Alt.Latino: Roots and unity at the Latin Grammys

All Songs Considered

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Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

The annual Latin Grammy awards are always full of glamour and glitz. But they're also an ideal time to take the pulse of the industry - which is exactly what Anamaria Sayre did this year, perusing the red carpet to talk with the most exciting names in Latin music.

In this episode, Ana brings Felix her report from Las Vegas, where Bad Bunny won Album of the Year, the independent Brazilian music scene made a splash, and the whole industry seemed to be saying: "Show us where you're from."

This podcast episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. The executive producer of NPR Music is Suraya Mohamed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From NPR Music, this is Alt Latino.
0:05.4	I'm Felix Contreras.
0:06.5	And I'm Anna Maria Sayer.
0:08.2	Let the Chisembe begin.
0:14.3	The Chisemay is that you went to Las Vegas without me again.
0:17.5	You didn't want to come.
0:18.8	You never want to come.
0:20.3	I should go back. I don't want to cramp You never want to come. I should go back.
0:38.8	I don't want to cramp your style, though. Yeah, I'm pretty cool without you, feelings. I don't want to have to be towing you around all the parties, you know? So anyways, I went without you this year. You went there with a purpose, though. I did. You were given a task. I was given a task. I always use the Latin Grammys, I feel like, as a space to really take stock, understand where Latin music is at. Last
0:45.1	year I had gone and reported kind of similarly on what's happening right now, which to me is this
0:52.1	like massive explosion of Latin music.
0:55.7	And you kind of get to see at the Latin Grammys how people are dealing with that.
0:59.7	At last year's Grammys, it was like Mexican Regional was having the crazy,
1:05.0	like we didn't see it coming kind of really like peaking moment.
1:08.7	We saw, you know, as per always, reggaeton is always on the rise, but we hadn't reached this year with Bad Bunny yet. Sure. You know, a number of things like that were happening. So I kind of wanted to check in on some of those trends that I covered last year and also understand some of the new stuff that was popping up. What makes it so interesting is that the industry is so dynamic. I did
1:28.9	some research while you were away. Oh, you did work while I was gone? And according to various
1:33.9	industry sources, the Latin music industry has been growing steadily for over 10 years straight.
1:40.3	And that's surpassing the general market, the English language market, because that's kind of flat.
1:46.3	So a lot of people are listening, a lot of people are paying for it, and a lot of people are making music.
1:51.6	And Felix, this is something I've been hearing anecdotally from people throughout the industry.
1:56.2	Like even a lot of, I think, American labels are really kind of looking to Latin America right now and realizing what a valuable and massive audience that is. And so I think, generally speaking,
2:06.8	at the Latin Grammys, it's pulsing with that energy. The excitement, the newness, that
	...

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