Chuwi’s Music Reflects the Anxieties of Puerto Rico

With a bassy voice and over a minimalist syncopated beat, Wilfredo “Willy” Aldarondo sings of lament. “The love of my life 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 nobody clapped.”

These are the opening traces of “Tierra,” the main single off the Puerto Rican band Chuwi’s latest EP of the identical title. Based in 2020 within the northwestern coastal city 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 reply to all of these questions is “sure.”

Over the previous two years, the quartet’s reputation has grown amongst listeners and trade friends. A part of that motive is that they’ve seemingly crammed an all-too-common position in Latin American music: a band whose music echoes the activist sentiment of its era.

“Tierra,” the music, makes unmistakable allusions to considered one of Puerto Rico’s most up to date anxieties. In 2019, the Puerto Rican legislature handed Act 60, which codified beneficiant tax breaks for overseas buyers who transfer to the archipelago and set up themselves as residents.

The end result has led to what critics name a nationwide gentrification effort that has priced locals out of their very own neighborhoods. Swaths of actual property have been purchased and changed into short-term rental areas, which has, in flip, provoked skyrocketing housing prices; in the meantime, advantages that proponents of the act promised haven’t come to fruition. Between this, 2017’s disastrous Hurricane María, and the one-two punch of earthquakes and a pandemic in 2020, the inhabitants decline has been swift and extreme, inflicting much more dire results.

Chuwi’s lyrics resonate with Puerto Ricans who’re dismayed by what is occurring round them. Puerto Rico has a strong historical past of music teams sporting their political leanings on their sleeves. Teams like Fiel a La Vega, Cultura Profética, and El Hijo de Borikén adopted the usual set by Argentina’s rock nacional and Chicano folks music, amongst different influences. Even reggaetón turned often called “perreo combativo” through the 2019 protests on the island that pressured then-governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign.

However Chuwi is frank about how, regardless of appearances, they do not consciously determine as an activist band, even when their songs are likely to strike near the zeitgeist of political discuss on the island. As a substitute, the band sees themselves extra as artists placing their feelings on the web page moderately than preaching a specific ideology. “We write about what weighs on us, and we’re utilizing [music] as an outlet,” Willy says. “It is how we began. We simply wished a method to specific ourselves concerning the issues that make us uncomfortable or the issues we love.”

One other monitor on the EP, the merengue-tinged “Mundi,” places the listener within the tanned cover of the true Mundi. This African savannah elephant spent 35 years alone on the Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo of Puerto Rico, lower than an hour away from Isabela in close by Mayagüez. The elephant’s predicament turned a trigger célèbre amongst native animal rights activists, and Mundi was finally relocated in 2023 to an elephant sanctuary in Georgia.

For Chuwi, the music got here to be due to their proximity to the zoo, which they recall visiting throughout area journeys as children. It additionally serves as a homage to a music their mom would usually play: “Laika” by the Spanish ’80s pop band Mecano, concerning the Soviet house canine despatched on a doomed solo mission to outer house in 1957.

“We wished the music to be factual, so we truly investigated [Mundi’s backstory] however on the similar time, made it catchy, and if folks take note of the lyrics, then they will even be emotionally devastated,” laughs Lorén, who can be the band’s common lead singer.

One among their most spectacular songs is “Guerra,” a palo Dominicano that channels frenzied Afro-Caribbean rhythms, creating an auditory sensory expertise that mimics the enveloping chaos of its namesake (“guerra” means “struggle”). Whereas struggle has certainly been on the forefront of the information for the previous seven months, that is one other occasion the place their muse was working subconsciously.

“We reside on this world, we’re uncovered to those issues, we’re captivated with sure issues in our private lives, so musically [it bleeds in],” Lorén explains.

Their eclectic type and earnestness have drawn the eye of bigger acts. Grammy-winning producer Eduardo Cabra of the iconoclastic rap duo Calle 13 and artists like Buscabulla (“We name them mother and pop,” says Lorén) have suggested them of their nonetheless nascent stage as a younger band, for instance.

Seeing them reside reveals one more reason Chuwi has linked a lot with audiences. Lorén’s voice mesmerizes as she croons and wails with honeyed tones, and Adrián’s percussion simply will get folks’s blood pumping and feelings rising. In Lorén’s case, she digs into previous teachings from her days singing in church to completely contain listeners with the present she and her bandmates placed on.

“I rely loads on emotion in my performances. If I do not really feel it, the viewers will not really feel it. In church, they taught us that while you sing one thing, you are singing to God, and if folks see your genuineness, then you definitely’ll encourage them to sing to God, too,” she says. “If you happen to’re weak, they will be weak as effectively. If I am not genuine, then how can I anticipate the gang to attach with the music we’re creating?”

And whereas they hope their subsequent initiatives, together with a debut LP they’re already exhausting at work on, showcase extra of what they’re able to lyrically and sonically, they don’t seem to be about to draw back from talking from the guts, even when it would tag them as resistance artists.

“I believe it means our music is reaching folks. That what we really feel is not simply amongst us,” Wester says. “Seeing folks determine with it makes us really feel we’re not alone. I am superb with being perceived that means.”

Juan J. Arroyo is a Puerto Rican freelance music journalist. Since 2018, he is written for PS, Remezcla, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork. His focus is on increasing the canvas of Latin tales and making Latin tradition — particularly Caribbean Latin tradition — extra seen within the mainstream.