From Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, Tiny Desk is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with an “El Tiny“ takeover of the (home) concert series, featuring J Balvin, Camila Cabello and several more musicians from all corners of Latinidad.
Felix Contreras | September 29, 2021
As you gaze into the space where Cuban vocalist Eme Alfonso performs her Tiny Desk (home) concert, you enter a place where music becomes a spiritual language. So much of her history and music is centered around the Afro-Cuban spiritual practice that some know as santería. In the 1980s, her parents started Síntesis, a pioneering ba
...nd that performed secular versions of that musical liturgy through electric jazz fusion. In fact, her parents, Carlos Alfonso and Ele Valdés, join her on vocals on this three-song set, which she recorded in Havana.
As with all things spiritual, it’s best to start off paying homage to all things greater, which she does with a track from her 2018 album Voy, “Ayabba,“ a prayer sung in Yoruba and interpreted for voice and jShow more