Elixir (which leverages the Erlang VM) has been gaining some momentum, so it could be related to that. Alternatively, distributed systems are more abundant than they've ever been, and many of the problems they present have been solved in Erlang.
Erlang isn't a terribly complex language, rather I believe OTP is the barrier to entry for me. Anyone know good docs for OTP? I've read LYSE a while ago, but is there something specifically for OTP?
I don't have the perspective yet to compare this to other works on OTP but this book may be of value to you: "Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP" [1]. It is co-authored by Francesco Cesarini, founder of Erlang Solutions and one of the master-class instructors.
I think I maybe just went too fast through that section. If that's the best place to learn it with an understanding of the language primitives, I'll just reread it.
Here are some direct links to playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR812eVbehlwEArT3Bv3U...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR812eVbehlwq4qbqswOW...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR812eVbehlx6vgWGf2FL...