Joe Bataan & Ali Wong

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2016

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jesse Thorn talks to comedian and Fresh Off the Boat writer Ali Wong, who recorded her new comedy special Baby Cobra, while seven and a half months pregnant. He also sits down with Boogaloo legend Joe Bataan to talk about breaking into the music industry, why he dropped out of it for a while and how he came back with a performance on one of the very first rap songs, back in 1979. Joe Bataan is one of the subjects of a new documentary, We Like it Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo. Plus Jesse highlights an artist with one of the sweetest voices and some of the most beautiful melodies in music right now - Chance the Rapper.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.0	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:14.2	My first guest this week, Joe Batan, helped bring Latin soul music into the mainstream.
0:19.0	It was a leading figure in Bougaloo.
0:21.8	But he only did all that because his first career plan didn't work out.
0:27.5	Well, you got to understand growing up in a body or at that time,
0:31.0	there were only two ways to escape that your environment either became an athlete,
0:36.1	high-paying athlete.
0:37.2	So you played ball, baseball, and everything you could get your hands on, cans, sticks, rocks.
0:42.2	Or else you became an entertainer.
0:44.5	No one thought about pursuing the education and going on to higher learning at that time
0:48.4	because we couldn't afford it.
0:50.0	You know, so I failed as a baseball player because I didn't grow anymore.
0:54.5	My first idol was Jackie Robinson.
0:57.0	And the story goes on.
1:00.2	The same thing is true of NPR hosts, by the way.
1:04.7	The second I get that call from the San Francisco giant, some out of here.
1:08.6	It's Bullseye.
1:16.4	Coming up, I'll talk to Joe Batan.
1:18.5	Back in the 60s as Bougaloo music got big,
1:21.3	there was a kind of backlash from other parts of Aladdin music scene.
1:25.0	Batan says there was a simple reason for that.
	...

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