Puerto rico news in spanish: El Nuevo Día – noticias de última hora, opinión, fotos, videos y podcasts de Puerto Rico.
The second season of ‘La Brega’ tells the story of Puerto Rico through its music : NPR
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The podcast La Brega tells a history of Puerto Rico.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “TITI ME PREGUNTO”)
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
CHANG: And in its second season, that history is told by way of Puerto Rican music – eight songs, each of which tell their own complicated story about the island. One of those songs is “Preciosa,” a prideful love letter to Puerto Rico but one that, in the 1930s, did not find a way to include Black Puerto Ricans.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PRECIOSA”)
RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: (Singing in Spanish).
CHANG: Another song this podcast features is the salsa classic “El Gran Varon,” which advocated for tolerance of LGBTQ people at the height of the AIDS crisis but perpetuates the harmful idea that transgender women are really men.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “EL GRAN VARON”)
WILLIE COLON: (Singing in Spanish).
CHANG: Alana Casanova-Burgess is the host of La Brega, and she is here to tell us more about these songs of Puerto Rico and the histories they have to tell. Hey, Alana.
ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: So to you, what is it about the music of Puerto Rico that made you think to yourself, OK, this is a story that I want to tell?
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Well, it’s really that it’s everywhere. When you think about even the stars that we – you know, that we know today, like Bad Bunny, Marc Anthony, J. Lo, like, these are Puerto Rican stars. We’re talking about our musical history. And really, across Latin America, Spanish-language music is just peppered with Puerto Rican excellence and talent. And so this season, we really wanted to celebrate that. But truly, you know, the influence that Puerto Rico has had in this industry, in music, is incredible.
CHANG: Well, I was going to ask you, like, why do you think Puerto Rico has so consistently punched above its weight when it comes to music? I mean, we’re talking about an island that is – what? – just 100 by 35 miles.
Why do you think Puerto Rican…
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Yeah.
CHANG: …Music has had such global reach, such global impact?
CASANOVA-BURGESS: I think it’s a few things. I mean, one is that the island or the archipelago, you know, has ties to the United States – so access to the U.S. market, perhaps, but also access to Latin America – you know, singing in Spanish, thinking in Spanish. But I think it’s also – and someone says this in the first episode. You know, when you live on the margins, you have to be good at a lot of different things – right? – so good at boleros, good at salsas, good at merengues.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ESTAS ENAMORADA”)
LIMITE 21: (Singing in Spanish).
CASANOVA-BURGESS: It means you have to be adaptable, right? As a colony, you have to – you know, something about the striving, the kind of scrappiness that comes from that, which is – which obviously has a dark side and a painful side.
CHANG: Yeah.
CASANOVA-BURGESS: But maybe that has something to do with it.
I’m not sure.
CHANG: Well, there’s no question that this second season of La Brega celebrates Puerto Rican music. But like I mentioned in the introduction, you don’t shy away from taking a critical look at some songs that are beloved to Puerto Ricans but have problems. Like, you don’t sugarcoat how some have not aged well. Why was that important to you, especially in a podcast that’s otherwise focusing on showing love for Puerto Rico?
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of music, not just Puerto Rican music, can age poorly – right? – just like any art. But we really wanted to get to the messages behind these songs, right? What’s behind the lyrics? What was going on at the time that they were written, right? And how do we contend, how do we grapple with that, which is a kind of brega in itself, right? The brega is the struggle. And so we’re struggling with some of these messages in the songs.
Puerto Rico is a complicated place. You know, you mentioned “El Gran Varon.
” There’s a huge problem with transphobic killings in Puerto Rico. We wanted to talk about “El Gran Varon” as a song that’s hugely famous across the hemisphere that has, yes, in some cases, helped people come out or build relationships to their families but also, to a lot of listeners, to a lot of trans listeners, sounds like a really hateful song. And so we spoke with one pop artist, Ana Macho, who’s a trans nonbinary star from Puerto Rico, from Caguas, who, in the interview said, you know, I really want to cover this song. And so we actually – we commissioned that work.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “EL GRAN VARON”)
ANA MACHO: (Singing in Spanish).
