Pushkin

Hey y'all it's Justin Richmond. Today on this show we're talking to Grammy award-winning musician Adrian Casada.

He's best known as one half of the Black Pumas with singer Eric Burton.

But since the pandemic started he's been working on a solo project called Baleros Psychedelicos or Psychedelic Baleros.

Inspired by Adrian's long time love of psychedelic music and Latin America love songs of the 60s and 70s,

he started thinking about how he might recreate Baleros and Baladas.

The album includes singers from all over Latin America as well as Tom Waits guitarist Mark Rebo and Beastie Boy collaborator Money Mark.

Released in June Baleros Psychedelicos reached number one on the Billboard Latin album chart.

On today's episode Adrian and a few of the singers featured on the album, Ile, Angelica Garcia and Tita,

talk about how the new album came together, the collaborative process and how Baleros and Baladas fit into Latin music today.

This is Broken Record, line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond.

Here's my conversation with Adrian Casada and his collaborators, Ile, Angelica Garcia and Tita.

So Adrian, last time I was talking to you was for the Black Pumas record.

You've been riding like a wave of love and success on that record that was seemingly unexpected, I'd imagine.

And your new project is Baleros Psychedelicos and it's a solo-ish project. A project you did yourself featuring a bunch of different singers.

How did this come together?

So this was very much a pandemic record, you know, and I always wanted to do something like this because I've just really been obsessed with this kind of music for a long time.

But when the pandemic started, I was supposed to be on tour with Black Pumas all of 2020.

Like everybody else, you know, like my ear just cleared out and all of a sudden, like I was home, I had nothing to do.

You know, some people were like baking bread and stuff, getting hobbies during the pandemic.

But I just started making music. I felt like that was what was keeping me from getting depressed.

I just finally had time to do this. I just started cranking out a ton of music, a ton of instrumentals and then I just started reaching out to amazing collaborators like Tita, Angelica Garcia, Ile, and they kind of brought it all to life.

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