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The Austin 100: Hector 'Coco' Barez

Hector "Coco" Barez.
Courtesy of the artist
Hector "Coco" Barez.

Hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico

Genre:Jazz

Why We're Excited: A go-to percussionist who's become a staple of Puerto Rican music — he spent a decade playing with Calle 13 and has popped up in Tiny Desk concerts twice, once with Bio Ritmo and once with Miramar — Hector "Coco" Barez never seems to stop moving. He's an educator, a musical ambassador, a busy session musician and, as of 2017, a solo artist whose joyfully infectious, endlessly varied debut album is titled El Laberinto del Coco.

Listen to Hector 'Coco' Barez's "Plere Maria (feat. Chamir Bonano)"

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)