Astropical’s self-titled album, out March 7, is a euphoric exploration of South America’s coastal sounds.
Maria Jose Govea
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Maria Jose Govea
It began with one music.
The Venezuelan tropical rock band Rawayana joined the electro-cumbia Colombian group Bomba Estéreo in a Miami studio to work on a collaborative single. The artists immediately clicked, and the songs stored multiplying. Quickly sufficient, Bomba vocalist Li Saumet invited members of Rawayana to her seaside hometown of Santa Marta to put in writing a full album. There, towards a backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains and beneath the scorching Caribbean solar, they birthed a brand new supergroup: ASTROPICAL.
Since 2008, Bomba Estéreo’s exuberant, digital melodies have ignited a free-spirited type of mayhem on dancefloors across the globe.The group’s mix of psychedelic synths, conventional Afro-Colombian rhythms and eco-conscious lyrics launched them to the forefront of the Latin indie scene. Throughout 5 studio albums, over a dozen mixed Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations and a coveted Dangerous Bunny collab, Saumet has reigned as a excessive priestess of dance events — a non secular information rooting Bomba’s musical debauchery.
In neighboring Venezuela, a gaggle of buddies from Caracas was harnessing an equally sun-drenched, barely extra laid-back sound. Rawayana began out importing jokey songs to MySpace, then relaxed right into a funk reggae band with rising attraction. Because the socioeconomic state of affairs within the band’s nation deteriorated, Rawayana emerged as a key voice of artistic resistance from a era raised beneath political misery. Final month, the band grew to become the primary Venezuelan act to win a Grammy for finest latin rock or various album.
ASTROPICAL’s self-titled album, out March 7, is a euphoric exploration of South America’s coastal sounds. “We’re dwelling in very darkish occasions for humanity and I really feel like this type of music is what we have to vibe on a unique degree,” Saumet tells NPR in Spanish. “The entire songs on this album are very constructive; they’re meant to elevate individuals’s minds and spirits.”
By becoming a member of forces, Bomba and Rawa set their sights on a less-explored Caribbean musical heritage, one they started navigating as solo artists. Whereas the Latin music increase of the previous decade has largely centered genres like reggaeton, dembow and dancehall, ASTROPICAL‘s 12 astrology-themed songs characteristic dazzling champeta guitar riffs, gaita flutes and Afrobeats percussion.
“That is what Bomba Estéreo and Rawayana have all the time achieved, and that is the place the magic is,” says Rawa frontman Beto Montenegro in Spanish. “We’re not essentially reinventing the wheel, however we have all the time made music that is a bit completely different from what’s occurring commercially, or what persons are used to listening to. I believe that is the place each bands meet and make sense of the world collectively.”
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On the club-ready opener “Brinca (Acuario),” Montenegro’s velvety, drawn-out vocals collide towards Saumet’s piercing, fast-paced supply. As they sing backwards and forwards, detailing directions for the best way to let go and lose your self within the music, their contrasting voices change into the album’s superpower. “Llegó el Verano (Sagitario)” is a sizzling rush of EDM beat drops and playful rhymes. Within the infectious merengue-pop of “Una Noche en Caracas (Tauro),” Saumet takes inspiration from her first efficiency in Venezuela at 2022’s Cusica Fest.
“It felt like a extremely historic second. A variety of the individuals there hadn’t been capable of return to Venezuela for like 10 or 11 years, so it was this large reunion,” she says. “There have been additionally plenty of bands that had by no means had the chance to play within the nation earlier than. The vitality was so magical and so sturdy. It was like a portal opened.”
Sadly, the portal did not keep open for lengthy. In 2024, Venezuela held a highly-contested presidential election that resulted in widespread protests and a crackdown on dissent by the incumbent authorities. Many musicians, together with Rawayana, spoke out in assist of opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González. A number of months later, President Nicolas Maduro criticized Rawayana and rapper Akapellah’s hit music “Veneka,” which reclaims a slur typically waged towards Venezuelan migrants in Latin America. Days after Maduro’s speech, Cusica Fest, which had lengthy been sustaining the nation’s dwell music scene, issued a press release saying it needed to cancel its competition for causes past organizers’ management. Additionally cancelled was Rawayana’s upcoming tour all through Venezuela, which Cusica was selling.
“Though our important precedence is making music and never getting concerned in Venezuelan politics, we’re very open about the place we stand on the political state of affairs. And due to that, the state made the choice that our tour was not handy,” says Montenegro. “We’re not stunned by the choice, however we’re stunned by the try to go us off as a power of division. Regardless of making our place on the matter well-known, everybody in Rawa respects ideological, spiritual, sexual range, and many others and many others. Basically, all human range.”
Throughout his acceptance speech on the Grammys — across the identical time the Trump administration revoked non permanent safety standing for lots of of hundreds of Venezuelans —- Montenegro addressed his countrymen straight, telling them to carry their heads excessive.
“That award — I do know lots of people relate it to the resilience and resistance of what we have needed to undergo as Venezuelans,” he says. “That was positively the intention behind my speech: a reminder of how good we’re and can proceed to be.”
That is the opposite underlying throughline of ASTROPICAL: a brand new second of unity for each Venezuela and Colombia. Because the inception of each international locations, the connection has been rocky; within the nineteenth century, they have been a part of one giant supernation generally known as La Gran Colombia, which is cheekily referenced within the lyrics to “Una Noche en Caracas.”
In the course of the armed battle of the Seventies and ’80s, many Colombians sought refuge in neighboring, oil-rich Venezuela. In current many years, because the latter undergoes a socioeconomic disaster, thousands and thousands of Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia. There, they’ve typically been met with xenophobic backlash. In 2019, the 2 international locations broke all diplomatic relations, although they have been restored in 2022.
Saumet and Montenegro say that working collectively on the album helped them perceive simply how comparable their international locations are to 1 one other, and the way far more widespread floor there’s to discover. Lyrically, ASTROPICAL is a playground of cultural touchstones and if you understand, you understand references to each international locations. Within the cosmic journey of “Me Pasa (Piscis),” Montenegro winks on the endless argument about who arepas actually belong to. Each artists hope this album — a convincing affirmation to tune out your units and tune into your family members — may help ease tensions which have permeated the area for thus lengthy.
“I believe as artists, we have now a duty to liberate individuals from these beliefs,” says Saumet. “What cannot be achieved by politics, we will do by music. Music can heal from a spot of affection.”
