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    She Brought New Sounds to Colombia. The World’s Catching Up.

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    Back in the 1960s, when female musicians were mostly confined to the roles of teacher, interpreter or muse, the Colombian composer Jacqueline Nova was charting new pathways in Latin America. Using tools like amplifiers, cables, pulleys, transformers and oscillators to create novel sounds, her sonic experiments anticipated the music software programs and apps that are commonplace today. Nova also helped to lay the foundations for the development of sound art and interdisciplinary feminist art worldwide.Yet Nova’s work is only now beginning to resurface and her influence to be reckoned with. Scattered recordings began appearing online a decade or so ago, followed by presentations in museums. It culminated this fall with the release of a double album, “Creation of the Earth: Throbbing Echoes of Jacqueline Nova: Electroacoustic and Instrumental Music (1964-1974),” from Buh Records in Lima, Peru.Perhaps the delayed recognition is not surprising. Nova — who died at 40, in 1975, from bone cancer — was a consummate rule breaker. An independent woman and a self-identified lesbian in a field dominated by men, she created forward-thinking, often transgressive music. Though classically trained, she played with variations in form and blurred the boundaries of acoustic instruments, electronic sounds and human speech. She also challenged the conservatism of Colombia’s musical establishment by keeping the structure of her scores open to interpretation, inviting performers to collaborate rather than defer to her authority.“Today we can say she’s a sound artist or interdisciplinary artist, but she was an autonomous person driven by curiosity,” said Ana María Romano G., a professor at El Bosque University in Bogotá and a musical innovator in her own right. “She had questions about sound, about the here and now. Hers was not the kind of music we could hear in the streets, but she was interested in the freedom to engage in the world of sound — acoustics, physics, timbre, orchestration.”The work was often political, sometimes overtly so. Nova brought the chants of the Indigenous U’wa into her 1967 piece “Uerjayas. Invocación a los dioses” (“Invitation to the Gods”) and again in “Creación de la Tierra” (“Creation of the Earth”), her 1972 masterwork. By sonically altering recordings of those chants, she raised questions about what it was like to be perceived as an “other.”Nova’s work with visual artists was no less provocative. Rather than positioning audiences passively, Nova and Julia Acuña’s “Luz-Sonido-Movimiento” (1969) invited viewers to physically activate the installation’s various components. Nova contributed a soundtrack to the sculptor Feliza Bursztyn’s series “Las Camas” (1974), in which metal bed frames, outfitted with electric motors and colorful satin sheets like those used to cover images of the Crucifixion during Holy Week, moved suggestively to a throbbing beat. ‌Nova rejected the idea that music was meant only to be performed for the elite in hushed concert halls. She gave lectures, hosted a program on Colombia’s national radio station, composed for theater and films, wrote for magazines and newspapers, and worked tirelessly to support like-minded contemporaries by cultivating receptive audiences. For Nova, experimentalism was more than a new method of making music. It was a method of making change. And why wouldn’t it be for a composer whose outsider status led her to forge her own way?Born in 1935 in Ghent, Belgium, to a Belgian mother and a Colombian father, Nova spent her early childhood in Bucaramanga, the capital of the Santander region in northeastern Colombia. She came of age during La Violencia, the Colombian civil war that stretched from 1948 to 1958, the year she was admitted to the National Conservatory as a piano student. At the conservatory, she worked with the contemporary composer Fabio González Zuleta and became the first woman to graduate with a degree in composition. In 1967 she won a scholarship to study at the Latin American Center for Advanced Musical Studies in Buenos Aires, where she found the infrastructure and community to support experimental music made with machines.For all the intensity and breadth of her work, however, Nova didn’t achieve the renown she deserved during her lifetime. The musicologist Daniel Castro Pantoja points out that the contributions of Latin American composers were often regarded as secondary to those of European and North American vanguard figures like Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and Milton Babbitt. There was also the issue of gender bias, leading Pauline Oliveros to write an essay for The New York Times in 1970 asking “Why have there been no ‘great’ women composers?”Another obstacle to gaining widespread recognition was Nova’s unapologetic denunciation of traditionalists. She dismissed those who clung to the classical conventions as fearful of the present and the possibility of progress. In 1966, she argued for bursting that protective bubble: “The world of the composer, of the artist,” she wrote, “is situated concretely in the current moment.” Beyond that are “the fainthearted,” she continued, “those who can’t make up their mind about joining our fight.”That fight was cut short by Nova’s early death from cancer. The movement she had started building was still in its infancy, and since she didn’t teach, there were no students to carry on the work. Colombia’s experimental music scene fell into a long period of dormancy, Romano G. said.Nova at work. She used tools like amplifiers, cables, pulleys, transformers and oscillators to create novel sounds.Archive Ana Maria Romano G.Recovering Nova’s music and establishing its place in the electroacoustic canon has been an obsession ever since Romano G. first encountered it as an undergraduate in the early 1990s. Attending a concert of “Creación de la Tierra,” Romano G. said she was shocked by its beauty as well as its rarity. “Works by women were not generally presented, nor studied,” Romano G. said, “Maybe Clara Schumann or Hildegard of Bingen, but certainly not contemporary women from Latin America.”Romano G. became something of