Lenguajero Blog

August and I got a puppy. Her name is Pasa (Raisin in Spanish), or for now, Pasita. Pasa has a lot of energy and por eso I’ve been walking her a lot. This has given me a lot of time to listen to new music and podcasts that I don’t normally listen to. One thing that has come out of this is that I am now listening to a LOT of new Spanish language music.

My new discoveries started with this Writing Club theme – write about your favorite song, which has been one of our most popular topics ever (for good reason).  Since then I have discovered a bunch of great resources that I would recommend to anyone else interested in finding great Spanish language music.

1. I signed up (and actually paid) for a couple of months on LoMasTv. LoMasTv is a site that has videos in Spanish (like telenovelas, music videos etc.) that you can watch. The player that you watch the videos on has Spanish and English captions (that you can turn on or off) and pitch-correct slow play (especially useful when you’re listening to Calle 13). While you’re listening you can add new words to a flashcard program in one-click.

There are 2 other things I think LoMasTv does really well. First, the music available is popular and crosses every genre. It’s organized by Spanish-difficulty and/or country. There is a tongue-in-cheek write-up about each song/artist. The other is that there are Spanish lessons on grammar, expressions or vocabulary that reference specific songs. Here is a lesson on the suffix -ero (it helps explain our name – lenguajero no?), that uses Choc Quib Town to reinforce the lesson. This is an awesome way to learn Spanish.

2. I discovered another great site Radio Tuna.

It’s a beautiful site that helps you find free streaming online radio stations. Just click on genre “Latin” and you’ll see un montón of Spanish music. Another neat thing about the site is that for each song you can see information about the artist. So if a song by Las Orishas comes on, I can see right there on the site their entire bio and a list of their albums.

3. I really like the YouTube stream for Buenos Entonces. One morning I played their video of Gotas de Agua Dulce by Juanes about 20 times in a row. I’m sure my neighbors loved me.

4. @Verschof from the language-learning blog Baby-Steps to Fluency tells me that Pandora is great for discovering new music. Her advice is to start with a spanish-language artist that you like (Juanes, Manu Chao, etc.) and the site will then stream music that it thinks you’ll like. Unfortunately it only works in the United States. I can’t experience it here in Mexico.

5. If you have iTunes, you can scroll to the bottom of the iTunes Store. There’s a link “Change Country”. If you set your country to Spain or Mexico you’ll get that country’s version of iTunes. You’ll see the most popular music and podcasts. It’s a great way to discover what’s popular now. This also works on YouTube. At the bottom of the homepage there’s a “change location” link.

August and I put together this Lenguajero Recommends – MP3 Music Store (US only). Any MP3s you buy from it help us continue with Lenguajero.com.

What music discoveries have you made lately? Share them in the comments or on twitter.