AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Calling all musicians - get your recording equipment and your home office furniture. The Tiny Desk Contest is coming back. NPR Music has announced the seventh annual contest for 2021. The previous six have seen tens of thousands of entries from every genre. They've even launched a few careers and not just for the contest winners. The Tiny Desk is Bob Boilen's actual workstation when he's at NPR headquarters.
Welcome back, Bob.
BOB BOILEN, BYLINE: Hello there.
CORNISH: All right, so remind us again what's in it for the musicians - I mean, other than a chance to play at your cubicle...
BOILEN: (Laughter).
CORNISH: ...Which sounds very exciting. Why enter this contest?
BOILEN: A couple of things. One - and the most important - is to be heard. There's a chance that you might win, and hundreds and thousands of people will hear your music who never would have heard it before. And also, for those who enter the contest that don't win, we highlight videos all the time and discover artists. So an artist, No-No Boy, who makes music talking and helping us learn about those imprisoned in Japanese internment camps...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IMPERIAL TWIST")
NO-NO BOY: (Singing) Can you give the world a twist just by doing the twist?
BOILEN: ...Lau Noah, who is an amazing classical guitar player...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA REALIDAD")
LAU NOAH: (Singing in Spanish).
BOILEN: ...Both of these artists, in fact, were on this past week's All Songs Considered. We continued to follow them.
CORNISH: At this point, how do you enter?
BOILEN: So we're asking musicians in the United States who are 18 years and older to make a video of themselves behind a desk of their choosing - the desk is important, and get imaginative - of a song that is yours that you're proud of, and then send it to us.
CORNISH: Now, the truth is you get, like, 6,000 entries every year of all sorts, right? I mean, people do send stuff to you. What are you looking for?
BOILEN: Singularity is the thing that I look for most - something that you out there as a musician are doing something in some way, shape or form that nobody else is doing.
CORNISH: Do you have an example, someone who stood out over the years that you really think, this was the ideal?
BOILEN: We have six great examples. Let's take Tank and the Bangas, for an example.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TANK AND THE BANGAS: (Singing) Man, I can't believe I just won Tiny Desk. Oh, my God, I did it with big hair and a tiny desk. I won Tiny Desk.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Laughter).
BOILEN: They are an artist I had never heard of before. But also, the music that they make is - it's poetry. It's joy. It helps you look deep inside of yourself in the poetry and music they make. And it's a big band. And they did it all in a little classroom.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUICK")
TANK AND THE BANGAS: (Rapping) So I got to make a quick decision. I got to get - get out my feelings, see that money on the dash. Oh, then we want to go to Venice. Then we want to go to Venice.
CORNISH: Last year's contest came during the pandemic. We're obviously not out of the woods, you know, this year when it comes to COVID. How will that impact this one? What will be different about this year's contest?
BOILEN: As the entries started coming in at the end of last year's Tiny Desk, a lot of people couldn't get together, and so people had to figure out how to make their music with their bandmates. So people got creative in that regard. This may be a little bit easier. There will still be challenges, but I think people are better equipped to overcome them. Everybody's gotten their home office and their desks in a little better shape this year than they might have had last March.
CORNISH: That's NPR Music's Bob Boilen, creator of Tiny Desk Concerts, talking about the Tiny Desk Contest, which opens May 11. Best of luck, everyone.
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