a Nova detective. While working at the Colombian Ministry of Culture she discovered a trove of material, including scores and press clippings, in its Center for Musical Documentation. That led her to Nova’s brother, who gave her access to Nova’s personal archives. Interviews with contemporaries helped her further situate Nova’s life and work in a multilayered context. Though Romano G. admired Nova’s technical proficiency as a composer, she said she was also eager to learn how she managed to flourish creatively despite living in a conservative milieu that was hostile to change.At first Romano G. presented her findings in academic journals and within Colombia’s experimental music scene. And then, in 2017, she organized a sound installation based on “Creación de la Tierra” for the Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellín, and another in 2019 at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, in collaboration with Castro Pantoja and Tyler Blackwell. This past fall, she put together the double album for Buh Records.Nova’s legacy can now be heard in the current generation of Colombian artists like Alba Triana, whose work includes sound and light sculptures, vibrational objects and resonant spaces; and Lucrecia Dalt, who fuses the traditional music of her childhood with electronic, and sometimes otherworldly, sounds.But Ela Minus, a Bogotá-born musician, said the impact of Nova’s approach to making and understanding music has yet to be fully realized. “There is still not a lot of structure for electroacoustic music in Colombia. The idea is that musicians should reach back to the past to ‘folkloric’ instruments, and avoid ‘European’ ones” — that is, electronic instruments and music technology.Ela Minus stumbled onto Nova’s music around 2012, as a Berklee College student in jazz drumming, while perusing music videos on YouTube. “She was working with tape machines!” Ela Minus said, adding that she was blown away by the sophisticated spatiality of Nova’s 1968 electroacoustic composition “Oposición-Fusión” and how huge it sounded. Ela Minus, 32, said the revelation helped her to imagine a new approach, inspiring her to switch to a double major in drumming and music synthesis.Today Ela Minus creates music in a homemade lab where she patches self-built hardware synthesizers together with samplers, drum machines and effects pedals to create interwoven beats and pulses. Romano G. says she’s not surprised to learn that Nova’s experiments continue to spark the imagination and traverse borders, whether geopolitical or generational. “She was more contemporary than many people today.” More

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      ‘Encanto’ May Be Accurate, but Can It Carry a Whole Country?

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      The filmmakers behind the Disney hit worked for cultural accuracy. Some Colombians and Colombian Americans are looking for more.“Encanto” wasn’t always set in Colombia.The germ of the idea for the Disney feature can be traced to 2016, when the “Encanto” directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard were still working on “Zootopia.” They knew they wanted to tell a story about family — and how family members can struggle to truly see each other. Then they asked: Where should this movie take place?Enter Natalie Osma and Juan Rendon, two Colombian filmmakers who worked on the behind-the-scenes documentary “Imagining Zootopia.”“As we were trying to figure out all of these perspectives and how to bring all the wonders and splinters of Latin America in a way that felt real,” Bush said, “they were like, ‘It’s the crossroads. Everything you can imagine is there.’”Osma and Rendon both became members of the Colombian Cultural Trust, a 10-member group of specialists — historians and anthropologists, biologists and botanists — dedicated to the movie’s details.“Encanto” has been praised for its cultural accuracy. And many Colombians and Colombian Americans loved the film — but it has also started a debate: What can and can’t one movie capture about a country?Whether it’s the racial dynamics that exist today or a strong sense of place in a country one-ninth the size of the United States, the film’s portrayal of nuanced and critical topics has sparked countless discussions among those of Colombian descent.“I found it charming,” the writer and editor Camilo Garzón said in an interview. “I found it beautiful. At the same time, it fell short in terms of what representation for representation’s sake can be.”He explained, “In the spirit of American meliorism, the criticism is to make things better, not necessarily because I didn’t like it.”Colombia, located where Central and South America meet, is home to more than 50 million inhabitants, and its rich cultural heritage reflects influences from Indigenous populations, European colonization, enslaved African people and later immigration.In Hollywood, the nation has been used mainly to tell stories about drugs, drug lords and violence — known as narconovelas — and that is why “Encanto” means so much: The country has never received treatment like this from a major American studio before.Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.Colombian Picture: The movie has been praised for its cultural accuracy. But for many Colombians, it has sparked a conversation about cultural representation.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.The film, which is up for the Oscar for best animated feature this month — follows the Madrigals. Years ago, Alma Madrigal fled her home to escape armed conflict. She saved her three infants but lost her husband. Devastated, the matriarch clung to the candle lighting her way, which became enchanted. Its magic imbues her family members with fantastical gifts when they come of age — except for Alma’s youngest granddaughter, Mirabel.In 2018, Bush; Howard; the executive music producer Tom MacDougall; Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote eight songs for the film; and Miranda’s father, Luis A. Miranda Jr., credited as a story consultant, traveled through Colombia for two weeks on a research trip.They started in sunny Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, drove roughly an hour and a half to San Basilio de Palenque, visited in and around the capital, Bogotá, and saw Bucaramanga, the city of parks. In Barichara, they heard traditional bambuco music, which would inspire the song “Waiting on a Miracle.” They ended in the Eje Cafetero, the coffee-growing region, including Salento and the Valle de Cocora. The soaring wax palm trees of the valley would later feature heavily onscreen.The research process continued throughout the five years of production. Familia, a group of Latino Disney employees, was assembled to share personal perspectives that would help shape the film. Iterations of the project were screened about eight times, said a producer of the film, Yvett Merino. Familia, which she is part of, watched each time and read early scripts.