Valdivia, Brandon (Mas Aya)

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    Brandon Valdivia habla de su nuevo disco

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    En su álbum más reciente, el productor nicaragüense-canadiense se plantea las expresiones políticas surgidas en los momentos de quietud.“Momento Presente” de Brandon Valdivia es como una invocación. En este tema perteneciente a Máscaras, su álbum lanzado en septiembre, un ritmo poco convencional que no pertenece al estilo de baile “footwork”, suena junto a los remolinos de un silbato de hojalata. Suena una campana y, al poco tiempo, la voz divina de un hombre entona un llamado a la acción. “Sabemos que se está separando los opresores y los oprimidos”, reflexiona en español. “No vamos a esperar 2000 años para que los buenos estén de un lado y los malos estén de otro lado. Sino que ese momento lo estamos viviendo ahora”.Este es el tipo de magia militante que Valdivia, de 38 años, más conocido como Mas Aya, invoca en su música. “Intento fusionar lo político y lo espiritual”, comentó en una entrevista por video desde su estudio en Londres, Ontario. “Hay que actuar, hay que estar en el momento, hay que estar en el mundo”.Esa sensación de urgencia silenciosa inunda Máscaras, su primer disco desde el LP de 2017 Nikan. A veces, el proyecto hace referencias directas a las revoluciones en Nicaragua, su tierra natal. (El audio hablado de “Momento Presente” proviene de una reunión de guerrilleros a finales de la década de 1970 liderada por Ernesto Cardenal, el teólogo de la liberación). Sin embargo, Máscaras no solo se basa en alusiones explícitas al poder. También se trata de las pequeñas rebeliones incrustadas en los momentos de inmersión y quietud.Valdivia dijo que el título del álbum describe las máscaras utilizadas en las marchas políticas y las ceremonias indígenas, pero también se trata de su propio método compositivo. “Los instrumentos se esconden dentro de la nube de texturas”, explicó. Las canciones del álbum son como bocetos impresionistas, que cambian los puntos focales por una fresca fluidez. La quena y las flautas bansuri revolotean sobre bucles de batería. El repiqueteo de las claves o las maracas se desvanece en olas de sintetizadores nítidos y ritmos electrónicos desordenados, que se transforman en dulces ráfagas de armonía.Valdivia creció en Chatham, una pequeña ciudad canadiense a una hora en auto de Detroit. La suya fue una de las primeras familias latinas en llegar, y a menudo anhelaba tener aliados en la música, la comunidad y el arte.En Nicaragua, su padre era un jipi de cabello largo que escuchaba Black Sabbath y cumbia, fumaba marihuana y consumía ácido. Valdivia se enamoró de la música a los 12 años y aprendió a tocar la flauta dulce, y luego la batería. Veía MuchMusic (el paralelo de MTV en Canadá) y escuchaba la radio pública de Detroit. Leía poesía francesa y pidió una copia de A Love Supreme de John Coltrane en la tienda de discos local. Tardó seis meses en llegarle.“Sabía que era un bicho raro”, dijo sobre el mundo conservador que lo rodeaba. “Quería salir de ahí en cuanto pudiera”.Se escapó a la universidad, donde estudió composición en la Universidad Wilfrid Laurier de Ontario, ahí encontró “gente creativa, interesada en superar los límites”, comentó. “Como bichos raros. Utilizo mucho esa frase”.Valdivia optó por iniciar un proyecto en solitario después de sentirse frustrado con la escena artística de Toronto. “Nadie hablaba de política”, dijoBrendan Ko para The New York TimesEn los años siguientes, Valdivia se convirtió en un respetado multinstrumentista y percusionista del entorno experimental y de art-rock de Toronto, tocando en grupos como Not the Wind, Not the Flag y I Have Eaten the City. También ha colaborado ampliamente con su compañera, la artista nominada al Grammy y que rompe géneros, Lido Pimienta, quien también participa en Máscaras. A los veinte y pocos años, viajó a Nicaragua, donde visitó a su familia en Managua, Estelí y Masaya, la ciudad natal de su abuela, y estudió las tradiciones musicales folclóricas del país. A su regreso a Canadá decidió poner en marcha un proyecto en solitario, inspirado en parte por su frustración con el entorno artístico de Toronto.“Nadie hablaba de política. Todo el mundo hacía, básicamente, una extraña música experimental nihilista”, afirmó. Mas Aya toma su nombre del hogar de su abuela, así como de “el más allá”.Valdivia describió su práctica como “armelódica”, un término que tomó prestado del músico de jazz Ornette Coleman. “Este tipo de música en la que la melodía, la armonía y el ritmo están al servicio de los demás”, dijo. Es una visión que capta el enfoque musical real de Valdivia, pero también evoca los tonos espirituales del álbum en su conjunto.En el tema “Quiescence”, Valdivia utiliza la mbira dzavadzimu (un tipo de piano de pulgares) como percusión, a pesar de que es un instrumento que suele pulsarse sobre teclas de metal. Por encima de ligeras flautas y sintetizadores brillantes, el sonido de los mazos que golpean la mbira se funde en una pacífica ondulación líquida.En “18 de Abril”, usa el audio de un manifestante universitario en una protesta de 2018 en Nicaragua, conectando los esfuerzos de resistencia actuales con los movimientos de décadas pasadas, y presentando la lucha política como un continuo. El resultado va más allá de la mera fusión o del homenaje ancestral. Articula un lenguaje prismático y poético, con lo cual demuestra que la expresión política no siempre es evidente. También puede llegar en momentos de silenciosa contemplación y conexión.Isabelia Herrera es crítica de arte becaria en el Times. Cubre la cultura popular, con especial atención a la música latinoamericana y latina en Estados Unidos. Anteriormente fue editora colaboradora en Pitchfork y ha escrito para Rolling Stone, Billboard, GQ y NPR, entre otros. @jabladoraaa More

