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La Mera Mera: New Music From Peru, Colombia, Ecuador And More

Anyone who listens to Alt.Latino regularly knows that in addition to being music geeks, history buffs and dance doofuses, we're big language nerds. We open this week's show with a discussion about the widely used word cabron (seriously, how did calling someone a 'big goat' get so popular?). We also talk about the expression la mera mera, which is on the opening track to this week's show, an awesome mixtape by a DJ known as Ese Cabron. Since we were struggling to translate, we outsourced the question to our listeners: Cristobal Moris from New York says it means "the one and only." Mariana Ramirez Carrillo told us it means "the OG wise one." And Christian Villa defines it as "the real deal, the real McCoy."

No doubt, those are all phrases that have been used to describe Alt.Latino, especially this week's show, which features insanely good music from Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and more.

As always, we always want to hear what you're listening to these days. In fact, one of our favorite discoveries from this week's show is the lovely Peruvian singer Danitse, sent to us by loyal listener Jackie Amidon Donaldson, who is living in Lima. Jackie has promised to send us more great music she discovers in the beautiful Andean nation. What do you have for us, wise ones?

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jasmine Garsd is an Argentine-American journalist living in New York. She is currently NPR's Criminal Justice correspondent and the host of The Last Cup. She started her career as the co-host of Alt.Latino, an NPR show about Latin music. Throughout her reporting career she's focused extensively on women's issues and immigrant communities in America. She's currently writing a book of stories about women she's met throughout her travels.