ASTROPICAL’s self-titled album, out March 7, is a euphoric exploration of South America’s coastal sounds.
Maria Jose Govea
cover caption
toggle caption
Maria Jose Govea
It began with one tune.
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 jot down a full album. There, in opposition to a backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains and below 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 religious information rooting Bomba’s musical debauchery.
In neighboring Venezuela, a gaggle of mates 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 enchantment. Because the socioeconomic scenario within the band’s nation deteriorated, Rawayana emerged as a key voice of artistic resistance from a technology raised below political misery. Final month, the band grew to become the primary Venezuelan act to win a Grammy for greatest latin rock or different album.
ASTROPICAL’s self-titled album, out March 7, is a euphoric exploration of South America’s coastal sounds. “We’re residing in very darkish occasions for humanity and I really feel like this sort of music is what we have to vibe on a special degree,” Saumet tells NPR in Spanish. “All the songs on this album are very optimistic; they’re meant to raise individuals’s minds and spirits.”
New Music Friday: The most effective albums out March 7 ➡️ Take heed to new releases from Woman Gaga, BLACKPINK’s JENNIE, Jason Isbell and extra.
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 growth of the previous decade has largely centered genres like reggaeton, dembow and dancehall, ASTROPICAL‘s 12 astrology-themed songs function dazzling champeta guitar riffs, gaita flutes and Afrobeats percussion.
“That is what Bomba Estéreo and Rawayana have at all times finished, 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 at all times made music that is a bit of totally different from what’s occurring commercially, or what individuals are used to listening to. I believe that is the place each bands meet and make sense of the world collectively.”
YouTube
On the club-ready opener “Brinca (Acuario),” Montenegro’s velvety, drawn-out vocals collide in opposition to Saumet’s piercing, fast-paced supply. As they sing backwards and forwards, detailing directions for find out how to let go and lose your self within the music, their contrasting voices develop 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 very historic second. Lots of the individuals there hadn’t been in a position to 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 power was so magical and so robust. 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 tune “Veneka,” which reclaims a slur typically waged in opposition to 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 fundamental precedence is making music and never getting concerned in Venezuelan politics, we’re very open about the place we stand on the political scenario. And due to that, the state made the choice that our tour was not handy,” says Montenegro. “We’re not shocked by the choice, however we’re shocked by the try to move us off as a pressure of division. Regardless of making our place on the matter well-known, everybody in Rawa respects ideological, non secular, sexual variety, and so forth and so forth. Primarily, all human variety.”
Throughout his acceptance speech on the Grammys — across the identical time the Trump administration revoked momentary safety standing for a whole bunch 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 undoubtedly 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. For the reason that inception of each nations, the connection has been rocky; within the nineteenth century, they have been a part of one massive 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 latest a long time, because the latter undergoes a socioeconomic disaster, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia. There, they’ve typically been met with xenophobic backlash. In 2019, the 2 nations 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 related their nations are to at least one one other, and the way rather more widespread floor there may be to discover. Lyrically, ASTROPICAL is a playground of cultural touchstones and if you understand, you understand references to each nations. 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 gadgets and tune into your family members — can assist ease tensions which have permeated the area for thus lengthy.
“I believe as artists, now we have a accountability to liberate individuals from these beliefs,” says Saumet. “What cannot be finished via politics, we are able to do via music. Music can heal from a spot of affection.”
