Escritorio Pequeñito

The Tiny Desk Concerts at National Public Radio emerged from the frustration NPR host Bob Boilen and editor Stephen Thompson experienced at the 2008 South by Southwest festival in Austin.

The noise of the crowds had drowned out the music, leading the pair to create a bare-bones venue in Boilen's office, leading to hundreds of performances there and thousands more in similarly small spaces everywhere, after the Tiny Desk team launched an online contest.

I recommend the Tiny Desk Wikipedia article for more background because this origin story is difficult to find on the NPR web site itself. Then dive into the Tiny Desk page for so much more music!

In its early years, the series was sometimes criticized as too narrow, but a very wide variety of musical genres are now included and encouraged. It being a contest, the series surfaces far more excellent performances than can be declared winners.

On the July 9, 2024 edition of All Things Considered, Mary Louise Kelly begins by mentioning the Philharmonix, with its cleverly staged winning entry "What's It All Mean?" Watch this carefully -- it is full of subtle visual humor, with musicians who never break character. 

Kelly then asked Alt Latino host Felix Contreras to discuss some of his Latin music favorites from among this year's entries. Although some might consider Latino music a genre, it is an umbrella term for the many musics of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. 

I recommend listening to their seven-minute conversation, which includes short audio clips from four of this year's contestants and his ideas about why he likes them and what genres they represent, and then watching each performance. Because the contest is based on video entries, I was able to find all four of these performances on YouTube; the musicians have additional music on that platform and elsewhere. Enjoy!

The first performance Contreras mentions is Taza de Café by Cáthia, a Salvadoran American from the Bronx. The song compares a lover to a cup of coffee -- or more specifically, uses the desire for a cup of coffee as a metaphor for her romantic attraction. I was interested in the coffee connection, of course, especially when Contreras mentioned that the performance was recorded in a café. That would have been perfect for the Coffee Maven, but the actual stage is a bodega in Miami -- equally wonderful, but not a café.

The lyrics are fairly simple but Cáthia sings with such gusto that I had some difficulty understanding some parts. I'm grateful for the lyrics and translation she provides on the YouTube page. 

He next mentions Lluvia Pesado (Heavy Rain) by Flaco el Jandro, a song that mentions coffee in a different context. For years I had assumed that cumbia was a style originating in the US-Mexico borderlands, but Contreras tells us that it originates in Colombia and is now very widespread in Latin America. 

The YouTube page includes some background on this artist and some mostly correct lyrics, this time only in Spanish.

After Contreras expresses relief that he was not a judge in this round, Kelly presses him to name a favorite "just between us" and he queues up a ranchera by Puerto Rican Mireya Ramos, who returns to the Tiny Desk with a band called The Poor Choices.

This is a soaring, operatic ballad that blends ranchera with many influences, even country. 

Finally, Contreras offers the song "Guero" ("Blond") by Los Quinceañeros when asked for a song to end the session. It is a fun, irreverent blend of cumbia, punk, and surf -- all dressed in cheesy outfits and staging.

The title apparently refers to the blond, nerdy guy sitting at a tiny desk in the middle of the band. This song is a little bit abstract.

This rounds out what promised to be -- and is -- a selection that illustrates the increasingly great diversity of Latin music.

Lagniappe

It is perhaps a cliché to point out that one advantage of being a teacher is that I never stop learning, and much of what I learn comes directly from students. I have been an avid NPR listener for over 40 years and have learned a lot about music from it. Even so, I was only vaguely aware of the Tiny Desk Concerts until Esha -- a student in my honors colloquium on New Orleans -- brought some music to my attention for that course. She then realized that I did not know much about the series in general and explained to me and another student that has become one of her favorite sources of music, giving us many of her favorite finds as a start. Thank you, Esha!

Musical Wisdom of Ibrahim Maalouf

 For students in my class and other students of cultural geography (which should be everyone), I recommend Jen White's interview with Ibrahim Maalouf on the radio program 1A. Produced by Haili Blassingame and originally broadcast earlier in 2024, the staff of 1A selected it as a highlight for rebroadcast during the holiday-week of Independence Day. 

The title of this episode is French Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf blends sound and defies genre. It is an hour well spent. 

GEOG 298 students, please take notes about what you notice in this discussion/performance. Meanwhile, I will mention a few of the highlights in what I heard.

Around 7m30s, he talks about the variety of understandings that can be found within a single country or tradition. His words here remind me of Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story (itself another indispensable font of insights about how to approach learning about people and places)

Throughout the interview, he emphasizes the role of music in building for him what is the most important thing: empathy. This is something both more important and more complicated than sympathy. He is embodying the motto my friends at the Polus Center use to describe their worldview. Despite the importance of the multitude of good and bad human experiences, the remind us that "People are more alike than different."

At about 34m he explains why finds teaching to be an important way to continue as a learner. 

