Latin Excitement in Three Boroughs

By JON PARELES/NY Times

Published: July 5, 2013

Music isn’t waiting for immigration reform; ideas cross borders. The annual Latin Alternative Music Conference returns this week, eclectic as ever and stretching to the Bronx, where it starts on Tuesday with a free show at 7 p.m. at Crotona Park (Claremont Parkway and Crotona Avenue) by the Brooklyn rapper Joell Ortiz and two Chilean disc jockeys, DJ Raff and Latin Bitman. Free concerts at Central Park SummerStage, midpark at 70th Street, include the rappers Fat Joe (from the Bronx), Cuarto Poder (from Venezuela) and Los Rakas (from Panama via Oakland, Calif.) on Wednesday at 6 p.m.; the Mexican trad-rocker Lila Downs on Thursday at 6 p.m.; and the Mexican pop-folk songwriters Julieta Venegas and Carla Morrison on Saturday at 3 p.m.

The Mexican electronica experts Bostich and Fussible, from Nortec Collective, headline Celebrate Brooklyn! at the Prospect Park Bandshell, Ninth Street and Prospect Park West, on Friday at 6 p.m., free, and the long-running Latin-tinged funk band War performs free at Crotona Park on Friday at 7 p.m. The conference also has smaller, well-populated showcases — where next year’s headliners may well be appearing — at Manhattan clubs. (Schedule: latinalternative.com/events.htm.)