Alisa Amador is a jazz, funk, and alternative folk musician.
In 2022, she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest with “Milonga Accidental”, the first Spanish language song to win the contest. [1] [2]
Amador was raised in Cambridge, MA. Her parents allowed her and her twin brother to speak only Spanish at home so they could maintain connection to their culture and communicate with family. Her family has roots in Puerto Rico, Argentina, and New Mexico. [3] [2]
Amador is the daughter of Latin folk musicians, Rosi and Brian Amador of the band, Sol y Canto. At age five, she began performing as the band's backup singer on tour. [4] She studied abroad in Argentina. [5] In 2018, she graduated from Bates College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. [6]
In 2018, Amador submitted to NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest for the first time. WBUR stated, "It was clear from the young singer’s deft musicianship that she was an artist to watch." [3]
In 2019, Amador performed at the Cambridge Arts Council River Festival and at Club Passim's 60th anniversary celebration at the Shubert Theatre in Boston. She regularly played gigs at Club Passim. [4] She was featured in WGBH 's series, "Bands You Should Know". [7]
In 2020, she won an Iguana Music Fund grant to help buy recording equipment. [4] She released the tracks “Red Balloon” and “Milonga Accidental". [8] She performed for the benefit livestream concert, All In For Chelsea. [9]
In 2021, she released “Timing", ahead of her album release, Narratives. [10] Grateful Web complimented Amador's talent on Narratives for "sparking connection across both listeners and musical styles". [11] She was chosen by Tiny Desk as one of their favorite 2021 entries. [12]
In 2022, Amador submitted to Tiny Desk for the fifth time and was chosen as the national winner. [13] [14] Bob Boilen called her, "a powerful voice whose tender performance commands attention and fosters connection." [14] In an interview with Sound of Boston, Amador recalls how she got the news while recording in Nashville: “I was going through press interviews as I was recording songs with Emily and Lizzy and the band. At first [the news] was secret, like super secret, and then it went out to the entire country that I had won, all in that one week we were recording.” [15]
As her prize, Amador flew to Washington D.C. to perform her Tiny Desk show. [16] It was the first show to be recorded in the original NPR Tiny Desk studio at Boilen's desk in two years. [17]
Afterwards, Amador performed on the Tiny Desk Contest On The Road national tour at WAMU, KEXP, WABE, LAist/KPCC, and WFUV. [18]
She considered quitting music right before she won Tiny Desk. [19]
Amador was nominated for New Artist of the Year and won Folk Artist of the Year at the 2022 Boston Music Awards. [20] [21] [22] In fall of that year, Amador was awarded a grant for a forthcoming album from the nonprofit Salt Lick Incubator. [23] In May 2023, Amador opened Boston Calling Music Festival, performing songs in both Spanish and English. Boston Magazine wrote that her set was one of the best moments of the weekend. [24]
| Title | Details |
|---|---|
| Multitudes [25] |
|
| Title | Details |
|---|---|
| Red Balloon / Milonga Accidental [26] |
|
| Narratives [27] |
|
| Title | Year | Album |
|---|---|---|
| "Timing" [28] | 2021 | Narratives |
| "Slow Down" [29] | ||
| "Together" [30] | ||
| "River" [31] (Live from Salt Lick Sessions) | 2022 | non-album single |
| "Woke Up Today" [32] | 2023 | Multitudes |
| "Quedar" [33] | ||
| "I Need to Believe" [34] (featuring Quinn Christopherson) | 2024 |
All Songs Considered is a weekly online multimedia program started in January 2000 by NPR's All Things Considered then-director Bob Boilen. At first, the show featured information and streaming audio about the songs used as bumper music on All Things Considered. The program has turned into a source of discovery for new music of all genres. In August 2005, the program began podcasting for free. In 2005, it began webcasting and podcasting live concerts from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club, including acts such as Animal Collective, The Decemberists, Neko Case, and Tom Waits.