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      Mas Aya’s Music Holds Quiet Rebellions

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      On his new album, the Nicaraguan Canadian producer considers the political expressions embedded in moments of stillness.Brandon Valdivia’s “Momento Presente” is like a summons. On the arresting track from his September album, “Máscaras,” an offbeat, not-quite-footwork rhythm thumps under the swirls of a tin whistle. A bell chimes, and before long, the godlike voice of an elder intones a call to action. “Right now, the oppressors and the oppressed are being separated,” it reflects in Spanish. “We’re not going to wait 2,000 years for the good ones to be on one side and the bad ones to be on another. We are living in that moment now.”This is the kind of militant magic that Valdivia, 38, better known as Mas Aya, invokes in his music. “I’m trying to meld a political take in addition to a very spiritual take,” he said in a video interview from his studio in London, Ontario. “You have to act; you have to be in the moment; you have to be in the world.”That sense of quiet urgency suffuses “Máscaras” (“Masks”), his first album since the 2017 LP “Nikan.” At times, the project makes direct references to revolutions in Nicaragua, his homeland. (The sample in “Momento Presente” is lifted from a gathering of guerrillas in the late 1970s led by the liberation theologist Ernesto Cardenal.) But “Máscaras” doesn’t just rely on explicit allusions to power. It also considers the small rebellions embedded in immersive moments of stillness.Valdivia said the album’s title describes the masks used in political marches and Indigenous ceremonies, but also his own compositional practice. “Instruments are hiding themselves within the cloud of textures,” he explained. The album’s songs are like impressionistic sketches, trading focal points for cool fluidity. The quena and bansuri flutes hover over drum loops. Clatters of claves or maracas evanesce into waves of crisp synths and off-kilter electronic beats, shape-shifting into sweet flurries of harmony.Valdivia grew up in Chatham, a small Canadian town about an hour’s drive from Detroit. His was one of the first Latino families to arrive, and he often longed for comrades in music, community and art.In Nicaragua, his father was a longhaired hippie who listened to Black Sabbath and cumbia, smoked marijuana and dropped acid. Valdivia fell in love with music at age 12 and learned to play the recorder, then eventually the drums. He watched MuchMusic (the MTV of Canada) and listened to Detroit public radio. He read French poetry and ordered a copy of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” at the local record store. It took a comically long six months to arrive.“I knew I was a weirdo,” he said of the conservative world that surrounded him. “I wanted to get out as fast as I could.”He did escape to college, studying composition at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, where he found “people who were creative, who were interested in pushing the envelope,” he said. “Like, weirdos. I use that word a lot.”Valdivia opted to start a solo project after he grew frustrated with the Toronto arts scene. “Nobody was talking politics,” he said.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesIn the years that followed, Valdivia became a well-respected multi-instrumentalist and percussionist in Toronto’s experimental and art-rock scene, playing in groups like Not the Wind, Not the Flag and I Have Eaten the City. He has also collaborated extensively with his partner, the Grammy-nominated, genre-crushing artist Lido Pimienta, who is featured on “Máscaras.” In his early 20s, he traveled to Nicaragua, where he visited family in Managua, Esteli and his grandmother’s hometown Masaya — and studied the country’s folkloric music traditions. After he returned to Canada, he decided to start a solo project inspired in part by his frustration with the Toronto arts scene.