"Asalto Navideño" with Miguel Zenón, and the Ray Conniff Singers

This week’s episode features two interviews—one with Grammy-winning jazz saxophone player Miguel Zenón helping us appreciate the salsa Christmas classic Asalto Navideño by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe. Asalto Navideño was reissued on vinyl this holiday season by Craft Recordings. The other is with music industry veterans Jonathan McHugh and Tamara Conniff, who worked together to produce A Life in Rhythm: The Ray Conniff Story about her father. The episode also includes new Christmas music from Kristian Noel Pedersen, who appeared on the podcast earlier this season. You can find his new album, Bullshit & Gift Wrapping at his Bandcamp page. In the episode, we also hear music from the late Raul Malo of The Mavericks. I wrote about the Mavericks’ return in 2013 , but never got a chance to interview Malo, whose Marshmallow World & Other Favorites is a wonderful introduction to his charms as a singer. The episode also includes “Two XMAS” by New Fools from the New Orleans indie Christmas compilation, A Strange Daisy Christmas . If you’d like this year’s Christmas mix, email me at Alex@myspiltmilk.com. If you have a cool mix yourself, send it or a link over. I’d love to hear it.

You can listen to "Asalto Navideño" with Miguel Zenón, and the Ray Conniff Singers online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

"Asalto Navideño" with Miguel Zenón, and the Ray Conniff Singers is an episode from Twelve Songs of Christmas by Alex Rawls.

This episode is 76:26 long.

This episode was published on Dec 18, 2025.

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