“I joke that they were like true family, because they gave us true feedback,” Merino said. “When they didn’t like something, they really let us know.”The opposite held true, too: Members of the Colombian Cultural Trust made clear what they thought should be included, like the story line of conflict and displacement.In 2016, the Colombian government signed a peace deal with the largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, supposedly heralding the end of a conflict that had left more than 220,000 people dead over more than half a century.“We were repeatedly asked, ‘Please don’t shy away from that; that is part of our history,’” Bush said. “By going through it, you also see the incredible resilience of Colombians.”Garzón, the writer and editor, was born in Bogotá and moved to the United States at the age of 18. “It’s beautiful to see different things that you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this makes me feel back at home,’” he said in an interview. “And at the same time, that’s not home, because home wouldn’t look like that.”He contrasted the pueblo surrounding the Madrigal family’s enchanted house with the town of Macondo, where the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez set his novel “100 Years of Solitude.” Both are fictional, but Macondo is believed to be based on Aracataca, García Márquez’s actual childhood home, while the pueblo is an amalgam of Colombian sites.“That cheapens the places, cheapens the significance of the geographies,” said Garzón, who critiqued the film’s generic setting in an article for Intervenxions, an online publication of the Latinx Project at New York University.He also saw a family whose members looked deeply different from one another, but lived in harmony — without ever talking about how race affects their lives.This, he said, was unrealistic: It was a representation of Colombia projected from an American perspective. But as he kept watching, he began to see the film’s depiction instead as an ideal to strive for — whether or not that was the filmmakers’ intent.Aiko Hilkinger, a Japanese German animation screenwriter from Colombia, thought “Encanto” was visually beautiful, stunning. It looked like Colombia, she said. But echoing Garzón, she said it didn’t feel like home. And she wrote as much, in an op-ed for Remezcla.“Because of the lack of Colombian people behind this film in positions where they could make decisions and actively influence people — particularly from the directing and the writing perspective — it doesn’t feel like a Colombian film,” Hilkinger said in an interview. “It doesn’t feel like you’re portraying Colombian culture and Colombian people in a way that’s authentic to Colombia.”Hilkinger said it seemed to her that the film was made more for Latinos who were born or living in the United States than for those from or living in Colombia. At the same time, though, she loves that young Latinos are seeing themselves onscreen, connecting with characters who look like them.Lina Britto, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at Northwestern University, agreed with the criticisms about place and race. “But I think expecting that from a movie like this would be not understanding the alphabet that they are using to write the story,” she said. “And the alphabet is the alphabet of magical realism.”The professor, who is from Colombia, said accuracy was not necessarily a concern or a goal in magical realism. She said the film’s premise — that the Madrigals received magical gifts as a result of overcoming tragedy — could open up a conversation about the history and reality of Colombia in an artistic manner.“Each person has his own unique talent,” Britto said, “that is the product of each one of them transmuting the trauma into something special and something unique and something that is going to be of service to others, not just to themselves.”Britto views each gift or talent as a form of justice and reparation. Which, she said, is “absolutely crucial” to Colombia at this moment, as the peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia threatens to unravel. In the courage of the young protagonist, Mirabel, and the receptiveness of young viewers, though, she sees hope for the future.“It’s the audience — and the insightfulness, the intelligence, the open-mindedness of this generation,” Britto said, “that has pushed older people — the producers, the creators — to be more daring.”In Colombia, “Encanto” was the highest-grossing film of 2021. According to the culture minister, Angélica Mayolo, almost four million people saw the movie in theaters, generating more than $10 million at the box office. (A percentage of that, totaling about $560,000, goes to the country’s Film Development Fund, which helps filmmakers with screenplay development, production and more.)“What, for me, would be the greatest win or success for ‘Encanto’ — aside from the three award nominations in the Oscars — is how the world now sees Colombia,” Mayolo said in an interview. “We’re no longer seen just as the country of drug lords. We are seen in a more positive way.”Mayolo pointed to the more than 16 companies currently working on production in the country — including Netflix, with “100 Years of Solitude” and “Freelance,” starring John Cena and Alison Brie — as proof that they way the world views Colombia is changing.She added: “We cannot deny our history and our conflict. But what we really want to reaffirm is our new moment.” More

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      I Watched ‘Encanto’ With My Dad. It Brought Him Back Home.

