His music really transported me back to the nights and days of endless parties in my hometown, Buenos Aires. Back then I was a teenager completely outraged by the 4 a.m. curfew my very strict parents imposed on me (nightclubs don’t even get started until 2 a.m. back home).

My most bizarre New Year’s memory took place in Buenos Aires. My friend had a party — one of those memorable celebrations where the whole neighborhood shows up, plus their cousins from other neighborhoods, and at some point the house looks like a crowded Where’s Waldo? illustration.

By 7 a.m. it started winding down and people went to sleep wherever they could find a spot, but my best friend Gabi and I had this romantic idea to grab breakfast by the river. As we started walking toward the port, we accidentally found ourselves in the middle of a street fight between two very drunk teenage crews. Scared, we ran into an old garage and hid until the police showed up.

As I peeked through the garage door cracks and saw the enraged kids beating one guy with sticks, I had a passing feeling this was going to be the year in which things changed, and whether that was for better or worse, it had to happen and couldn’t be stopped even if I wanted it to. Even in my adolescent melodrama, there was a grain of truth — by the end of the year, that kind of fighting had become common and I’d packed my bags and left.

But that moment was pure teenage adrenaline. This was love. This was the time in life when everything is the first time. It was the time of waking up covered in glitter — and desperately scrubbing it off so your parents thought you’d actually been with your study group. This was thumping, bumping music all the time.

Gabi and I sneaked out of the garage, looked at each other, laughed and said something I’ve come to realize many years later and wish I could say more often, something this week’s show feels like: Let’s just go home.

P.S.: Mami, if you’re reading this, sorry I snuck out.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

On this episode, we follow our own tradition and play new Brazilian artists worth hearing. Our guide is Lewis Robinson, a British DJ whose love of Brazilian music is so great, it led him to assemble Rolê, a stellar 43-song compilation that showcases up-and-coming musicians.

As always, we’re eager to hear from you. What Brazilian artists are you loving these days?

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

And, since this week we’re all about hip-hop, now is a good time for a special announcement: We’re about to head to SXSW to participate in the inaugural SXAmericas, a series of events geared to connect U.S. Latino and Latin American technology, music and film-industry thought leaders. We’ll host an intimate chat with French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux at the SXSW Convention Center in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, March 13. Hope to see you there!

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

We kick off our coverage with special guests Bianca Laureano and Daniel Familia, two of the minds behind the fantastic LatiNegr@s Project. Celebrating Afro-Latino perspectives, issues and stories, the project is one of the boldest, most innovative projects on the Latin media landscape. It’s essential to our community: As we discuss in today’s show, Black Latino perspectives are significantly under-served by Latin media.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Alt.Latino without music: In addition to discussing the state of Afro-Latino affairs with Laureano and Familia, we listen to fantastic music from Brazil, Cuba, Peru and the Dominican Republic.

Laureano and Familia will continue the conversation on Alt.Latino‘s Twitter and Facebook, as well as on this page. So please leave your comments — and stay tuned, because we have a month of amazing shows coming up.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

When Vega told me this, I remembered the book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man, by evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi. Changizi proposes that language evolved from humans imitating the sounds in nature, while music emulates the sounds of humans moving. It’s one of many theories about the origins of music and language, and it’s much more complicated than that, but it came to mind when Vega told me about his grandfather, who was also a Son Jarocho musician. As was his great-grandfather, and his great-great-grandfather; Vega comes from five generations of musicians. They all played that beautiful music that mixes guitar strums like machete whacks, vocals that are almost like yodeling, lyrics that can be erotic, crude and/or breathtakingly romantic, and a dance style that looks like a hybrid between flamenco and tap.

Music sounds like human movement, and not just in the literal sense: It tells the story of how we’ve moved and been forced to move over time and space. Son Jarocho is heavily influenced by the African slave trade to the port city of Veracruz. Our other guest on this week’s show, musician Alexandro Hernandez, explains that as Mexican cinema entered its golden era, it made its way into the center of the country, where the capital nestles in between mountains. Eventually, Son Jarocho trickled up into Los Angeles, where it became part of the Latino identity in the U.S., as well as one of the sounds of the Chicano movement.

Today, there’s a resurgence in the popularity of Son Jarocho, both in its native Mexico — among young urban Mexicans who fall in love with the dance and music — and among activists and musicians in Los Angeles.

We’re proud of this week’s show, which starts off in Mexico, where Jarocho was born, and travels all the way up to L.A., where it’s been firmly planted.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.