Just to note before we get started this episode mentions sexual assault and s...
And if you or someone you know is in crisis call text or chat with the suicide in crisis lifeline at 988
From a PM music, this is all Latino. I'm Felix Contreras And I'm Ana Maria's there. Let the cheese me begin Okay, so Felix last Sunday. I hope you're aware who was in our national women's day and it's a month to celebrate So March 8th in particular is acknowledged in many parts of the world as a day of Notability right for women, but in large swath of Latin America it is much more than a perfunctory holiday
It's a yearly recognition for the acknowledgement support of basic rights for women and Ana
“You were in Mexico City on Sunday. What did you see in our national women's day?”
or Ocho M.A. in Mexico City is a huge deal. Mexico has one of the world's highest Femeside rates to this day and it's deeply embedded in everyday life.
One third of murders is at the hands of partners or ex-partners. So every year on the 8th of March
women take to the streets to demand attention and action over 120,000 people turned out in the streets on Sunday in Mexico City. Okay, so what you're hearing right there Felix is traffic lights being smashed to the soundtrack
“of I can buy myself flowers. It's a day of seeming contrast in many ways. The streets are”
lined with only female police officers. Some yell at them, others adorn them with flowers.
The police response in particular to Femeside is often sluggish and incomplete. With some
claiming that the government's limited response to these murders is designed to keep women oppressed. Nuna Mass, Nuna Mass, Nuna Sessina Mass. Not one more murdered one is something they chant over and over again. But Felix amidst all of the chanting there's a lot of singing too. It made me think about the lineage of protest resistance and fight for the feminine
“that exists in the Latin American song book. I saw so many signs that said this was the fight”
that had been started generations ago. They were now carrying that torch. Latin America's music has been defined in the past century by women who wrote and sang power into song. So this week we're going to take a moment to bring you some of our favorite power tracks from some of all Latinos very own Hall of Fame Latin American female singers. Nuna, you're up first.
Okay, so we're starting with one of the most classics of the classics. Gracias a la vida. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, medio dos en los heroes, que cuando los abro, perfecto de tingo, lo negro del blanco, en el alto cielo sus fondores, de llado, en las multitudes de nombre que yo amo. Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado nada, me ha dado el uno, que en todos los duños, yo. So famous Chilean singer via la tappara,
published this song in 1966, before she took her own life in 1967. One of her final messages to the world, thank you to life. And then in 1971, the beloved Argentine singer Mercedes also releases her version of the song. On an album she released paying homage to Violetta Parra, this is her version. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, medio dos en los heroes, que en todos
Los duños, yo.
version caught like wildfire across Latin America, and it's really been a canon song ever since.
“You know, what's interesting to me about this song is that, I mean, I hear in the violetta”
Parra's version or Mercedes Sosa's version, and it immediately takes me back to my college days in the late '70s. I'm out in California, part of the Chicano movement, like social movement, farm workers, there was all this progressive political thought going on, and people doing things in political thought. And one of the soundtracks was the whole level of canción movement from Latin America, which Violetta Parra song and Victor Harra and all of those singers, they
they created that with their folk music. The themes were so universal that they applied for the
“fight for civil rights for Chicanos in the southwest. And that's what I hear when I hear this”
music, like I'm immediately taking back to the profound statements, the poetry, the music, all
stuff, women playing guitars, like singing the songs, it's just such a powerful moment.
