always just completely mesmerized by the scope of how you hear things. That's, to me, is the secret, the secret sauce. It's like, it's how you hear them. We all listen to the same stuff, man. Colombian music, we all listen to it, right? The stuff you do with Dimead is Afro-Cuban is Santiria, but it's the way you hear it and the way you and JC put it together that makes it so special. Thank you, Felix. I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Appreciate you guys for your show, for your love, you know, and it's really special to be here with you. I'm really excited about this record. It's something I wanted to do for a long time. It took forever, but it's here. Yay! Yay! And I gotta say, with the list of collaborators that you have on the show, it was like a stamp of approval of what we do here on the show because I look at the list, Gabby, Dimead, Mire, they're all women we featured on the show or including you on the tiny desk and all that. So, if you think they're cool, then I think we're on the right track. That's all Felix is really waiting for. I was like, Felix, you've got to know everybody here. They all like you, of course. That's awesome. Let's close out the show with your song, Siete Lidios. Tell us a little bit about it before we hear it. So this is a song that we recorded with Mariana Baraj. She was one of the first people I heard back home in Argentina doing more experimental folk folkloric music. She's a percussionist, she's a singer. She knows traditional music really well, but she always from the very beginning from her first record decided to do something different with it. Very minimalistic, very organic, yet bringing it to a completely different sonic landscape. So I asked her if she wanted to do this with me and this is a song of mine called Siete Lidios. And we were able to record it in Buenos Aires a few years back. The name of the record is Antonima by Sofia Rey. It comes out on April 3rd. You have been listening to All Latino from NPR Music. Our audio producer is Noah Caldwell. Sere Mohamed is the executive producer of NPR Music. Sonali Mehta is executive director of NPR Music. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Thanks for listening. From WQXR and Carnegie Hall comes classical music happy hour, a new podcast hosted by me, pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music inspired games and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th. Listen on the NPR app.
