Felix Contreras
Felix Contreras is co-creator and co-host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture since 2010 and a curator for the acclaimed Tiny Desk Concert series.
A knowledgeable international ambassador for Latino heritage and arts, "Tio Felix" travels extensively in search of new talent and new music and captures important legacy performers in jazz and Latin genres. He appears regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines, All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Various national and international publications have quoted his expertise on the contemporary influences of Latin culture, music, and media.
He's a recovering TV journalist whose first post at NPR in 2001 was as a Producer/Reporter for the NPR News Arts Desk.
He is also the other NPR Music resident Deadhead and an Afro Caribbean percussionist who performs around the DC area with various jazz and Latin jazz bands.
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For more than 50 years, Los Mirlos has cultivated its own Peruvian twist on cumbia, featuring reverb-heavy, surf-rock guitar. -
Alt.Latino's Felix Contreras explains a surprising new trend in Latin music that's been bubbling for awhile.
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We asked people to share the story of how they became a Deadhead and received hundreds of responses. Their stories are tender, comical and sometimes spiritual. -
NPR's Felix Contreras explains why this summer was different than most for Grateful Dead fans around the country, and what Deadheads told him about why they got hooked on the band.
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Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco are two artists who've dipped their toes into the Grateful Dead extended universe through a singular experience: by sharing the stage with Bob Weir. -
Over the last decade, reality TV mogul Andy Cohen has been spotted dancing at concerts for Dead & Company. But his ties to the Grateful Dead go much farther than that. -
To devotees of the Grateful Dead, the first nine days of August are known as the "Days Between." This annual celebration commemorates the birth and death of guitarist Jerry Garcia.
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The Grateful Dead understood the importance of recording its legacy. A number of archivists and historians are dedicated to maintaining the band's immense collection of music and memorabilia. -
To devotees of the Grateful Dead, the first nine days of August are known as the "Days Between." This annual celebration commemorates the birth and death of guitarist Jerry Garcia.
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Death never stopped the Grateful Dead before. Since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, a sprawling collection of musicians and fans across generations have kept the band’s legacy alive in different ways. But without members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, Deadheads are experiencing their first summer where there’s no clear inheritor of the Grateful Dead’s mantle. Where does the music, and the dedicated community that has grown up around it, go from here? NPR Music's resident Deadheads Felix Contreras and Isabella Gomez Sarmiento took a cue from the Dead itself: They hit the road, interviewing musicians, fans and archivists to learn how the band and its fans built a legacy that has spanned generations, and to find out what's next. For more podcast episodes and stories about the future of the Grateful Dead, check out our series Dead After Death. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Jacob Ganz and Hazel Cills. The executive producer of NPR Music is Suraya Mohamed. Our executive director is Sonali Mehta.