It's also one of those songs in one of those sentiments, Felix, that I think is really powerful in Latin America and Latino culture, because it's so deeply felt with limited explanation. Like, the basics of the song, I mean, it's almost eerie and end stunning to think about Violetta Parra writing these lyrics just being grateful for her feet, for her breath. I mean, these basic elements of life right before she takes her own. And then to hear it reverberated
in so many places for so many years, voicing Latin American struggle, or specifically as I heard it on Sunday, the struggle for life for women by simply acknowledging its value. There's something
really powerful. I was trying to explain it to a friend recently, like the beauty of the song,
and she was like, "This just sounds kind of disturbing to me." But I was like, "You don't get it!" And then my other friend, my friend, who's Mexican, was sitting there and immediately just
“started singing the song. And there's just this, I think that there's something really powerful”
in the acknowledgement of life being this really deep form of protest. Yeah. That was two versions of Gracias a la vida, bye Violetta Parra. Okay, Felix, what are you got today? Okay, if anything is endemic, it's this song, Wantanameda, performed by everyone's favorite Cuban Thea Celia Cruz. It has a rich history of the lyrics, the songwriter, the lyric writer, many covers, but the most famous was any time Celia Cruz sang it. Here's the first recording of the song that she did
from 1967 her album Bravo. And the song has become one of the most expressive statements of love for Cuba, the island and the culture. Check it out. [Music] That voice, man. That is going to be the through line of all of the songs, Felix, the voices. Yeah. Wantanameda means a person from Wantanamo, which is the eastern part of the island,
which most people in the United States know because of the military base. The lyrics were adapted from the poetry of Jose Martí, who was a writer poet and revolutionary during the fight for independence from Spain in the late 1800s. The song form is Guajida. It's a very specific type of laid-back country sound. In Celia's hands, it creates a poignancy that other versions don't
have because it's well known that after she left, she was never allowed to go back. The government
didn't let her back, not even for her mother's funeral. So there was a really bite of sadness on
That and she kept an intense love for her home and everything that she did af...
those songs because no matter where you stand politically about what's going on in Cuba or the Cuban government, both sides both look up to Jose Martí as a writer poet and an expression of
“everything Cuban. That's what the magic of this song is and her version of it is that it celebrates”
everything that she loved about Cuba and that she had to leave behind. One of the things that excited me the most Felix about you bringing this song is that Celia has that unica ability to sound
party to sound light to sound fiesta and she never overtly talked about political things she never
overtly condemned the Cuban government in her music and yet there's always a weight to everything she does. There's a weight to her party. There's a weight to her dance. There's a weight to her voice. More than anything. It's a party and themic voice and yet it carries so much and I think that that's something that you can hear. In this song especially you can hear it in her most La Negra tiene dombao. You can hear it in anything that she does is that there's a deepness, there's a depth,
there's a sadness in some ways that I think makes it almost more danceable and more powerful. That's the Cuban way as it is in a lot of Latin America. So it's a dance through the pain. Very well put. I mean, I've seen grown people cry when this song is played at a restaurant or something. It's just it has that kind of reach. One of my favorite versions is Celia singing with the Fania All Stars in 1974 and it's not on a record. It's on a video.
I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how to make it. Celia in the Fania All Stars were invited to perform at a music festival in Zayir in Africa and it took place during a Muhammad League fight with George Forman in 1974. They had this music festival. They had a lot of R&BXB be king, but some other people went along and they performed and the Fania All Stars were invited to close that circle on the African diaspora. The performance I'm speaking about is a video of
it. I don't know what you're talking about. The video of the afternoon rehearsal, man, because their voice is so relaxed. Oh my god. Her voice is so relaxed and then when the
whole band comes in and the groove and the moment get good, man, she gives this amazing smile
that makes me cry every time because it's so Celia. It's everything about her, her smile, her joy, her innovation, habits to music. Man, it's melted in my mind. You've got to check it out. It's really spectacular. It's one of our favorites. We have to let people hear it. That was one that I met. I we heard in 1967.
“Version in a little bit of video from 1974. From the great Celia Cruz. Okay Anna. What do you got?”
♪ But I'm still a singer ♪ ♪ If I stay at the singer ♪ ♪ I'll be back at the moment ♪ ♪ The Esperanza ♪ ♪ The light ♪
♪ And the joy ♪ ♪ If I stay at the singer ♪ ♪ If I'm alone ♪ ♪ I'll be back at the moment ♪ ♪ The joy ♪
♪ And the joy ♪ ♪ And the joy ♪ ♪ And the joy ♪ ♪ And the joy ♪ ♪ And the joy ♪
- I mean, the way she starts that song, Felix. [speaking in foreign language] If the singer falls silent, life falls silent because life itself is a song.
