A moment for Los Angeles

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Los Angeles is home for me and always in my heart. Watching the fires from afar in my current city, New York, has me thinking a lot about what makes my hometown great: breathtaking mountains, stunning beaches and above all a hodgepodge, tapestry community that comes together in powerful ways during a painful moment.

The good and bad of LA's history — redlining and rebuilding, previous fires and displacement, immigration and annexation — have all been building blocks for an exchange of culture that shows up in layers in its music and art. This week on Alt.Latino, we've decided to shine a light on some of the sounds that feel most quintessentially LA, while also specifically honoring the creativity that has come from communities most affected by the fires.

We're thinking of family and friends, and the beating heart of the city as a whole. There's nothing quite like LA and we hope this episode is an intro to some and an invitation for others to celebrate what makes it so special. —Anamaria Sayre

Songs featured on this episode:

•José Feliciano, "California Dreamin"
•Ry Cooder feat. Lalo Guerrero, "Barrio Viejo"
•Banda MS feat. Becky G and Snoop Dogg, "Que Maldicion"
•Jasper Bones, "Amor de mis sueños"
•Gerardo Ortiz, "Dámaso"
•Empress Of, "For Your Consideration"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From NPR Music, this is Alt Latino.
0:03.0	I'm Felix Contreras.
0:04.3	And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Let the Chisemay begin.
0:08.5	And this week, Anna, the Chisemay is a little serious.
0:11.5	It's a little, a bit heartfelt this week.
0:16.1	We're going to dedicate this episode to Southern California, to Los Angeles, specifically, in light of all the fires and all the stuff that's going on there.
0:25.4	We're both from California. It's touching both of our hearts. You more so, I think, because you actually are from Southern California.
0:33.4	Yeah, Felix. It's a city that I think is really significant to a lot of people in our community.
0:38.4	It's almost 50% Latino.
0:41.7	It used to be Mexico.
0:43.6	So we just wanted to take some space to talk about the music that has been a part of why it's so special.
0:49.4	So we've each dipped into our own personal catalog of music about Southern California to help us send out
0:57.3	healing energy and good vibes to the folks that are suffering through that stuff.
1:02.1	Felix is going to share a couple of songs that generally remind us of the LA community,
1:07.8	and I'll be sharing some music that's more specifically from the affected areas.
1:12.9	And I always teases me about this. I'm an old softie. I'm going to go back to 1968 and a recording by Jose Feliciano.
1:19.9	He did a cover of a song called California Dreaming, which was written from the perspective of someone in New York thinking about California,
1:28.3	and it resonates with me because it reflects my own very first trip to New York in December of 1981,
1:34.3	and it was cold and gray and dark, exactly like the lyrics say,
1:38.3	and it really struck home to me. It really hit me finally.
1:42.3	I understood hearing him sing this lament about dreaming of California.
1:47.6	And that's sort of where I am right now, thinking about all the folks in Southern California.
	...

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