SXSW 2018 Recap: Hip Hop, Latin Folk and Mexican Barbecue

By Rodney Carmichael,

Felix Contreras, Christina Cala

Published March 19, 2018 at 5:46 PM PDT

The 2018 South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas has come to an end. But before the week-long fest finished, Alt.Latinohost Felix Contreras and NPR Music hip-hop correspondent Rodney Carmichael met up at a barbecue joint in Austin to dish about their favorite performances from the week.

Tierra Whack

"This is, like, my new favorite hip-hop artist right now," Carmichael says. "She has this song called 'Mumbo Jumbo' ... that she laid down rough vocals for and she never went back and cleaned them up. It sounds so good, and her energy on stage was so incredible."

La Cuneta Son Machin

"They do a combination of Nicaraguan folk music mixed with jazz, mixed with ska, mixed with a bit of rock," Contreras says. "They blew the roof of this place."

Sudan Archives

"She's up on the stage; this tall, thin, regal-looking black woman with an afro that adds another five feet to her stature," Carmichael says. "It's just a mix of soul and funk and classical thrown in."

Hear the full conversation at the audio link.

Rodney Carmichael

Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. An Atlanta-bred cultural critic, he documented the city's rise as rap's capital outpost for a decade while serving as music editor, staff culture writer and senior writer for the alt-weekly Creative Loafing. During his tenure there, he won awards for column writing, longform storytelling, editing and reporting on cultural issues ranging from gender to economic inequality. He also conceptualized and co-wrote "Straight Outta Stankonia"—an exhaustive look at Atlanta's gentrifying cultural landscape through the lens of OutKast—which was voted as one of the Atlanta Press Club's Top 10 Favorite Stories of the Past 50 Years.

Felix Contreras

Felix Contreras is co-creator and host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering program about Latin Alternative music and Latino culture. It features music as well as interviews with many of the most well-known Latinx musicians, actors, filmmakers, and writers. He has hosted and produced Alt.Latino episodes from Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, and throughout the U.S. since the show started in 2010.

Christina Cala

Christina Cala is a producer for Code Switch. Before that, she was at the TED Radio Hour where she piloted two new episode formats — the curator chat and the long interview. She's also reported on a movement to preserve African American cultural sites in Birmingham and followed youth climate activists in New York City.