Speaker 1: Alna. I've thought Julie Gacia, a lifelong educator and the
Speaker 1: proud recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Today, it's
Speaker 1: my great honor to wish Latino USA a very happy
Speaker 1: thirtieth anniversary. Ucisi Magaskis for thirty years of informing, challenging
Speaker 1: and inspiring us. That Lisi that is to all at
Speaker 1: Latino USA.
Speaker 2: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
Speaker 2: Kurturre Latino USC latin Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa. We
Speaker 2: bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to you,
Speaker 2: overlooked by the rest of the media, and while the
Speaker 2: country is struggling to deal with these, we listens to
Speaker 2: the stories of black and Latino Studio United Latino Front,
Speaker 2: a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of the movement.
Speaker 2: I'm Maria Ino Jossa or La Latino USA. Listener. Hey,
Speaker 2: here's a show from Los Archivo's enjoy.
Speaker 3: I loved seeing how people reacted when somebody was singing
Speaker 3: stuff like that that would give you goose bumps or
Speaker 3: like that kind of stuff. I want to be able
Speaker 3: to do that. I still don't know if I do that,
Speaker 3: but it was just something I've always wanted to do.
Speaker 4: New chins.
Speaker 2: From Fudromedia and PRX. It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria no
Speaker 2: Josa today. Omar Apollo a rising star in the indie R.
Speaker 5: And B scene.
Speaker 2: Omar Apollo began making music on his own, teaching himself
Speaker 2: chords from YouTube videos and honing his sound in an
Speaker 2: attic in a small town in Indiana. His musical inspirations
Speaker 2: transcend borders and cultures, reflecting his experience as a son
Speaker 2: of immigrants from Guaalajara, Mexico, growing up deep in the Midwest.
Speaker 2: The music of this twenty three year old Mexican American
Speaker 2: artist courses with rich funk, sweet soul, and upbeat pop,
Speaker 2: and his lyrics often flow seamlessly between English and Spanish.
Speaker 2: Omar began performing music at house parties and open mics
Speaker 2: in his hometown of Lake Station, Indiana. Then, in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: while working at a fast food restaurant, Omar found his
Speaker 2: first breakthrough on Spotify with the song you Got the
Speaker 2: He then began receiving invitations to play at venues in
Speaker 2: Chicago and eventually across the country. Almost four years later,
Speaker 2: Omar has amassed more than one hundred million streams on
Speaker 2: Spotify and has signed a recording deal with Warner Records.
Speaker 2: Before the coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a halt,
Speaker 2: Omar had relocated to Los Angeles after wrapping up nearly
Speaker 2: two years of touring throughout North America, Asia, Australia.
Speaker 5: And Europe.
Speaker 2: When California went on lockdown, Omar decided to scrap everything
Speaker 2: that he'd been working on, daring himself to turn Quarantine
Speaker 2: into a lab of sonic experimentation. On this episode of
Speaker 2: How I Made It, Omar takes us to the early
Speaker 2: days of making music on bowered equipment and tells us
Speaker 2: how he explored everything from funk music to corridos in
Speaker 2: order to make his debut album, Apologno.
Speaker 3: It was up Omar Apollo and I'm an artist from Yenna.
Speaker 3: I'm from Lake Station, Indiana, where I grew up, so
Speaker 3: I don't need a GPS to go around anywhere. It's
Speaker 3: kind of very small. Everybody knows everybody type of thing.
Speaker 3: There wasn't really much of a music scene, but I
Speaker 3: would go to little events. I just wanted to perform.
Speaker 5: I don't knew what you need.
Speaker 3: The first bands that got me into music. There's a
Speaker 3: band called the Internet and released album called Ego Death
Speaker 3: when I was like seventeen.
Speaker 5: Need for your thoughts on knowledginal Gar.
Speaker 3: I remember I just listening to the album and then
Speaker 3: I was just like, oh, I need to get a
Speaker 3: guitar tomorrow. So after I heard that, I just went
Speaker 3: to the pawn shop and got a guitar. My friend
Speaker 3: let me borrow his bass. Then my other friend let
Speaker 3: me borrow his interface. My first memory really of getting
Speaker 3: started with music was in the garage. I had a
Speaker 3: few friends who played. I was eighteen when I started performing.
Speaker 3: After we started playing in Indiana, people were like, oh
Speaker 3: you could play, Like come play over here. It was
Speaker 3: just a hobby of something I did, but I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure that it was going to happen. I made you
Speaker 3: got me when he's seventeen, and I remember I was
Speaker 3: by myself really and then I called my cousin because
Speaker 3: he lived down the street, and I was like, Yo,
Speaker 3: you gotta come through, fool, come listen to this song
Speaker 3: I just made. He's like all right, I'm coming. He
Speaker 3: pull up in his little Monte Carlo and then I
Speaker 3: played it for him. He was just like, bro, what
Speaker 3: like that's insane. Maybe there's something you know, but clearly
Speaker 3: say I'm not good.
Speaker 4: I think that I'm ben.
Speaker 3: My friend was like, you gotta put it on Spotify,
Speaker 3: and then I didn't have any money, so gave him
Speaker 3: money to put it up and then got like playlisted
Speaker 3: or something. I got on like three playlist or something,
Speaker 3: and then I woke up and I had like all
Speaker 3: these plays and I was like whoa. I was like,
Speaker 3: that's crazy. I was like working on McDonald's and collected
Speaker 3: in the work that day, and then my friend told
Speaker 3: me the next day. He was like, yo, you gotta
Speaker 3: you gotta put it on another one on you got
Speaker 3: another one. I was like yeah, and then I had
Speaker 3: break lights like ready to go.
