Supergroup Astropical, that includes Bomba Estéreo and Rawayana, talks about debut album : NPR

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 state of affairs within the band’s nation deteriorated, Rawayana emerged as a key voice of inventive resistance from a era 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 dwelling in very darkish instances 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 optimistic; they’re meant to carry folks’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 function dazzling champeta guitar riffs, gaita flutes and Afrobeats percussion.

“That is what Bomba Estéreo and Rawayana have all the time performed, 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 slightly totally different from what’s occurring commercially, or what persons are used to listening to. I feel that is the place each bands meet and make sense of the world collectively.”

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 the right way to let go and lose your self within the music, their contrasting voices turn 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. Numerous the folks there hadn’t been in a position to return to Venezuela for like 10 or 11 years, so it was this huge reunion,” she says. “There have been additionally quite a lot 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 couple of months later, President Nicolas Maduro criticized Rawayana and rapper Akapellah’s hit tune “Veneka,” which reclaims a slur usually waged in opposition to Venezuelan migrants in Latin America. Days after Maduro’s speech, Cusica Fest, which had lengthy been sustaining the nation’s reside music scene, issued an announcement 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 move us off as a drive of division. Regardless of making our place on the matter well-known, everybody in Rawa respects ideological, non secular, sexual variety, and many others and many others. Basically, all human variety.”

Throughout his acceptance speech on the Grammys — across the similar time the Trump administration revoked non permanent 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 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 nations, the connection has been rocky; within the nineteenth century, they had been a part of one massive supernation referred to as La Gran Colombia, which is cheekily referenced within the lyrics to “Una Noche en Caracas.”

Through the armed battle of the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, many Colombians sought refuge in neighboring, oil-rich Venezuela. In current many years, because the latter undergoes a socioeconomic disaster, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia. There, they’ve usually been met with xenophobic backlash. In 2019, the 2 nations broke all diplomatic relations, although they had been restored in 2022.

Saumet and Montenegro say that working collectively on the album helped them perceive simply how comparable their nations are to at least one one other, and the way way more frequent floor there may be to discover. Lyrically, ASTROPICAL is a playground of cultural touchstones and if you realize, you realize references to each nations. Within the cosmic journey of “Me Pasa (Piscis),” Montenegro winks on the unending argument about who arepas actually belong to. Each artists hope this album — a powerful affirmation to tune out your gadgets and tune into your family members — may also help ease tensions which have permeated the area for thus lengthy.

“I feel as artists, we’ve got a accountability to liberate folks from these beliefs,” says Saumet. “What cannot be performed by way of politics, we will do by way of music. Music can heal from a spot of affection.”