"When will I know how to decipher my purpose? / When will I feel at home in my voice?" As Alisa sings those words to her winning entry in Spanish at the Tiny Desk, I'm thinking: Perhaps that moment is now. For the next three songs, she's joined by Jamie Oshima (guitar, keys), Noah Harrington (bass) and Jacob Thompson (drums, keys). The arrangements were originally done by Jamie Oshima after a recording session a few years back, and then Alisa's friend Noah Fishman transcribed the arrangement. quartet and rehearsed for the first time just hours before the performance. For COVID safety, we limited the audience to a small group of masked NPR employees, yet the sing-along for the closing track was still powerful.Īlisa also set her winning song to a lovely string arrangement performed by a Washington D.C. In fact, the song "Together," which closes this concert, was an astonishing entry from 2020. She's been singing since she was four, and has been entering the Tiny Desk Contest every year since 2018. Despite the fact that I don't speak Spanish, I felt the conflict, the yearning and the song's questioning.Īlisa grew up in Boston, Maine, Puerto Rico and Argentina, and was raised by Rosi and Brian Amador, her Latin-folk musician parents who play in the band Sol y Canto they were also in attendance. I often fall for a song because of the lyrics, and this is the first Tiny Desk Contest winner whose winning song is in Spanish. It's a song that our judges - iLe, Big Krit, Michelle Zauner (of Japanese Breakfast), Raveena, Nate Chinen (of member station WBGO), Tiny Desk producer Bobby Carter and I - all found to be so filled with passion. For the staff of NPR and the Tiny Desk crew, it was our first Tiny Desk concert with an audience in over 800 days, and Alisa's captivating music surely intensified our spinning emotions.Īlisa Amador opened with her Contest-winning entry "Milonga accidental," a song about embracing your contradictions. And those joyful tears for Alisa Amador, the winner of the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest, came at a time when she had been considering putting her music career on hold. Meet Alisa Amador, the winner of the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest This years winner is a songwriter from Boston, Mass. That is part of a toxic culture.It surely was a day of joyful tears. Alisa Amador is the winner of the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest (Jacquelyn Marie / Courtesy of the artist) Today, Morning Edition announced the winner of the eighth annual Tiny Desk Contest: Alisa Amador. I used to think that was part of being a woman and now I’m like: No. Or, that man just told me I have a good voice but I have to be careful, because I can turn a lot of people on with my voice. Septem Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras sit down with Tiny Desk Contest winner Alisa Amador to talk about. Like, that guy just told me if he were 20 years younger he’d want to go on a date with me. Alisa Amador: Why the Tiny Desk Contest winner almost gave up on music. And I’m not totally sure why.” Because I still saw experiencing that behavior as just part of the deal of being a woman. I would leave conversations and interactions saying, “Huh. Before I prioritized everyone else’s happiness and comfort over my own comfort. But being able to share this music gives me so much hope.Ī. Sometimes I don’t feel strong sometimes I just feel tired. I’m still learning how to listen to myself. When I come out of a conversation and say, “I don’t feel like I was respected” - now I have a vocabulary for it. Before I, the behaviors I accepted are so different from the behaviors I accept now. It’s so hard in so many ways that I’m still trying to understand. It must be hard being a woman in the music business.Ī. “Narratives” feels like a standing-up for yourself. In “Nada Que Ver,” the chorus is: “I want it to be a drop of honey/ for it to last longer than a paper airplane.” And I never would’ve come up with those words in English. In Spanish, the lyrics are more poetic because I have fewer words to draw from - I’ve read fewer books, listened to fewer people talking, so I don’t draw from tropes or phrases. Do you find it easier to write in Spanish or English?Ī. Now when I sit down to write, it’s either English or Spanish and I don’t know until I start. Before, I saw as this private coping mechanism - I didn’t conceptualize that people would want to play with me. In Buenos Aires, I played with a band for the first time. Something that changed me was a semester abroad to Argentina. It’s this helplessness feeling - like there’s nothing you can do to help them heal. A friend got really sick with mental illness, due to their being closeted. You started writing songs in high school. I started playing classical nylon-string guitar at 10, wanting to look and play like my dad who was a classical guitarist - but I was playing Don McLean’s “American Pie” and “Monster Mash”.
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