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Alisa Amador: 2022 Tiny Desk Contest Winner (2022x53)

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It surely was a day of joyful tears. And those joyful tears for Alisa Amador, the winner of the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest, came at a time when she had been considering putting her music career on hold. For the staff of NPR and the Tiny Desk crew, it was our first Tiny Desk concert with an audience in over 800 days, and Alisa’s captivating music surely intensified our spinning emotions. Alisa Amador opened with her Contest-winning entry “Milonga accidental,” a song about embracing your contradictions. It’s a song that our judges — iLe, Big Krit, Michelle Zauner (of Japanese Breakfast), Raveena, Nate Chinen (of member station WBGO), Tiny Desk producer Bobby Carter and I — all found to be so filled with passion. I often fall for a song because of the lyrics, and this is the first Tiny Desk Contest winner whose winning song is in Spanish. Despite the fact that I don’t speak Spanish, I felt the conflict, the yearning and the song's questioning.