“- This song is one of the best, I think,”
examples of writing about music from a musician. It's like, and the role that music plays,
how essential it is to life.
That's to the people that made the record,
people that were listening to the records, the people that she thought would listen to it. You know, Latin America or whatever. It's like, it's so well written.
I've always loved the intricacy of life and music
and everything altogether. It's like, without one, you don't have the other. - And there's something really poignant about the use of that can see as this kind of, I want to say it's a reverence for life
and it's also, again, like, it's kind of acknowledging or even like fighting for the preciousness of life, which is something that I feel a lot in some of these
“best songs, it reminds me honestly, a lot,”
Felix of Sylvanas Thratasongsi-Mimathan, which is explicitly about Femesaiar. I mean, there's lyrics in there where she says, like, she opens that song saying, if they kill me, when they find me, let them always say
that I was a singer following my dreams. She says, like, everyone I grew up with fear, but I went out alone anyways to look at the stars and to love life. And there's this really beautiful echoed
active resistance in just living and acknowledging that life is fleeting. And I saw that also, in the demonstrations on Sunday, Felix, a lot of this voicing of dreams, of things that people wanted to be saying,
let me go study and return to my family with a degree and not as a body. Like I saw that sign repeated over and over again.
“It's this voicing of we understand that life is fleeting”
and we want it to be less. We want it to be just as precious, because we acknowledge this precious, but we want it to feel less like something we could lose at any moment.
It's like, is the active resistance and a merceness suicide in this song with that voice? It's so perfectly effortlessly there, that feeling. It's like, I want to say it's a melancholy, but not even.
There's not a word for it, except when you hear it, you know it. What I really like about what we're doing and taking time to think about these anthems and these vocalists is the way that, for example, Marseille, social, and cellulose,
there are different cultures, different countries, different backgrounds, but there were just so profound that their performances, everything about them.
“And when you put it together and with the rest of the voices”
that we're gonna present here, it's like this tapestry
of just amazing female voices and presence
and lyrics and messages. We're gonna take a break and then hear more voices right after this. This message comes from wise. The app for international people
using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive and up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get wise, download the wise app today or visit wise.com, tease and seize apply.
- Okay, we're back and Anna, we're gonna go to Houston, Texas, 1934, with vocalist Lydia Mendoza. This is a track called Mal Ombre. She was born in 1916 in Houston.
She was of a family of musicians
and a travel and perform for basically Mexican laborers
from Texas to California and around. They followed the workers. And when she turned 18, she recorded on her own for the first time and that very first song she recorded, not only became her most recognized song,
it became a statement of female empowerment among the Mexican-American community and then much larger after that. This is Mal Ombre or Badman from 1934 from Lydia Mendoza.
(singing in foreign language) , (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) - Don't you just wanna sing that to every single man in your life, you know?
(laughing) And it's Mal Ombre, Mal Ombre. - Two things stand out, first of all the lyrics because the story is of the life of a young woman who was seduced at a very young age by a man
who was not a good guy at Mal Ombre. Bad things happen and then she survives to write about the experience of basically call 'em out. That's how this song is described
In various periodicals, online stuff.
I've always interpreted the circumstances
of this song as sexual assault of a woman who's not a bitch 'cause when you listen to the lyrics at first line, I was a still young girl when by chance you found me and thanks to you worldly magic that perfume of my honor you took.
And then things got worse from there in the song. And through the song, Lydia Mendosa defies this subordination of women during that time. This is in 1930s and takes a self-affirming stance. The five tradition of my cheese moan misogyny
that can still be very much part of a Mexican or a Chicano culture.
“- I think it's important to acknowledge two Felix”
that the event that she's describing is something that was end to this day is frequent. I think a lot more frequent than anyone wants to acknowledge and I think especially at the time,
I mean, there's something extremely revolutionary
about releasing a song that is almost explicitly, if not explicitly describing these events, I mean, that was just something that you did not do. And so the practice alone of turning that into art and again, it's something that a lot of people turn
those experiences in those feelings and what comes from them into art. To turn that into art, to perform it openly. I mean, that's power, like that is bravery on another level, really.