Bob B Boilen is an American musician and media personality. He was the host and creator of NPR's online music show All Songs Considered and the co-creator of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts, a series originally conceived of by NPR's Stephen Thompson. He retired from NPR in October 2023 after 35 years.
Laura Anne Gibson is an American singer-songwriter. She currently records for the U.S. independent label Barsuk Records, and the Berlin-based label City Slang. Gibson's most recent album Goners was released October 26, 2018.
NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music discovery. NPR Music offers current and archival podcasts, live concert webcasts, reviews, music lists, news, studio sessions, and interviews to listen to from NPR and partner public radio stations across the country, as well as an index of public radio music stations streaming live on the Internet. There have been two blogs: "Monitor Mix" by Sleater-Kinney musician Carrie Brownstein and the All Songs Considered Blog by Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton.
Arborea is an American psychedelic folk duo consisting of husband and wife Buck Curran and Shanti Curran. Buck Curran provides vocals, guitar, slide guitar, and sawing fiddle, while Shanti Curran provides lead vocals, banjo, 'Banjimer', harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer. They share songwriting, arranging, and producing.
DakhaBrakha are a Ukrainian folk music quartet which combines the musical styles of several ethnic groups. They were a winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award in 2009 and the Shevchenko National Prize in 2020.
Oh Pep! are an Australian band formed in Melbourne, Australia by Olivia Hally and Pepita Emmerichs. Their debut album, Stadium Cake, was released on 24 June 2016.
Phoebe Lucille Bridgers is an American singer-songwriter. Her indie folk music typically centers around acoustic guitar and electronic production, with melancholic lyrical themes. She has received four Grammy Awards from eleven nominations.
Gaelynn Lea Tressler is an American folk singer, violinist, public speaker and disability advocate from Duluth, Minnesota. She won NPR's 2016 Tiny Desk Contest.
Tank and the Bangas is an American musical group based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The band won the 2017 NPR Tiny Desk Contest and in November 2019, they were nominated in the Best New Artist category for the 2020 Grammy Awards. They have released three studio albums, Thinktank (2013), Green Balloon (2019), and Red Balloon (2022).
Grass Punks is an album by Tom Brosseau. It was released in 2014 on Crossbill Records. It is the first album in his North Dakota Trilogy. It was produced and recorded by Sean Watkins in Hollywood, California.
Naia Izumi is an American virtuoso guitarist and singer songwriter from Columbus, Georgia.
Quinn Christopherson is an American singer-songwriter of Alaskan Native heritage. He is best known for his song, "Erase Me," which describes his experience with male privilege as a transgender man. The song won NPR's 2019 Tiny Desk Contest, out of over 6,000 entries.
Madison Cunningham is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. Rolling Stone described her music as "a new spin on West Coast folk-rock, with classical tendencies, electric guitars, jazz-school chord changes and alt-rock strut all living under the same roof". Her second studio album, Who Are You Now (2019), was nominated for the best Americana album in the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. Her third studio album Revealer (2022) won the Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2023.
Anjimile Chithambo, better known under the mononym Anjimile, is an American folk musician from Boston, Massachusetts.
Mecca Russell, known professionally as Neffy, is a singer-songwriter from Arlington, Virginia.
Little Moon is an American indie folk rock band from Springville, Utah, and formerly a project of lead vocalist, singer-songwriter Emma Hardyman. Their first album, Unphased, was released in 2020. The band won the Tiny Desk Contest in 2023.
Lau Noah is a Spanish self taught multi-instrumentalist and composer. Noah has received international recognition for her way of playing guitar and singing in virtuosic counterpoint, with the Recording Academy describing her as "a musical polymath" She became the first Catalan artist to ever perform on NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Her first LP contains collaborations with artists such as Jacob Collier, Jorge Drexler, Chris Thile, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and many others.
Nicolle Horbath is a Colombian singer-songwriter. In May 2024, she released her debut EP, De Magia Imperfecta, produced by Latin Grammy Award winner Juan Carlos Pérez Soto. That same year, she received Latin Grammy nominations for Best Singer-Songwriter Album and Best New Artist.