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2024 Election Coverage

The Cast Of 'Vida' Shares The Music Of Its Powerful Latinx Drama

Melissa Barrera ("Lynn) and Michel Prada ("Emma") from the show <em>Vida. </em>
Kat Marcinowski
/
Starz Entertainment, LLC
Melissa Barrera ("Lynn) and Michel Prada ("Emma") from the show Vida.

There is a quiet Latinx revolution going on in television drama these days. Well, maybe not so quiet. But the status quo is definitely being shaken up.

The folks at the cable network Starz have just released the second season of the Latinx drama Vida, a pioneering production that pushes the boundaries of story telling and representation. The show presents the queer and straight Latinx community of the very real East Los Angeles community of Boyle Heights.

When season one premiered a year ago, we invited show runner Tanya Saracho to Alt.Latino to introduce us to the characters and talk about some of the behind-the-scenes efforts to get a show like this one past the pitching process. This year we have invited the very talented actors who portray the lead characters to talk about about this season: Mishel Prada, Melissa Barrera and Ser Anzoategui.

Music plays a very large role on Vida and much of it we have played here. The Starz folks have assembled two Spotify playlists with music heard on the show.

Very rarely does a mainstream media outlet invest so much in a stories that are complex and nuanced about the Latinx community. So when something like Vida comes along, it should be celebrated and shared.

Consider yourselves notified.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the entirety of Season 2, please stop when we ask you to at the end of the show!!


Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Felix Contreras is co-creator and host of Alt.Latino, NPR's pioneering radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture since 2010.