“Nobody was talking politics. Everyone was basically making weird nihilistic experimental music,” he said. Mas Aya draws its name from his grandmother’s home as well as the Spanish phrase “el más allá,” meaning “the beyond.”Valdivia described his practice as “harmelodic,” a term he borrowed from the jazz musician Ornette Coleman. “This type of music where melody, harmony and rhythm are all at the service of each other,” he explained. It’s a vision that captures Valdivia’s actual musical approach, but it also evokes the spiritual tones of the album as a whole.On the track “Quiescence,” Valdivia uses the mbira dzavadzimu (a type of thumb piano) as percussion, even though it is an instrument typically plucked on metal keys. Over feather-light flutes and shimmering synths, the sound of mallets hitting the mbira melt into a peaceful liquid ripple. On “18 de Abril,” he samples audio from a protester at a 2018 university demonstration in Nicaragua, connecting present-day resistance efforts to movements of decades past, and presenting political struggle as a continuum. The result moves beyond mere fusion or ancestral homage. It articulates prismatic, poetic language, demonstrating that political expression isn’t always obvious. It can arrive in moments of hushed contemplation and connection, too. More

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      Pop Smoke’s Memory Lives On, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Xenia Rubinos, Swedish House Mafia, Soccer Mommy and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Pop Smoke, ‘More Time’“Faith,” the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, includes collaborations with Kanye West, Dua Lipa, 42 Dugg, Future and others. But this track, early in the album, is jarring and stark. Not simply because it’s still eerie to hear Pop Smoke rapping with a blend of menace and joy, but because of its chilling beat — produced in part by the rapper’s longtime collaborator Rico Beats, but also in part by Nicholas Britell, who has scored “Moonlight” and “Succession.” It is a familiar trick, these reverberating keys that stand stern sentry, but no less effective for it. Here is a splash of theater more visceral than any radio hit, any pop crossover. JON CARAMANICAXenia Rubinos, ‘Working All the Time’Xenia Rubinos’s “Working All the Time” is only two minutes long, but it’s as intricate as an arduous jigsaw puzzle. There are waves of skittish synths, air horns straight out of a Funk Flex set on Hot 97, a bridge that sounds like the glitchy maximalism of hyperpop, and last but not least, an interpolation of the traditional rumba “Ave María Morena.” Somehow, Rubinos makes sense of all these disparate pieces using her brassy, featherlight voice. Blink and you’ll miss that it’s a workers’ anthem, too: In one verse, Rubinos sings, “You better keep me poor and busy or I’d be a danger.” It’s a warning for those who try to crush the power of the people. ISABELIA HERRERASwedish House Mafia, ‘It Gets Better’I suppose you can absorb this song on the internet, where it is currently available. But the slick return of Swedish House Mafia — the Brobdingnagian kings of mainstream EDM, the clout champions of biggest-room house music — cries out for an open field, a dizzying laser show, a loss of sense of time and place. Hug a friend; the soundtrack of shared mayhem is upon us. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Whenever You’re Ready’A brisk, ratcheting, evolving ska-meets-trap beat carries “Whenever You’re Ready” by Mahalia, a British singer whose mother is Jamaican. It’s a semi-breakup song that flaunts confidence instead of pain. The singer is letting him go because he’s angry at her now, but she’s sure he’ll be back: “You won’t be gone for good,” she sings. “No, I’m not worried.” JON PARELESCaroline Polachek, ‘Bunny Is a Rider’Singing about a woman so elusive that a “satellite can’t find her,” Caroline Polachek makes staccato syllables and short phrases bounce all around the beat, working equally as percussion and melody. They’re just a few of the syncopated layers in a playful yet strategic production — by Polachek and her frequent collaborator, Danny L. Harle from the PC Music circle — that juggles whistling, triangle, birdsong and the giggles and gurgles of Harle’s baby daughter. “I’m so nonphysical,” Polachek exults, over the sustained bass tone that cushions the chorus. Nonsense: The song is built for dancing. PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Rom Com 2004’“Rom Com 2004” could have been a straightforward indie-rock love song, vowing “Just let me be yours like no one else before” over a march beat, guitar chords and a chorus with a proud leap in the melody. But Soccer Mommy — Sophie Allison — handed over her demo to the producer BJ Burton with instructions, she has said, to “destroy it.” He obliged with glitches, distortion, speed variations and exposed moments — making the song more appealing because it plays hard to get. PARELESTurnstile featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alien Love Call’From the forthcoming Turnstile album, “Glow On,” comes this shoegaze space-soul collaboration with Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). The video compiles mayhem-esque live footage more in keeping with the hardcore band’s usual rhythms, but perhaps this is the meditation before the rage. CARAMANICADave McMurray, ‘Dark Star’Dave McMurray is a longtime Detroit tenor saxophonist with decades of experience in rock, jazz, pop and R&B, mostly as a side musician. But he’s just released his second album for Blue Note as a leader: “Grateful Deadication,” a tribute to the Grateful Dead songbook. His cover of the classic “Dark Star” channels the epically trippy M.O. of a Dead performance: McMurray declares the melody over Wayne Gerard’s twinkling, distorted guitar; eventually, a dug-in backbeat sets in. Then a coolly grooving section opens up, and the saxophonist dishes out a solo that’s laced with greasy Motor City attitude but still takes its time, as if to bask in the California sun. