Keeping the past present through music | podcast recommendations

These podcasts give us insight into the past through music culture

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Welcome to EarBuds! This week, our curator is Jaime Roque, host of Getty’s new podcast, ReCurrent. He brings us a list entitled “heritage you can hear,” featuring music podcast recommendations. Let’s get into it!

Here’s why Jaime chose this week’s podcasts:

Working at the Getty, ReCurrent lets me chase where culture lives: in sound, in community, in the archive, and in everyday life. Music has been the constant in my life since I was a kid, and it’s also one of the clearest ways I experience, remember, and share who I am.

This list is about learning and keeping the past present through songs and stories. Each pick hits a facet of that idea: the deep roots and instruments documented in the Florentine Codex (ReCurrent), the craft of modern pop braided with tradition (Song Exploder x Natalia Lafourcade), the first time I felt truly seen on screen and on a soundtrack (Latino USA x La Bamba), the way a single tune maps Black & Brown L.A. across generations (KCRW Lost Notes x “Viva Tirado”), and an annual ritual that turns remembrance into a living practice (AltLatino’s Sonic Altar).

Jaime Roque, December 2025 EarBuds curator

Music Podcast Recs: Heritage You Can Hear

ReCurrent podcast cover art

ReCurrent

This one opens with audio of a home video from my first trip to Mexico — my grandpa rolled out “the band,” which was all my uncles and I jumped on a drum kit for the first time, and a lifelong love of music switched on.

From there, I trace the instruments and sounds documented in the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century manuscript that offers the most detailed record of life in Mexico at the time, where instruments are described and pictured. I get hands-on with Indigenous instruments, hear them played, and explore why music sits at the heart of Nahuatl life, then connect those timbres and rhythms to the Rock en Español (Spanish rock) and Latin sounds I grew up on. It’s part history lesson, part listening party — heritage you can hear, circling back to family, memory, and belonging.

Song Exploder podcast cover art

Song Exploder

Natalia’s been one of my favorite artists for years, and this song — about holding tight to your roots — has gotten me through a lot of morning commutes here in Los Angeles.

Song Exploder breaks the track down stem by stem, so you hear how intention lives in each guitar line, harmony, and drum hit. As a musician and a fan, I love getting inside the choices that make a song feel both intimate and universal. By the time they play the full track at the end, you feel the song in a whole new way.

Latino USA podcast cover art

Latino USA

La Bamba is a top-three movie for me, and I watched this on repeat as a kid (and still do). The Los Lobos soundtrack, the family dynamics, and Ritchie’s story were my first big-screen mirror for a Mexican American/Chicano identity I recognized.

This conversation reframes the movie not just as nostalgia but as a landmark for representation and musical memory — and it’s a big reason I picked up the guitar. I still think about the what-ifs of his 1959 death: how far his sound might’ve traveled in the decades to come. Produced by Futuro Media (founded by Maria Hinojosa), Latino USA delivers a wide range of stories with deep reporting and beautiful storytelling — consistently one of the best listens out there for me.

Lost Notes podcast cover art

Lost Notes

El Chicano is the kind of band I’ve always wanted to be in — percussion-forward, timeless groove and Viva Tirado felt familiar from the start.

This episode shows how that tune braided Black & Brown L.A., how a melody can move through parties, cruises, and generations without losing its pulse. I also love the sampling lineage — hearing how Kid Frost flipped “Viva Tirado” on “La Raza” is a perfect L.A. musical experience.

Alt.Latino podcast cover art

Alt.Latino

Alt.Latino blends music discovery with cultural context, curating essential Latin sounds and the stories that give them meaning, and was one of the first podcasts I truly locked into and listened to on a consistent basis. I connected with their annual Sonic Altar episode; it blends music with a cultural celebration I grew up with, Dia De Los Muertos. Even when I can’t build a physical ofrenda, I can build a playlist of my dad’s, mom’s, sister’s, and my abuelos’ favorite songs.

When a Vicente Fernández track comes on, I hear my dad’s voice and those little bits of wisdom he used to drop — just like a home altar invites loved ones back with their favorite foods and drinks. I now do a similar version every year on my radio show based out of Boyle Heights — an episode inspired by Alt.Latino’s ofrenda, mixing new musical discoveries with my family’s soundtrack — so the music stays fresh, the memories stay present, and I get to honor my family sonically!

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The low-tech version of that is what I have done here, reach out to podcasters with long-running shows and ask them to tell me about the episode in their backlog that they think will hook a new listener. That’s the hook.

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Redacted (verb): censor or obscure for legal or security purposes. [REDACTED] History is a show where we can have real, unfiltered conversations about the things that SOME FOLK don't want us to talk about.

This is where we will huddle around the campfire and tell the stories of people that the textbooks forgot.

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