Tokischa: Tiny Desk Concert

From the creator

From Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, Tiny Desk is celebrating Latinx Heritage Month with an El Tiny takeover, featuring Jessie Reyez, Susana Baca and more musicians from all corners of Latinidad. Stefanie Fernández | October 12, 2022 Tokischa came to NPR with a set of arrangements which, a conversation after the performance, she called "a little more Tiny," reworking her dembow tracks in a melange of other Caribbean and Latin American genres. True to her identity as an artist whose performance is aimed squarely at disarming respectability politics, she doesn't sanitize the originals. Instead, her performance subverts expectations by foregrounding her celebration of female sexual autonomy, queerness and desire against a backdrop of popular folk genres. The juxtaposition succeeds uncannily, the kind of artistic strength that lands on the ears of people in power like a threat. The dembow avant-gardist has incensed conservative pundits in the Dominican Republic and abroad. Her unfiltered expression has sparked moral panic and, elsewhere, drawn justifiable criticism. She opens with "Perra" — a collaboration she originally recorded with J Balvin and the video for which was criticized for racist imagery against Black women and was eventually deleted from YouTube. It's a surprising choice for an opener, even more so as a demure bossa nova. Tokischa lilts the song's chorus and playfully points to the audience. Her distinctive voice and flow pair deftly with the switch-ups across Caribbe

Published 2022-10-12 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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