- That course is cold-hearted man. You're so so wicked, it has no name. You're a pig, you are evil. You are a cold-hearted man, my lombry. And the other aspect of it, you know,
we talk a lot about the cultural mashup
“and that area between Northern Mexico and Monterey, Mexico”
and San Antonio, you know, with the mixture of the German and Austrian influences of Waltz's, Polkos, the cordians. We've talked about that a lot.
She always performed with just her 12 string guitar
and her voice. And this song doesn't sound like a chorizo or Rancetta or anything back then. It has a tango feel and which comes from the sudden cone, Argentina, Uruguay, and I have her memoirs.
And she said that she heard the rhythm on the radio and wrote that song to that particular syncopation. So she's a well-known chorizo, Rancetta singer, but her most famous song is from a tango. ♪ Oh, but the angle ♪
♪ This can't be seen in the radio ♪ ♪ And this song goes ♪ ♪ My life is in the end ♪ ♪ One night, one night ♪ ♪ But I'm thirsty ♪
♪ And I'll meet you in the future ♪ - Well, and I wonder about her selection of a tango in a way because, in some ways, there's an expression of anger. - Here, that maybe that's distinct.
Maybe from how she typically played maybe the 12 string and her voice wasn't sufficient in this moment, in this way, to kind of like get out that feeling and I was talking to a friend recently about... She was like, when I couldn't find any other emotion
and grow as the first one that I could grab onto.
“And I think that there's something about meeting a sound”
that feels a little bit outside of your usual to be able to communicate such a forceful emotion and she sounds kind of angry, but more like definitive to me. There's an angry feel like that tango
does kind of feel like it's dancing with anger, but ultimately it comes out very definitive, which I think is a lot more effective in many ways than just a straight ahead. - Girl, you know?
- Right. The song is "Mal Omere" from Lydia Mendoza from 1934. - You're next. - We've already made it to my last song.
This is a song by our favorite Chilean adopted Mexican while La Ferre, talking about amazing voices. The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪
♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪
♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ ♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪
♪ The song is called "Seva la Vía". ♪ - I love that you brought in a singer from right now
Because Moana Frette is definitely one of these vocalists along with
like Natalia La Fercade, who they will be speaking about in the future the way we talk about Violeta Parra, and the way we talk about Silicruz, any of these women that we talk about in the past, they are them right now and then moving on into the future. - Right, that's exactly Felix. I was going to say this is off of her 2021 album
but it fits right into this canon of female power of the last century, like she will fit perfectly right in there. She already does, and it's again, it's the combination of that striking voice that just carries so, so much that ballad of a voice and then the lyrics. I mean, the chorus of this is life goes away
from a little girl from a grandmother. Oh life goes away the cement prize for the injustice. And there's something especially striking to me that I've been thinking about this whole time too, Felix is the intergenerationality of it all. It feels really, really tragic and empowering.
“I think, you know, I saw little girls at this demonstration, like,”
literally from babies to our waylands, at this demonstration, and it's something that it affects all of us, right? And that's something that so many people with signs saying, "I'm here with my mom today so that she doesn't have to be out here for me tomorrow." Or I don't want to, like, little babies three years old with signs saying,
like, "I don't want to grow up in fear." And that's something I think that no matter who you are, you know, as a woman, that's something I think of, "Oh, all the things that I do because my mom and my grandma couldn't is constantly a thought in my head." And as you move with the generations of same pains,
get repeated, but also things change. And so there's something about mum being able to encapsulate that so perfectly in this song and often times in what she does.
I mean, she's very rebellious and revolutionary,
and also sexual themes that she includes in her music. And life themes, and she's just very unapologetic and brave,
“I think, in who she is as an artist all the time.”
Yeah, yeah. Okay, Felix, close us out. Okay, so I brought in another, curiously, we didn't compare notes, and then we'd come, like, right on top of each other again, and we're very similar themes.
I brought in another contemporary anthem by a contemporary singer, and it's "Kiddle by Lot" from "Eve Queen." Okay, so "Ragged Dawn" has been an adventure for me. It came of age. Just as I started to cover Latin music full time for NPR.