Speaker 4: Markers like cut right though.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to get good at making music, so
Speaker 3: I was just made it a bunch of songs a
Speaker 3: month for like the whole summer, like thirty five songs
Speaker 3: in a month, and I wouldn't put them out or nothing.
Speaker 3: None of them ever came out. It's just on this
Speaker 3: hard drive. Whether it was just an idea or like
Speaker 3: or a full song or just a bunch of mumbles
Speaker 3: or a bunch of harmonies. It was not until I
Speaker 3: started like selling out shows that I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is possible. So after I got off a tour,
Speaker 3: I didn't like the music I had been making, and
Speaker 3: I had this process, and I was just bored with
Speaker 3: the process, and so I figured I needed to do
Speaker 3: like a lot of different things, like try different things
Speaker 3: in music. I had twenty five twenty seven songs or something,
Speaker 3: and I was getting ready to put it together, you know,
Speaker 3: release it. But then Quarantine happened, and yeah, it kind
Speaker 3: of hit me. It made a lot of stuff I
Speaker 3: wouldn't normally make. But I had just started using a
Speaker 3: lot of pedals, and there was this one pedal in particular.
Speaker 3: It's called the Mutron. It's like wow, wow, wow wow,
Speaker 3: It's like whoah.
Speaker 5: Wo won't.
Speaker 3: Step you wanted to use it? Bootsy Collins use it,
Speaker 3: George Clinton, everyone used it. I ordered it because I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, we got money, now I can I
Speaker 3: can order things. And then I woke up the next
Speaker 3: morning after playing with it all night, and then like
Speaker 3: made stay Back, and obviously it's very Booty Collins inspired.
Speaker 3: Bootsy Collins is one of the pioneers of funk music.
Speaker 3: He was the first one to like slow it down
Speaker 3: and make this funk music that was sexy and slow.
Speaker 3: I just kind of said the ideas to my managers
Speaker 3: that it would be really cool for got Bootsy Collins
Speaker 3: on this, so yeah, it would be so then I
Speaker 3: just d M them and then then you like responded
Speaker 3: and then uh, you heard the song and he was.
Speaker 5: Down especially, and I'm thinking about you.
Speaker 3: I feel like I still have a lot of things
Speaker 3: that I want to do to like satisfy myself, and
Speaker 3: I think I had the same feelings when I was
Speaker 3: younger too. I played with the La Philharmonic recently and
Speaker 3: they learned this corrido called those that I made well corrido.
Speaker 3: It's a Mexican style of music. It was just crazy
Speaker 3: to hear, like I have the sheet music that transcribed
Speaker 3: sheet music in my studio just because it's really cool
Speaker 3: to look at you. I don't know, I've never looked
Speaker 3: at music that way, and so it was just really
Speaker 3: interesting to see people play along to it in a
Speaker 3: very trained way. My earliest memory of a corrida was
Speaker 3: probably my uncle's, my Theo's playing it in the living
Speaker 3: room like two in the morning. Drunk, just singing. It's
Speaker 3: just music that is nostalgic to me and the family.
Speaker 3: And I'm telling the story of just my life Jesse
Speaker 3: being from Indiana. That's talking about where I was from,
Speaker 3: and then how people didn't take me serious because I
Speaker 3: wanted to do something differ. Well, then the pre course,
Speaker 3: I'm just talking about getting money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one day.
Speaker 5: Last I.
Speaker 3: Honestly, getting money, I think is always the goal now
Speaker 3: because I never thought about it on the way up.
Speaker 3: I never thought about money when I didn't have it.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about music. I love music. And
Speaker 3: now I'm like, oh, I want to have generational wealth
Speaker 3: because it's never It's never ran in my family. You know,
Speaker 3: we'd never had money in my family at all. And
Speaker 3: then the second verse, I'm talking about how much I'm
Speaker 3: making Now it's just this and all everyone who is
Speaker 3: hating on me back home, and yeah, it's kind of toxic.
Speaker 4: Paget go from me for La Jamara can compre Outlas diamonds,
Speaker 4: So Baganda press barabras get remade.
Speaker 6: Don't you.
Speaker 4: See yoga makom pre.
Speaker 3: I go back to Indiana, it just feels different. And yeah,
Speaker 3: just seeing people that you knew and they know and
Speaker 3: they know how you're doing.
Speaker 4: Now, would you.
Speaker 3: I changed every day? I changed this morning, I had
Speaker 3: a breakthrough this morning. I changed every day. I think,
Speaker 3: I think that Why would you stay the same?
Speaker 2: That was R and B artist Omar Apollom. His debut
Speaker 2: album Apollonio is out on all streaming platforms now. This
Speaker 2: episode was produced by Julia Esparsa with help from Julia
Speaker 2: Rocha and edited by Martha Martinez and mixed by Gabriel Lebiez.
Speaker 2: The Latino USA team includes Andrea Lopez Brusado, Mike Sargent,
Speaker 2: Victori Estrada, and Renaldo Leanos Junior, with help from Dorim Marquez.
Speaker 2: Our director of Engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our senior engineer
Speaker 2: is Julia Caruso. Additional engineering support by jj Carubin. Our
Speaker 2: marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed
Speaker 2: by Zena Ruinos. I'm your host and executive producer Maria
Speaker 2: jo Hosa. Join us again on our next episode. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, keep up with us on social media. Iyatusaves
Speaker 2: not Teva.
Speaker 5: Yes Bye.
Speaker 6: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
Speaker 6: working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide.
Speaker 6: The Heising Simons Foundation Unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities more
Speaker 6: at hsfoundation dot org. Funding for Latino USA is Coverage
Speaker 6: of a culture of health is made possible in part
Speaker 6: by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Speaker 1: Can we get quiet?
Speaker 3: Please? Please? Three minutes please?
Speaker 2: One way to engender a lot of love from your family.
Speaker 2: Okay too, one