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      The animated Disney movie is set in Colombia, where my father is from — a place he rarely talks about. Would he fall for the film?The first time I saw the teaser trailer for Disney’s “Encanto” — an animated musical set in Colombia — two feelings flooded me. First came a surge of excitement for what it could be. Then, almost instantly, a shift to the defensive. “They’d better not mess this up,” I thought.After “Narcos” hit Netflix in August 2015, glossing drug lords, the Medellín cartel and cocaine with a sheen of glamour, couples dressed for Halloween as Pablo Escobar and his wife, María Henao. Escobar’s mug shot and mustache were plastered onto canvas tote bags. Introducing myself as Colombian American became tinged with perceived intrigue — before “Narcos,” my peers may not have immediately associated Colombia with drug violence. Now, the country was a curiosity.But “Encanto” was a chance for a new generation to view Colombia in a fresh light.In October, I watched an early screening of “Encanto” for an article I was working on. Not long into the film — as towering wax palm trees filled the screen — my eyes glazed with tears. The filmmakers hadn’t messed it up. Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard, it turns out, had a close relationship with the Colombian filmmakers Juan Rendon and Natalie Osma, with whom they traveled on a research trip to Colombia. A group of Latino Disney Animation employees called Familia shared their experiences and perspectives to help shape the film. Charise Castro Smith, who wrote the screenplay with Bush and is a co-director, is Cuban American.The movie captivated me, as someone who had grown up with my heritage held an arm’s length away from me. I knew where my father’s family came from — I had visited Colombia — but I always itched to know more. But what about my dad, who left home behind to build a new one?“Encanto” means “enchantment” or “spell” in Spanish, and the movie lives up to its name: Years ago, Alma Madrigal fled her home while escaping armed conflict. She saved her three infant children, Julieta, Pepa and Bruno, but lost her husband, Pedro. Devastated, Alma clung to the candle she was using to light her way, which became enchanted. Its magic imbues each member of the Madrigal family with a fantastical gift when they come of age — except for Julieta’s youngest daughter, Mirabel.Julieta can heal physical ailments with the food she cooks (often arepas de queso or buñuelos). Pepa’s moods influence the weather, and Bruno sees visions of the future. Isabela, one of Julieta’s two older daughters, makes flowers bloom; Luisa, her sister, has superhuman strength. Pepa’s three children each have a power, like talking to animals. And our protagonist, Mirabel? Well, she never got a gift.For me, as the only cousin in my family born outside of Colombia — and the only one not raised speaking Spanish — that resonated.My father, Francisco Zornosa, is from Cali; he emigrated to the United States when he was around my age, at 25. He was born a year after a five-decade-long armed conflict began in Colombia and grew up amid warfare between leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces. It’s an aspect of his childhood we’ve never really talked about.Laura Zornosa, left, and her father, Francisco, at the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena.Laura ZornosaI had just started college in 2016 when the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was signed. Growing up, I was fascinated by the mysterious land where my dad was from, where my grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins lived. But with my fair skin, red hair and mangled Spanish, I would stand out like a sore American thumb. It was deemed too dangerous for me to visit.Once the peace agreement was signed, though, my incessant wheedling began. Finally, my father caved: We embarked on a tour of his homeland. We stayed with my grandmother in Cali, nestled comfortably between the mountains. We drank in the sun in Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast. And we hiked through Cocora Valley in the Zona Cafetera, where the wax palm trees stretched impossibly tall, through the mist toward the sky.Walking out of the screening, I knew I had to show “Encanto” to my dad. “Look!” I wanted to tell him. “I recognize these trees! That animal! This pastry!” I wanted to hold up a shiny piece of him — of both of us — to be proud of.On Thanksgiving weekend, I dragged him to a theater. Maybe 20 minutes in, his glasses came off and the tissues came out. I had only ever seen him cry once, when his father died.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Morat, la banda colombiana que conquista el mundo al ritmo del banjo

