Buscabulla ‘creates’ music for pandemic
MEXICO CITY, Sept 7, (AP): Buscabulla, a Puerto Rican duo playing electro-Caribbean music, is promoting a “hymn of belonging” to lift spirits during the pandemic.
The video of the group’s latest single, “Mío”, includes images of the Carnaval de Ponce and the Day of the Holy Innocents, also called the Fiesta de las Máscaras de Hatillo, known for pranks, floats and loud music.
“It speaks to the Puerto Rican who is here to feel proud, to embrace a sense of belonging, to defend what is theirs,” said lead singer Raquel Berrios via video-call from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, a small town visited by surfers two hours west of San Juan.
“The sense of belonging transcends money. Sometimes it’s really hard to conceive of that now, when ... spirituality and traditions seem to go to a secondary plane,” she said.
Berrios is also the group’s designer, composer and DJ, while Luis Alfredo Del Valle, the other half of Buscabulla, is DJ and instrumentalist. They met in 2011 while living in Brooklyn, New York, and now have a 6-year-old daughter, Charly.
The word “buscabulla” is Puerto Rican for “troublemaker”, someone looking to start fights at parties.
Three years ago, Berrios and Del Valle returned to Puerto Rico – hence the title of their first LP, “Regresa”, released in May. “Mio” is one of the tracks.
When they came back, they found an island devastated after Hurricane Maria, economic crises and political turbulence.
“Lots of locals are leaving, and many foreigners are coming to the country buying land, buying coasts, trying to develop without any regard to the environment,” said Berrios.
Despite those concerns and some melancholy lyrics, the tone of “Regresa”, with its synthesizers and reverbs with retro touches, is calming and warm, like a sunset on the beach. That’s thanks to the sweet voice of Berrios.
Message
“No sabemos” is one of the most electronic songs on the album, and conveys a message to persevere despite the uncertainties of 2020.
“I realized that sometimes things happen in life that we didn’t plan, that end up being a hidden blessing,” said Berrios. She called the song “an exercise of faith”.
Buscabulla had planned a tour after launching “Regresa”, but everything changed with the coronavirus.
“It was a shock at the beginning, but to be honest, I also felt relieved. Having a 6-year-old girl, we would have been away from her all summer,” said Berrios.
She thinks the pandemic deepened the album’s message. “In the end, the album is about accepting yourself with your mistakes and imperfections,” she said.
One of the songs, “Nydia”, is dedicated to singer and TV host Nydia Caro, who Berrios said helped her “during an existential crisis and a creative block” with good advice.
As for working with her husband, Berrios said it hasn’t been easy, but they have managed to find balance.
“At the beginning we used to fight a lot. There were many clashes producing, or maybe we were working a lot and that was affecting our personal life. But with time, we have identified those patterns, and being conscious of them makes it easier and helps to separate work time from family and couple time,” she said.
During the pandemic, they have also been working on a documentary about their album, and creating videos like the one of their virtual concert for NPR’s recently premiered series “Tiny Desk”. They also help their daughter with online classes.
Vacations
“Here at home, we have lots of materials for crafts and many books to learn to write,” said Berrios, showing a table with scissors and cardboards. “We’ll need vacations after this year.”
Buscabulla are an experimental Puerto Rican duo whose savvy, smooth fusion melds indie dance-pop and hooky electro with slick funk and breezy post-chill grooves with a plethora of Boricua beats – from bachata, reggaeton, and merengue to bomba, plena, and salsa. They have played to delighted audiences in the clubs of Brooklyn, on the white beaches of Aguadilla, and on the Coachella stage. From their Kitsune-issued self-titled debut EP in 2014 to their 2017 club smash “Tártaro” (from their self-released second EP) to their eye-popping video single for 2019’s “Vámono”, the pair actively seek to erase boundaries between low and high culture with imagination, activism, style, and humor.
Also: HALBERSTADT, Germany:
Hundreds of fans attended a special kind of musical happening Saturday at a church in Germany: a chord change in an organ piece that is supposed to last for an entirety of 639 years.
The performance of the “ORGAN/ASLSP”, or As Slow As Possible, composition began in September 2001 at the St. Burchardi Church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 – if all goes well.
The music piece by the American composer John Cage is played on a special organ inside the medieval church. The last sound has been the same one for the last six years and 11 months, and therefore the chord change Saturday was a big event among fans of the John Cage Organ Project.
A chord change means that the sound of the organ pipes changes either because new sounds are added or existing sounds end. On Saturday, two new organ pipes were added.
Organizers say the performance is “one of the slowest realizations of an organ musical piece.”
A compressor in the basement creates energy to blow air into the organ to create a continuous sound. When a chord change happens, it’s done manually. On Saturday, two people changed the chord.
When the piece officially started on Sept 5, 2001, it began without any sound. It was only on Feb 5, 2003, the day of the first chord change, that the first organ pipe chords could actually be heard inside the church.
Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and died in New York in 1992. He’s known not only as a composer, but also as a music theorist, artist and philosopher.
Chord changes usually draw more than 1,000 visitors to Halberstadt, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of guests allowed into the church was limited this year.