And for those that don't know the history, it was around late 90s, only 2000s. It started to develop.
And that first it was considered underground music,
made by marginalized neighborhoods in Puerto Rico, and initially Panama. And it became known for seriously misogynistic lyrics, and an overall negative attitude toward women. When I first started listening to what I had friends who had kids,
who didn't like any of it because of that, the track I'm gonna play today challenged that and changed the world of "Ragged Dawn." It's from 2003, "Ragged Dawn" pioneer, "Eve Queen." "Kiddle by Lot."
"Ragged Dawn" pioneer, "Eve Queen." "Eve Queen" was a trailblazer just by being there, because he think about it back then, the scene was dominated by man. When I interviewed her in 2020,
she said that her voice was so low that many thought that she wasn't man, and realized what was going on in the clubs and all that,
“she wrote this song and check out the lyrics, okay?”
I want to dance, and you want to sweat and stick to me, our body's touching, and I tell you, yeah, you can tease me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bed. I want to dance, you want to sweat, stick to me, our body's touching, you can tease me,
but that doesn't mean I'm going to bed. But I like my boy. And then she goes, nah, nah, nah, nah. It's such an important moment. The cultural social impact has been significant.
It made a big noise when it first came out,
and it has only grown in popularity and significance
To reach the point of being a true anthem.
This is one of my favorite songs to reference Felix
when people say that burial is misogynistic, or it's sexualized in a way that's wrong for women. All of these things can be true. They're absolutely misogynistic. I get those songs,
but you also have people like Evie Queen, who write a song that says, she literally says, I'm the one who came on that. I'm the one who directs I'm the one who's driving this thing. Like, she completely revolutionarily says,
I'm making a song that you can shake your butt to. If you want to, and you can do whatever you want about that.
One thing does not have to mean the other.
“And I think that even looking at some of these songs”
that do have lyrics that feel anti-feminist or feel misogynistic, you can dance to them however you want to dance to them. You can use them, you cannot. You can listen, you cannot.
And there's something really deeply important about claiming the narrative around songs or a style of music that people can dance. Again, it's often men who are condemning Barrel as misogynistic.
Also, there's so many layers to it and to say, no, I can dance however I want to dance. I can sing however I want to sing. And every bustle, every step of this is going to be my decision in mind alone.
There's nothing stronger than that. You know, I gotta tell our listeners that in our 2023 El Tiny Celebration our Latin music month, we invited Evie Queen. And she captured the power of the song
in the message in that stripped down arrangement she did with the string quartet in the piano. She was everything that she is and she saved the song to the end
and it was just, it was just still so powerful
because the message is powerful no matter what kind of context you put it in, check it out. This is from 2023, Tiny Desk with Evie Queen. I know this happens to you on a people-lasky,
“all the time, like what is your favorite, tiny desk?”
Man, if this isn't my favorite, it's near the top, man. The way that she delivered the song, you can hear the song. I know this happens to you on a people-lasky, all the time.
Like, what is your favorite, Tiny Desk? Man, if this isn't my favorite, it's near the top, man. The way that she delivered the song, you can hear the song. You can hear the crowd interacting with her. She was, again, everything that she is
and the power of that song just completely stripped down. I just, I just love that moment. It was so thrilling to be part of it and then to see it over and over again. And the way those strings build, too.
I still, I say this all the time. Like, everyone kept coming up to me
“leading up to the performance and they're like,”
how is Evie Queen coming in with out drums? And I was like, she's Evie Queen. She can do it. She can do it with the strings. And she did.
I mean, you can hear it. It's so powerful. I think you can hear me screaming, man. I heard myself. It's like, man!
That was ghetto by loud. A couple of different versions from Evie Queen. It's going to close out our female power anthem. What did you call this? Female power anthem's Hall of Fame episode.
All of those songs fit exactly that. You have been listening to All Latino from MMPR Music. Our audio producer is Noah Calwell. The executive producer of MMPR Music is Siriam Muhammad. Our executive director of MMPR Music is Sonali Mehta.
I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Thank you for listening. (upbeat music)