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      Una de las bandas con mayor proyección de América Latina le habla a una generación con ansiedades y problemas que, a menudo, vive en un contexto de gran agitación social.El momento decisivo para una de las bandas de más rápido crecimiento en América Latina llegó gracias a un instrumento poco probable: un banjo robado.En 2014, la banda colombiana Morat tuvo una sesión de grabación en Bogotá. Sus cuatro miembros todavía estudiaban en la universidad, eran amigos de la infancia que tocaban en eventos informales y, algunas noches de la semana, se presentaban en bares. Mientras buscaba inspiración, el guitarrista Juan Pablo Villamil tomó un instrumento que no sabía exactamente cómo tocar.“En ese entonces todos sabíamos que queríamos sonar distinto, explorar cosas”, recordó Villamil en una reciente llamada de Zoom cuando sus compañeros de banda Juan Pablo Isaza, Simón Vargas y Martín Vargas se unieron para agregar sus propios aportes. Grabaron una guitarra de 12 cuerdas y una mandolina, luego alguien vio un banjo colgado en la pared. Lo tomaron prestado y nunca lo devolvieron.“En cuanto al proceso de aprendizaje, yo diría que fue principalmente en YouTube”, agregó Villamil. “Porque no hay muchos profesores de banjo en Colombia”.“Mi nuevo vicio”, la canción que estaban escribiendo en ese momento, terminó con un sencillo pero prominente riff de banjo y llamó la atención de Paulina Rubio, la estrella pop mexicana, quien rápidamente la grabó con la banda. El tema se convirtió en una sensación en España y llegó a las listas de éxitos en América Latina y Estados Unidos. Los músicos fueron invitados a Europa para que grabaran más música, y se llevaron el banjo.“No podíamos ser una banda de un solo hit, la canción con Paulina y eso es todo”, dijo Villamil. La canción que llevaban como su “as bajo la manga” era “Cómo te atreves”, que ahora tiene más de 200 millones de vistas en YouTube. Con su banjo acelerado, letras llenas de imágenes y un ambiente alegre de “road trip pop” que se ha convertido en el sonido de Morat, la canción marcó la llegada fulgurante del grupo a la escena de la música latina en 2015. Desde entonces, no han parado de crecer.En julio, el grupo lanzó su tercer álbum, ¿A dónde vamos?, y la semana pasada comenzó la etapa estadounidense de su gira que los llevará a teatros y estadios en California y Texas, con paradas en Chicago, Nueva York, Atlanta y Miami. Con canciones que abordan la angustia, la nostalgia y el enamoramiento, la banda ha forjado conexiones poderosas a través de fronteras y océanos al hablarle a una generación de jóvenes cuyas ansiedades y preocupaciones personales, grandes o pequeñas, a menudo se desarrollan en un contexto de agitación social.“Lo que intenta hacer Morat es usar palabras simples para explicar sentimientos complicados”, dijo Pedro Malaver, el manager de la banda. “No estamos tratando de ser Neruda. Solo tratamos de decirle a la gente: no estás solo”.Las características de lo que Villamil definió como la “firma sonora” de la banda incluyen letras dolidas y nostálgicas sobre el amor no correspondido que recuerdan a los boleros clásicos; coros cantados al unísono; y el uso de instrumentos (como el banjo, el piano eléctrico o la guitarra de acero) que rara vez se escuchan en el pop latino. Han lanzado poderosas baladas, melodías funky de R&B y canciones de rock que se inspiran en el country. “Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Musicalmente, la banda es un poco atípica en un ambiente donde el reguetón recibe la mayor atención. Las influencias de Morat incluyen Coldplay, Bacilos, Mac Miller, el poeta y cantante español Joaquín Sabina, Dave Matthews Band, la banda de rock colombiana Ekhymosis y, por supuesto, los Beatles. Villamil e Isaza también son fanáticos del country (escriben y graban a menudo en Nashville), y los hermanos Vargas eran metaleros antes de incursionar en el folk-rock.“En 2021, no hay un sonido único que defina el pop en América Latina”, escribió Kevin Meenan, gerente de tendencias musicales de YouTube, en un correo electrónico. “En cierto modo, Morat es un microcosmos de esta tendencia que incorpora una amplia gama de sonidos y géneros en su música, y en su caso, suelen usar influencias distintas a la movida más popular del reguetón y el trap latino”.Leila Cobo, vicepresidenta y líder de la industria latina en Billboard, dijo: “Hay muchas suposiciones sobre lo que es la música latina en este momento, pero es un territorio muy amplio”.Y añadió: “Morat demuestra que la música latina no es necesariamente lo que ves en las listas de éxitos en un momento determinado. Escriben grandes canciones pop con buenas letras. Son fieles a sí mismos, y constantemente amplían su base de fans”.MORAT COMENZÓ cuando tocaban en la escuela primaria; sus miembros se conocen desde los cinco años. A medida que se acercaban al final de la escuela secundaria, Isaza, Villamil, Simón Vargas y Alejandro Posada, el baterista original del grupo, formaron una banda. Después del lanzamiento de su primer álbum en 2016, Posada se salió para concentrarse en sus estudios y el hermano menor de Vargas se incorporó.Al principio, los miembros de Morat (que en ese entonces se llamaba Malta) repartían sus discos en los bares de Bogotá hasta que lograron presentarse de manera regular en un local llamado La Tea, donde los fanáticos del grupo eran el personal de seguridad y los mismos músicos mezclaban y hacían los arreglos en las presentaciones en vivo. Pronto, comenzó a surgir su público. “Recuerdo que teníamos un juego: cada vez que tocábamos en La Tea tratábamos de adivinar cuánta gente iba a vernos”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y, por lo general, llegaban más personas de las que esperábamos”.“Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Gianfranco Tripodo para The New York TimesPero no todos veían el potencial del grupo. Villamil recuerda que en la primera reunión que tuvieron con Malaver, que en ese entonces empezaba su carrera como un joven representante artístico, los rechazó después de escuchar una de sus primeras canciones. “Nos dijo: ‘Creo que ustedes son talentosos, pero nunca tendrán una canción en la radio. Deberían haber nacido en Argentina a fines de los setenta, porque su música no es adecuada para lo que está sucediendo en este momento’”.Después de verlos actuar en vivo en La Tea unos días después, Malaver rápidamente cambió de opinión. “Fui con la peor actitud de la historia a ese concierto ¡Pero luego empezaron a tocar!”, recuerda. Esa misma noche decidió representar a la banda.Ya llevan casi una década trabajando juntos, y las colaboraciones de Morat se han extendido por todo el espectro de la música en español: han hecho canciones con la actriz mexicana Danna Paola, con el cantaor de flamenco Antonio Carmona, con el rockero Juanes y con estrellas del pop como Sebastián Yatra y Aitana, entre muchos otros.“El catálogo del grupo realmente habla del poder de la colaboración en la región”, dijo Meenan. “Este éxito no ha estado ligado a un solo país. En YouTube, hemos visto su música en más de 15 países, obteniendo lugares en el Top 40 en lugares como España, México, Bolivia, Argentina, Italia y Ecuador, además de su Colombia natal”. Dijo que Morat ha logrado tener más de 950 millones de visitas en YouTube, solo en los últimos 12 meses.MORAT ESTABA de gira por España cuando hablamos por Zoom, y el grupo se juntó en un sofá frente a la cámara como cuatro hermanos. Se movían cómodamente entre el inglés y el español cuando querían expresar más claramente un punto, hacían bromas y, a menudo, uno terminaba las oraciones del otro. Tampoco dudaron en debatir en voz alta algunas de las preguntas más complejas.Dos temas surgen a menudo en las letras de Morat: el amor y la guerra, que es un tema delicado en un país que ha soportado décadas de conflicto armado.“El contexto en el que hemos crecido y en el que vivimos, tiene esa imagen todos los días, todo el tiempo”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y creo que, aunque no quieras, se nota y te influye”.Aunque la imagen global de Colombia se ha visto afectada por descripciones generales que la ubican como un lugar violento, la realidad, por supuesto, es mucho más compleja. “Bogotá tiene estas montañas enormes y el sol sale detrás de las montañas. Entonces durante gran parte de la mañana el sol no ha salido de las montañas, pero el cielo está azul”, agrega Simón Vargas. “Eso es muy colombiano, en cierto modo es como si estuvieras viviendo al límite. Puedes ver la oscuridad, pero también sabes que hay algo más allí. Y, al mismo tiempo, estás al lado de la luz y justo al lado de una cultura muy hermosa y de gente muy hermosa”.En 2020, Simón Vargas, quien también es escritor y actualmente está terminando su licenciatura en historia en la Universidad de Los Andes, publicó un libro de cuentos sobre Bogotá inspirado en el realismo mágico. “Tal vez fue una forma de tocar temas más intensos y oscuros que los que hablamos en nuestra música”. Lo tituló, apropiadamente, A la orilla de la luz.El último álbum de Morat se compuso casi en su totalidad durante la pandemia de COVID-19 en una de las regiones más afectadas del mundo. “No hay un solo ser humano en este planeta que no haya pensado, ¿a dónde vamos después de esto?”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Decidimos que se llamaría ¿A dónde vamos? literalmente porque pensamos que era una excelente manera de hablar sobre lo que está sucediendo en todos los aspectos. No sabíamos cuándo volveríamos a tener conciertos. No sabíamos cómo es que la pandemia iba a cambiar el panorama social”.Martín Vargas dijo que el título también se refiere al proceso creativo de la banda. “Con la exploración musical que tratamos de hacer, ¿a dónde vamos con nuestros instrumentos?”, añadió. “Es muy evidente durante el álbum: las canciones son diferentes. Hay mucho rock. Y también hay claras referencias a países. Baladas, boleros”.Ninguna de sus letras habla explícitamente sobre la pandemia, pero casi todas las canciones están marcadas por temas de angustia personal, incertidumbre e inquietud que contrastan con melodías optimistas y, a menudo, muy bailables. Juntas, las composiciones muestran la versatilidad de Morat: la eléctrica “En coma” trata sobre una relación atrapada en el limbo; la balada “Mi pesadilla”, con el cantante colombiano Andrés Cepeda, trata sobre la ansiosa espera por la llegada de la persona adecuada; la acústica “Date la vuelta” es una sentida carta a un amigo que vive una relación tóxica.Aunque las canciones representan una variedad de estados de ánimo, todas tienen la estética de la banda que continúa sumando nuevos oyentes. “Siento que lo que hemos hecho hasta ahora ha sido un milagro”, dijo Isaza. “No sé por qué a la gente le gusta un banjo con letra en español. Lo considero un milagro, y el hecho de que todavía lo estemos haciendo, es asombroso para mí”..Aunque el disco comienza con la pregunta “¿A dónde vamos?”, termina con el mensaje esperanzador de “Simplemente pasan”: “Ya quiero decirle que bailemos / Que lo peor que puede pasar es que nos gustemos”, dice la banda. Y remata: “Porque cuando las cosas buenas tienen que pasar / Simplemente pasan”. More