CASANOVA-BURGESS: We also have a whole album coming out with covers of these songs to hear, you know, how do some of these problematic songs have new life in 2023? Maybe if they’re not problematic at all, if we still love them, what kind of new meaning, new depth can we get from them through new artists?
CHANG: Well, you know, one of my favorite episodes was about the song “Suavemente.
“
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUAVEMENTE”)
ELVIS CRESPO: (Singing in Spanish).
CHANG: Can you just explain, like, how that song tells us the story of the relationship between salsa and merengue, like, the tension, the rivalry? – because I had no idea until I heard that episode.
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Well, it was a surprise to us, too, and to a lot of our listeners, right? I think we broke new ground here in our reporting. But basically, you know, “Suavemente” is a merengue, which is a rhythm we most associate with the Dominican Republic, which is a neighbor to Puerto Rico. There was a period of time that we could not get away from this song. But it’s sung by Elvis Crespo, who’s a Puerto Rican man, right? How did that come to be?
Well, it turns out that during the wave of migration from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, a lot of musicians came as well and, of course, brought their own music. All of a sudden, all these merengue stars are coming through. And there was tension.
The salseros – a lot of them felt, like, hold on. You’re coming in here. You’re taking my jobs. It’s sort of a classic xenophobia story but told through rhythm, right? There’s this darker story, this more complicated story of that history that tells us something about, you know, Puerto Rico’s relationship with the Dominican Republic.
CHANG: Yeah, that mix of dark and light, like so many of the other songs that you talk about in this podcast. What is it like to see an artist like Bad Bunny, who embody so much of Puerto Rican culture, as you say – to now see him rise to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world?
CASANOVA-BURGESS: I mean, it’s incredible. I think what’s cool about Bad Bunny is that he’s singing from a place of love where he still lives in Puerto Rico.
CHANG: Yeah.
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Of course, he tours all the time, but he’s singing from this place where he’s very honest in his lyrics. He sings about potholes. He sings about austerity and…
CHANG: Yeah.
CASANOVA-BURGESS: …Gentrification, right? And so I feel very proud when I hear him and his accent be very faithful to the way that Puerto Rican Spanish works – right? – to the kind of words that we use.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “P FKN R”)
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
CASANOVA-BURGESS: He’s singing, and people are hearing it all around the world. For a long time, the Puerto Rican accent was derided as not as beautiful as other Spanish. But now all these reggaeton stars, all these people who are singing along to Bad Bunny – they’re singing in this accent. And that is very cool.
CHANG: That is cool. OK. Well, if you had to pick one favorite song from this eight-episode series to play us out on, what would that song be, and why?
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Oh, gosh. It’s like picking your children here.
(LAUGHTER)
CASANOVA-BURGESS: But maybe to get people dancing in the car or in the kitchen, maybe “I Wonder If I Take You Home” by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I WONDER IF I TAKE YOU HOME”)
LISA LISA AND CULT JAM: (Singing) Take you home.
CHANG: That is Alana Casanova-Burgess, host of the podcast La Brega by Futuro Studios and WNYC. It’s in its second season right now. Thank you so much, Alana.
CASANOVA-BURGESS: Thank you, Ailsa.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I WONDER IF I TAKE YOU HOME”)
LISA LISA AND CULT JAM: (Singing) ‘Cause I’m not too sure about how you feel, so I’d rather go at my own pace. And I know and you know that if we get together…
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Radio Ambulante: the voice of Latin America0001
February 5, 2020
Last update:
February 7, 2020
A Colombian guru accused of abusing the trust of dozens of women, a Cuban writer reminiscing about her childhood in Havana, an amateur astronomer who managed to capture the birth of a supernova from the roof of her house in the Argentine city of Rosario… Here are just a few of the stories , which offers the attention of its listeners “Radio Ambulante” or, in literal translation, “Mobile Radio” – a podcast service in Spanish.
One of its creators, Carolina Guerrero, told Courier about the calling of this project.
Carolina Guerrero answers questions from Lucia Iglesias Kunz (UNESCO)
How did you come up with the idea for Radio Ambulante?