Early in the interview, he describes the legacy of his father, a self-taught musician who invented a trumpet that makes Lebanese jazz possible, for technical reasons I do not fully understand. He holds his father's legacy both in his being and literally in his hands. At 39m20s he answers a question about what. legacy he hopes to leave for his daughter. The first few words of his answer could describe what every parent should want: 

"I would like her to feel comfortable in this planet...."

He then elaborates with a more detailed answer that sets out guideposts for any parent. He then explains how travel with his daughter helps them to attain this goal.

Jen White observes that he is an optimistic person and asks how this is possible. Optimism is in short supply everywhere these days, and his own lived experience would give him more cause than most of us to reject optimism as folly. Again, please listen to his entire reply, but consider this excerpt a good glimpse into his thinking:

"There is no day I'm not crying these days. There is no single day that passes without tears going on my cheeks. No one. But I am optimistic, of course. Again, because I have no choice."

These are important words from someone who speaks every day with friends in Gaza, and who has lived similar traumas himself. 

The program ends with his performance of what he calls a very small part of his music with a song called "Our Flag," which he wrote with musician Sharon Stone. 

Lagniappe

As someone who endeavors to communicate in other languages, I am always impressed with people who do it exceptionally well. This interview is in English and Maalouf discusses very complex ideas with great clarity, despite this being at least his third language. 

São Vicente Paisagens

Landscapes of São Vicente 

This entry is an excerpt from a more complete entry of the same name on my Environmental Geography blog; it describes a travel course we are planning, in which music will combine with environmental and linguistic topics. Please see that version of São Vicente Paisagens for much more information about the course we are planning. It will offered primarily to BSU students but others may apply. The full entry describes the environmental content of the course and more about the music as well.

Music is an important part of cultural geography everywhere, but it seems especially to be the case in Cape Verde, where each island is home both to several distinct musical traditions and to a variety of contemporary artists. 

Among the latter are producers of music videos who really help geography learners by their rich incorporation of the cultural landscape. One example is Khaly Angel and his 2022 production Mindel (Mindelo -- below); another is Ariah by Jenifer Solidade.

We are very fortunate indeed that one of my collaborators in offering this course is Angelo Barbosa, who directs our Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies and who also has helped to create the definitive museum of Cape Verdean music, which is fully online.

Nopal

Somos de la Tierra del Nopal
Image: Aswer Garcia

I was captivated by this image during my random scrolling a few weeks ago, and I also enjoy the caption. It is profoundly geographic and definitely sounds better in the original Spanish  than in translation. 

The Spanish "Somos de la Tierra del Nopal" means "We are the Land of the Nopal." This is even less poetic if we translate the last word: "We are the Land of the Prickly Pear Cactus."

But in any language, the point is made (pun intended) about the symbols that tie people to their land, in this case Mexican people to Mexico.

This illustration is a variation on the illustration central to the national flag of Mexico, which reflects the origin story of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan -- which was to become the literal foundation of Mexico City. The artist Aswer Garcia has done the original story one better, with the cactus growing from a skull instead of a rock. 

And now the final tangent in this post: I became aware of the symbolic importance of the nopal through a song by the McAllen, Texas band Los Frijoles Romanticos: ¿Donde Está Mi Raza?

Yours Truly with a Nopal at CATIE

Everywhere Johnny Goes

Johnny Cash was known as a performer of Country music, which is also sometimes called Country & Western. The latter is appropriate in the context of his song "I've Been Everywhere" which has been represented on the map below, shared on the popular Facebook page Terrible Maps.

Most of the locations are in the United States and even those that are elsewhere are in the Western Hemisphere. This is not what is usually meant by Country & Western, of course, but it works for the purposes of this post. And given that this is for a course on world music, we might call this an example of half-world music.

It is often good to avoid the comments in social-media posts, but I recommend the comments on this one. Some are unduly sarcastic or pedantic, but many do offer some geographic insights and opinions. They also mention other musicians with a claim to the song -- Johnny Cash was not the first nor the last person to record it.

Herewith, the song itself, with helpful subtitles.

I have not examined the map or lyrics in detail, but I estimate that I have been to about half of the "everywheres" mentioned.

Belonging from Sudan

Ahmed Gallab is a Sudanese-American song who performs as Sinkane. He spoke recently with NPR's Tamara Keith about his new album We Belong and how he, his family, and his music have emerged from the troubled land of their origins. 

Album art from Bandcamp, which sells a digital version of We Belong.

Praia Famosa

 Two beaches, two famous songs. In preparing to write this, I scoured the photos from a quick -- very quick -- visit in 2004, in which I took all the beach photos I could manage of both beaches. 

One of these is the subject of a song by Barry Manilow. (Okay, Manilow scholars -- the song is about a hotel, but you can see the hotel from the beach.)

The other is an even bigger hit from a decade earlier -- the Girl from Ipanema. The stage decor in this version mimics the pavement patterns common on Portuguese and Brazilian public places, including the sidewalks near both of these beaches.

This version is the most familiar. Another YouTube video includes two interesting versions, one from a movie and one from a jazz club in Germany.