Happy Birthday, Alma del Barrio

Twenty-five years of Latin soul

Comments (0) By Brendan Mullen Wednesday, Mar 17 1999

Lenart: "Back in the '80s, Emilio and I were playing more Cuban artists than ever, because he was getting us all the latest imports before anybody else. We were asked a few times by irate callers why we were supporting Castro, and we'd reason back: How was exposing Cuba's musicians and major classical composers on the radio supporting Castro?"

AS A YOUNG BRITISH IMMIGRANT WHO'D stumbled into L.A. in the mid-'70s, one of my fondest memories of this city is accidentally discovering Alma del Barrioand hearing exotic Latin orchestras beating it out every weekend, even if I couldn't understand a word of what they were singing about. In my beloved little rock & roll world, glam was a dead joke, since even Bowie had moved on to R&B, and Bolan had long ago lost interest. Disco, reggae and punk were still a while away. There was no college radio; there was nothing on the air except Elton John and the Eagles. Poor old Jerry Brown was being written off as a kook for advocating scary things like "global consciousness," yet here was this little bilingual radio show that seemed to be intuitively producing something exactly along those lines by turning people on to music they had no chance of otherwise hearing. That hasn't really changed in 25 years. Thanks, guys, for the enrichment, and . . . happy birthday.