Afrosideral
Representing Afro-Cuba to the world, how does it feel to connect with new audiences with your unique sound?
It feels super motivating. Afrosideral is a proposal to frame my new edge of experimentation in the Afro-Cuban from electronics, after two decades associated with hip hop and alternative music. It all started as a concept until it became a pseudonym. "The Olympus of the Orishas" was the door to connect with a new audience that has fueled the desire to continue delving into this universe where the ancestral becomes futuristic.
What influences your sound when you are in the creative process?
I am a sponge and a restless creator. Sometimes current musical discoveries influence me, other times I discover ancestral music and reinterpret it. Every so often, I explore new styles, production kits, timbres, ethnic instruments, plug-ins, and as I discover them, new songs come out. It fascinates me to learn in a self-taught way because this makes me create without prejudice and enjoy the result with humility but with great satisfaction.
There has been an increase in the use and fusion of Yoruba sacred music in the electronic, soul and R&B genres. Artists like IFE, Ibeyi and even Beyonce have used chants and imagery in their works. Do you see this as a positive move, as religious undertones are coming to the industry in this way?
I was "religious" first before being a musician, due to my father's inheritance and because of the environment in which I grew up in Cuba. Since the beginning of 2000, I made my first forays sampling Batá drums and ceremonial music always with respect, but with a certain resentment, inspired by bands like Irakere and Síntesis. In my opinion, they are the pioneers of this wave that began around the 70s, refreshed in the 90s with groups like Orishas and Yerba Buena. At the time that I assumed that, more than religious music, it was ancestral music and a cultural legacy sample of the resistance of a people that needs not to be forgotten, I understood that it is a duty to make my song a method of conservation of this millenary spiritual treasure. So, the more we are those who bet on this mission, the better !!!
The remixes are tastefully done and ready for dancing. Is there a particular remix that surprised you when you heard the final versions?
As you say, all the remixes provide a different and renovating vision of the original, each one has surprised me and given me the joy to see the reinterpretation of these excellent producers. But that of Leonardo Milano De Cuba was one of the ones that surprised me the most, because the introduction of the “Tres” which is a traditional Cuban guitar typical of Guajira music, I really liked because, in my opinion, it is quite difficult to decontextualize this instrument, making this song even more original because it makes a crossover between Afro-Cuban, traditional and electronic music.
What is the next step for AFROSIDERAL?
Good question! As I told you, I am restless and eclectic on a creative level, but Afrosideral is a kind of pact with ceremonial music and Afro-Cuban sounds. Although there is a certain boom among Afro-Latin electronic music producers, there is still much to do. I have an album ‘in the oven’ made during the first confinement called "Zen Orishas" where I make an approach to meditative music from the songs to the Orishas, accompanied by Asian instruments and electronic sounds (to dance inside) and in the second wave of the pandemic, I have begun to venture into the "Amapiano" which is a new sound of deep house from South Africa, but in my case, it would be connected with Afro-Cuban music.