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      Bomba Estéreo Strives to Save the Planet and Soothe the Heart

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      Mixing traditions and electronics, this duo from Colombia envisions a futurism with roots.When Bomba Estéreo, the Colombian duo of Simón Mejía and Liliana Saumet, had nearly finished recording its sixth studio album, “Deja,” the group took part in an age-old ritual: a pagamento, or payment. It’s a ceremony “to pay back what you have taken from the Earth,” Mejía explained in a video interview from his home studio in Bogotá.At a sacred site in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta — snow-capped mountains on Colombia’s Caribbean coast that are still home to Indigenous groups — Bomba Estéreo spent a night making offerings and sharing profound conversation with a mamo, a shaman of the Arhuaco people.As the ceremony was ending, Mejía asked the mamo, Manuel Nieves, to visit Saumet’s studio, at her home in Santa Marta, and to record a message for the public; it became the final words on the album. Speaking in Arhuaco, the mamo calls for preservation of the endangered environment, warning about climate change and concluding, “On this Earth, our duty is to take care of Mother Nature.”By video from Santa Marta, Saumet said, “What we talk about on this album is connection. Connection with nature, connection with people, connection with all that’s around us.”Over the past 15 years, the combination of Mejía’s music and production and Saumet’s voice, melodies and lyrics have brought Bomba Estéreo major hits across Latin America, like “Soy Yo,” a call for self-empowerment. and “To My Love,” both from the 2015 album “Amanecer.”From its beginnings, as a solo studio project for Mejía, Bomba Estéreo set out to fuse electronica with a Colombian heritage that encompasses Indigenous, African and European recombinations. “Colombia is all about mixture and diversity — we have it in our DNA,” Mejía said. “We’re not one thing. We’re many things at the same time in this small, crazy and conflicted territory.”For Bomba Estéreo, he said, “The concept was trying to make an electronic music that was original, that wasn’t a copy of the electronic music that was made in London or New York or Detroit or Berlin. It was kind of an identity search. OK, if we, as Colombians or Latin Americans, are going to make electronic music, how would it sound? Our dance music is cumbia, is champeta, is salsa, is merengue, is all the tropical and Caribbean and folk music. And the international dance music is electronic music. So what happens if those two worlds that come from dance — that connection with the ritualistic — can come together because they have the same root?”Mejía met Saumet at a party — “a really, really bad party,” Saumet recalled — and later invited her to sing and write at a recording session; their collaboration was forged when she finished a song, “Huepaje,” in 45 minutes. Her untrained voice had the biting tone of traditional Colombian styles, but she had also grown up on hip-hop and could write both raps and melodies; girlish but assertive, she easily cuts through Mejía’s electronic constructions.In Bomba Estéreo’s early years, Mejía traveled around Columbia to learn about regional styles. He worked on a documentary on the drumming of San Basilio de Palenque, a village founded in the 17th century by escaped African slaves, and set up a recording studio there; he delved into the carnival music of Barranquilla, and he sought out old LPs of local music. Meanwhile, the group’s studio expertise expanded rapidly.With each album, Bomba Estéreo’s music has grown richer, bolder, more intricate and more idealistic. “Deja” is simultaneously earnest, spiritual, euphoric, rooted and high-tech. “We’ve grown older and we’ve learned more about ourselves, about music, about the world. So you kind of develop more layers in life,” Mejía said.