This idea was born eight years ago during my conversations with Daniel Alarcón. At that time, I, a journalist from Colombia, and he, a writer originally from Peru, were in San Francisco. We became emigrants for different reasons, but we were united by our love for Latin America, our culture, the culture of our ancestors and the Spanish language. In conversations with him, we often lamented the fact that in our native language there are no such programs that prevail on American radio – I mean regular programs in which this or that story is told by its direct participants. The Spanish-language media in the US were not of very high quality and gradually we moved to English-language media. But since Latin America is rich in both events and stories, as well as talented storytellers, we thought that something similar should definitely exist in Spanish.
And we decided to do it ourselves.
Did you see Hispanics in the US as your potential target audience?
When I emigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago, you could say I went from Colombian to Latino. Among my friends now were not only Colombians, but also immigrants from Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, as well as native Americans of Hispanic origin. New horizons opened up before me: only here, in the USA with their mixture of cultures, I realized that I knew Latin America not at all as well as I thought. Therefore, in the case of Radio Ambulante, we decided to make content not only for immigrants.
From the very beginning, we wanted to create material that would be universal in character and would resonate with everyone. We do not cover events that are too small-town or those that all the media are already talking about. We try to choose stories that would be equally exciting for everyone. For example, a story from Chile that an audience in the New York Bronx would listen to with interest, or news from Guatemala that would be followed by listeners in Colombia.
Why did you decide to create a podcast service rather than a regular radio station?
At first we wanted to start a radio station, because we ourselves are big radio fans, but we had no idea how this industry works. We started looking for funds to implement our project, but soon realized that there was no free space on the airwaves in the United States, and besides, no one was going to help us. It was obvious that the future lay in digital technologies, and Radio Ambulante was destined to follow this path.
How do you interact with your audience?
It’s impossible to ignore your listeners these days. Unlike broadcast radio, the digital environment provides a unique opportunity for continuous interaction with the audience. In addition, in our case, this is not just an audience, but a whole community of fans who not only listen to us, but also talk about us, leave us positive or negative feedback. Our listeners know that their opinion matters.
They are quite demanding, they can ask us for something, point out mistakes. So we maintain a very close relationship.
About three years ago we decided to purposefully strengthen the connection and develop direct communication with the audience. We use several channels for this. For example, we have a WhatsApp group that includes our most active and dedicated listeners. And recently, in a similar vein to reading clubs, we’ve launched several “listening clubs” where people meet face-to-face to listen and discuss our podcasts together.
How does Radio Ambulante exist?
This is a rather expensive project. Today it employs about twenty people. At the same time, we do not release news or a certain number of podcasts per day. We have thirty episodes a year, which is certainly not much, but each of them requires careful preparation, painstaking editorial work and, accordingly, a lot of time. We are supported by a number of foundations, and three years ago we signed an agreement with the American organization National Public Radio ( NPR , “National Public Radio”), which gives it the exclusive right to distribute our content in podcast form.
In return for , NPR pays us a certain amount. Every year we host several live broadcasts (for example, theater performances). Those who wish to support us on a permanent basis can take part in a special membership program.
Recently, we have been developing derivative products based on existing ones. We think that this will help us to extract additional profit at relatively low costs. In particular, two projects are currently under development to bring us additional income from the 150 stories that we have in our catalog. We recently launched the first of these, the Magnifying glass app, which allows intermediate and advanced Spanish learners to improve their language skills. By the way, a large segment of our audience consists of people who study Spanish, mainly from the USA and Canada. This is an exciting project that we are working on with great interest.
Our second idea takes much longer to implement. We are considering doing a movie adaptation or TV series.
Maybe one day one of our stories will form the basis of a feature film and bring in revenue for us as copyright holders.
How do you select stories for podcasts?
In history, it is not so much the theme that matters to us as its characters. It also needs to have a clear opening and closing. Since we are listened to in different parts of the world (USA, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, England…), we get new stories all year round.
For example, we know that stories about drug dealers are very popular, but there are already enough of them in the press, and besides, we do not want to give a human face to crime. We are convinced that there are many other interesting stories in the world that deserve to be heard by as many people as possible. Listeners enjoy stories with many varied scenes and elaborate details, read with perhaps a few voices of expression. Stories that evoke childhood memories, make you dream, success stories.