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHalf Waif, ‘Swimmer’The songs on “Mythopoetics,” Nandi Rose Plunkett’s new album as Half Waif, suffer and exult in all-consuming love. As “Swimmer” leaps from everyday sensation to all-out devotion and need — “I want to know they can’t take this away from me” — synthesizer arpeggios and vocal harmonies swarm around Plunkett’s ardent voice, like a suddenly racing heartbeat and an uncontainable obsession. PARELESYas, ‘Idea of You’A viscous tar pit of a track — slow, oozing bass tones, sparse drum-machine taps and gaping silences — hints at the difficulty of pulling free from an increasingly destructive relationship. Yas (the songwriter, singer, producer and violinist Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi) sings about being “in love with the idea of you” amid details of mental and physical abuse. The negotiations aren’t quite over; her voice rises to a fragile soprano as she decides, “You think that I want you back — I don’t.” PARELESKoreless, ‘White Picket Fence’Koreless — the Welsh producer Lewis Roberts — swerves between pastorale and rave on “White Picket Fence.” A keening female voice, uncredited and possibly built from samples, floats at first over a stately harpsichord; then fuzzy synthesizers arrive with a pulsing beat under that vocal melody, before it gets stretched and chopped up; then it’s sent back to harpsichord territory. In the video, directed by FKA twigs, club creatures climb out of a futuristic green car alongside a bucolic creek, where fishing ensues; urban artifice meets Nature. PARELESKarol G, ‘200 Copas’To a friend who’s still tearful about her ex, the Colombian songwriter Karol G (Carolina Giraldo Navarro) doesn’t mince words in “200 Copas” (“200 Drinks”); she dismisses the guy with profanities after all the suffering he caused. Yet her 21st-century bluntness gets a traditionalist backing; while the rest of her album, “KG0516,” traverses modern Pan-American pop with all its technological tricks, “200 Copas” is an old-fashioned waltz backed by a few acoustic instruments, nothing more. The lyrics are decidedly impolite, but the predicament she sings about is not new. The new video has her leading a beach-bonfire singalong: solidarity against undeserving men. PARELESTainy and Yandel, ‘El Plan’“Dynasty” is a new collaborative album from Tainy and Yandel, two titans of reggaeton celebrating 16 years of eminence. With its sinister harpsichord, muted marimbas and a piercing dembow riddim, “El Plan” recalls the mid-00s reggaeton that required listeners practice dancing in front of the mirror. It’s all about the thrill of an after-hours dance-floor chase — the electrifying, will-it-or-won’t-it-happen energy of a night at the club. “Estoy esperándote y tú perreando sola,” Yandel says. “I’m waiting for you and you’re dancing alone.” Luckily, he knows he’s at the whim of his partner: “Pero tú dime cuál e’ el plan.” You tell me what the plan is. HERRERAMas Aya, ‘Momento Presente’It is easy to reference folkloric sounds, but have little to offer other than mere nostalgia. The instrumentalist Brandon Valdivia, better known as Mas Aya, escapes this fate masterfully on “Momento Presente.” More than a mere collision of past and present, the track is a study in the power of harnessing ancestral knowledge. Over six and a half minutes, Valdivia braids a skittish footwork beat with a flurry of Andean pan flutes, arpeggiated synths and polyrhythms. Halfway through, the voice of an elder reflects on centuries of protest, a reminder that the work of liberation is part of a continuum. One moment the song is celestial, transporting the listener 40,000 feet into the air. In another it is meditative, urging us into quiet introspection. HERRERAMatt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, ‘Trapezoids | Matching Tickles’In recent years the pianist Matt Mitchell and the drummer Kate Gentile have developed a book of pithy, one-bar-long compositions, which they play with small ensembles under the name Snark Horse. Through intense improvisation, taking equal cues from free jazz and metal, they morph and distend and scramble these little melodic fragments. On Friday, Snark Horse released its first album — a boxed set spanning no fewer than 49 tracks and five-and-a-half hours, mostly recorded at a three-day session in late 2019. “Trapezoids” is a Gentile composition, a crooked and incessant spray of notes, with Jon Irabagon’s saxophone further destabilizing the mix. It’s paired on this track with “Matching Tickles,” a Mitchell piece, which he plays more softly and abstractedly, as if it were the echo of another idea. RUSSONELLO More