With a bassy voice and over a minimalist syncopated beat, Wilfredo “Willy” Aldarondo sings of lament. “The affection of my existence left for New York / my mother adopted my aunt, to Florida they went/packing my baggage, it is my flip now / the airplane landed, and no person clapped.”
Those are the outlet traces of “Tierra,” the main unmarried off the Puerto Rican band Chuwi’s latest EP of the similar identify. Based in 2020 within the northwestern coastal the town of Isabela, Chuwi consists of Willy, his sister Lorén Aldarondo, his brother Wester Aldarondo, and buddy Adrián López. Describing the band’s sound is a problem in and of itself. Are they Latin jazz, indie rock, urbano, tropical fusion, or one thing else altogether? The solution to all of the ones questions is “sure.”
Over the last two years, the quartet’s reputation has grown amongst listeners and business friends. A part of that explanation why is that they have got apparently stuffed an all-too-common position in Latin American tune: a band whose tune echoes the activist sentiment of its era.
“Tierra,” the tune, makes unmistakable allusions to considered one of Puerto Rico’s maximum recent anxieties. In 2019, the Puerto Rican legislature handed Act 60, which codified beneficiant tax breaks for overseas traders who transfer to the archipelago and determine themselves as citizens.
The end result has ended in what critics name a national gentrification effort that has priced locals out of their very own neighborhoods. Swaths of actual property had been purchased and become momentary apartment areas, which has, in flip, provoked skyrocketing housing prices; in the meantime, advantages that proponents of the act promised have now not come to fruition. Between this, 2017’s disastrous Typhoon María, and the one-two punch of earthquakes and a virus in 2020, the inhabitants decline has been swift and critical, inflicting much more dire results.
Chuwi’s lyrics resonate with Puerto Ricans who’re dismayed by way of what is going on round them. Puerto Rico has a powerful historical past of tune teams dressed in their political leanings on their sleeves. Teams like Fiel a L. a. Vega, Cultura Profética, and El Hijo de Borikén adopted the usual set by way of Argentina’s rock nacional and Chicano people tune, amongst different influences. Even reggaetón was referred to as “perreo combativo” all through the 2019 protests at the island that compelled then-governor Ricardo Rosselló to renounce.
However Chuwi is frank about how, regardless of appearances, they do not consciously determine as an activist band, despite the fact that their songs have a tendency to strike on the subject of the zeitgeist of political communicate at the island. As an alternative, the band sees themselves extra as artists placing their feelings at the web page fairly than preaching a specific ideology. “We write about what weighs on us, and we are the usage of [music] as an outlet,” Willy says. “It is how we began. We simply sought after a method to specific ourselves in regards to the issues that make us uncomfortable or the issues we like.”
Every other monitor at the EP, the merengue-tinged “Mundi,” places the listener within the tanned cover of the actual Mundi. This African savannah elephant spent 35 years on my own on the Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo of Puerto Rico, not up to an hour clear of Isabela in within reach Mayagüez. The elephant’s catch 22 situation was a purpose célèbre among native animal rights activists, and Mundi used to be sooner or later relocated in 2023 to an elephant sanctuary in Georgia.
For Chuwi, the tune got here to be as a result of their proximity to the zoo, which they recall visiting all through box journeys as kids. It additionally serves as a homage to a tune their mom would ceaselessly play: “Laika” by way of the Spanish ’80s pop band Mecano, in regards to the Soviet area canine despatched on a doomed solo project to outer area in 1957.
“We would have liked the tune to be factual, so we in truth investigated [Mundi’s backstory] however on the identical time, made it catchy, and if other folks be aware of the lyrics, then they’re going to even be emotionally devastated,” laughs Lorén, who may be the band’s common lead singer.
Considered one of their maximum spectacular songs is “Guerra,” a palo Dominicano that channels frenzied Afro-Caribbean rhythms, growing an auditory sensory revel in that mimics the enveloping chaos of its namesake (“guerra” approach “conflict”). Whilst conflict has certainly been at the vanguard of the inside track for the previous seven months, that is some other example the place their muse used to be running subconsciously.
“We are living on this global, we are uncovered to those issues, we are positive issues in our non-public lives, so musically [it bleeds in],” Lorén explains.
Their eclectic taste and earnestness have drawn the eye of bigger acts. Grammy-winning manufacturer Eduardo Cabra of the iconoclastic rap duo Calle 13 and artists like Buscabulla (“We name them ma and pa,” says Lorén) have recommended them of their nonetheless nascent degree as a tender band, as an example.
Seeing them are living unearths one more reason Chuwi has attached such a lot with audiences. Lorén’s voice mesmerizes as she croons and wails with honeyed tones, and Adrián’s percussion simply will get other folks’s blood pumping and feelings emerging. In Lorén’s case, she digs into outdated teachings from her days making a song in church to completely contain listeners with the display she and her bandmates placed on.
“I depend so much on emotion in my performances. If I do not really feel it, the target market may not really feel it. In church, they taught us that while you sing one thing, you might be making a song to God, and if other folks see your genuineness, then you can encourage them to sing to God, too,” she says. “In case you are susceptible, they’re going to be susceptible as neatly. If I am not original, then how can I be expecting the group to hook up with the tune we are growing?”
And whilst they hope their subsequent tasks, together with a debut LP they are already laborious at paintings on, sing their own praises extra of what they are able to lyrically and sonically, they are now not about to shy clear of talking from the center, despite the fact that it could tag them as resistance artists.
“I believe it approach our tune is attaining other folks. That what we really feel is not just amongst us,” Wester says. “Seeing other folks determine with it makes us really feel we aren’t on my own. I am tremendous with being perceived that manner.”
Juan J. Arroyo is a Puerto Rican freelance tune journalist. Since 2018, he is written for PS, Remezcla, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork. His center of attention is on increasing the canvas of Latin tales and making Latin tradition — particularly Caribbean Latin tradition — extra visual within the mainstream.