“Colombia is all about mixture and diversity — we have it in our DNA,” Mejía said.Frank Hoensch/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe songs on “Deja” are grouped under elements: water, air, earth and fire.Frank Hoensch/Redferns, via Getty ImagesSince the 2010s, Bomba Estéreo has been strongly committed to environmentalism. With songs like “Siembra” (“Sowing”) and “Dejame Respirar” (“Let Me Breathe”), with benefit concerts, with speeches and with a 2020 documentary film, “Sonic Forest,” Bomba Estéreo has spoken out against deforestation, mining and pollution. Recording under the name Monte, Mejía released a solo album in 2020, “Mirla,” that put nature sounds at the center of instrumental tracks.The songs on “Deja” began emerging while Bomba Estéreo was touring Europe in 2019. On the bus, the guitarist and co-producer José Castillo and the percussionist Efraín (Pacho) Cuadrado started coming up with rhythms and guitar licks that would end up in new songs. After the tour, Mejía returned to Bogotá, building studio tracks and sending them to Saumet, who was in Canada with her Canadian husband and their children. Saumet brought in a longtime friend, Lido Pimienta, a Colombian songwriter who had moved to Canada in her teens; Pimienta was a singer, songwriter and arranger on “Deja”; Saumet has also been writing a solo album with her.“I’m her filter,” Pimienta said from her studio in Toronto. “Liliana is a fountain of words and singing. She is very free, and I’m more, like, methodical. She always tells me, ‘You’re my nerd,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re my hippie.’” Bomba Estéreo also invited other singers for the album: the Cuban duo Okan, the Mexican songwriter Leonel García and the Nigerian Afrobeats singer Yemi Alade. Cuadrado, the band’s percussionist, takes over lead vocals on “Tamborero,” a song that harks back to Afro-Colombian chants amid the electronics, as it celebrates the drums at the core of the music.“This is what music and art is,” Saumet said. “Something that was really awful in that moment, or was super strong, can be now something inspiring for other people.”Belulita PerezAt its best, Bomba Estéreo’s music hints at what Mejía calls “an Indigenous futuristic kind of civilization.”Belulita PerezIn January 2020, just before the pandemic lockdown, Bomba Estéreo and guest musicians gathered for three weeks of recording at Saumet’s home on the coast of Santa Marta, with the beach out front and a jungle and mountains behind it. The sounds of monkeys, birds and splashing Caribbean waves, recorded on the spot, surface often throughout the album.“The really cool thing about this album is that we finished it all together,” Mejía said. “In general, it’s everyone sending things on the internet. But I had always seen Bomba as a community effort, and finishing it together was kind of like having this hippie community, with everyone sharing energy.”The songs on “Deja” are grouped under elements: water, air, earth and fire. But that framework is open enough to encompass songs offering ecological pleas, dance-floor bliss, glimpses of mystical revelation and thoughts about loneliness, depression and healing.“Agua” (“Water”) opens the album with Saument, Pimienta and Okan harmonizing on a traditional-sounding chant, joined by a Colombian beat — a bullerengue — along with electronic blips and bass lines, and birds recorded in Santa Marta. The lyrics equate a woman’s body with an endangered planet: “Give me water, give me wind and I will survive,” Saumet sings.“Tierra” (“Earth”) uses a six-beat rhythm and plinking marimba patterns, drawing on Afro-Colombian styles from the Pacific Coast, to lament rapacious exploitation of natural resources. “The rivers were drained, the mountains were left empty for coal,” Saumet sings. “We are standing in the middle of the forest, watching its extinction.”Yet the album also has more lighthearted moments — like the Afrobeats-tinged “Conexión Total,” with Saumet and Alade wanting someone to go offline and get physical — and more introspective ones. The title track, written with Pimienta, is about trying to live through depression and leave it behind.“Lido and me, we both have a personal story with depression,” Saumet said. “When we finished that song, we started crying together. Now we can hear the song and know other people can be touched. This is what music and art is. Something that was really awful in that moment, or was super strong, can be now something inspiring for other people.”At its best, Bomba Estéreo’s music hints at what Mejía calls “an Indigenous futuristic kind of civilization,” he said, and added: “Obviously we’re not going back to living as an Indigenous tribe lives in the Amazon. We already live in cities, and we have computers and phones and whatever. But we can find a level of mixing our technology and respecting and being with nature. It’s like having one bare foot in the roots, while the head is looking to the future.” More

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      Camilo’s Hemisphere-Spanning Pop

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCamilo’s Hemisphere-Spanning PopWith indelibly catchy songs, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Colombia has conquered an international audience. A new album, “Mis Manos,” may bring him even more fresh ears.Camilo’s new album, “Mis Manos,” is determinedly grateful, trans-nationally eclectic and strategically unadorned.Credit…Rose Marie Cromwell for The New York TimesPublished More