The Tuba's Emancipation: Unknown History, Magic, and Lessons From the World of Band
Latino USA
My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journalist and author Sam Quinones spent his career reporting on crime, drug trafficking and addiction. After his latest book on the opioid epidemic, he turned to a vastly different topic that long held his interest—the tuba, an instrument that for decades was often looked down on or ignored.
The more Quinones learned about the tuba, and the people that dedicate their lives to mastering this complicated instrument, the more his interest in the world of band (and banda) grew. He takes us into his new book “The Perfect Tuba,” to explore its history and what we can all learn from working to master a craft.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Transcript
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| 1:22.6 | So the tuba reflected that search for liberation, the liberation of your own possibilities and creativity that was happening in the immigrant world. It was like almost a tuba civil rights movement, breaking away from the chains of what constrained us, |
| 1:29.7 | and these are attitudes that other people believe |
| 1:32.0 | that we ought to be both physically at the back of the band |
| 1:36.0 | and literally too. |
| 1:55.6 | Music From Futuro Media, it's Latino USA. I'm Maria Innojosa today. A conversation with Sam Quignonez, |
| 2:03.0 | award-winning journalist and author of the book, The Perfect Tuba. We talk about how a crime and opioid reporter becomes obsessed with the tuba, his unexpected journey that he embarked on in the band world, |
| 2:09.7 | and what all of us can learn from the tuba's low, low sound. |
| 2:24.2 | When you think of a tuba, what's the sound you hear in your head? |
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