This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Culture Latino USC Latino USA.
I'm Maria Inojosa.
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I'm Maria Inojosayan or La Latino USA. Listener, como tuta. Here's a show from Los Alchivos from Futuro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria no Josa.
Today.
Puerto Rican indie band Uscabuya.
I Demand.
It's the voice of Raquelberrios that takes us through Baya's ever evolving sound is the Puerto Rican experimental duo formed by wife and husband Raquelberrios and Luis Alfredo del Baym. In May, they released their new ALBUMA and With expands on their Caribbean synth pop sound by using a variety of rhythms and influences from marching band drums to R and B vocals. By twenty eighteen, was one of the
most beloved LATINX bands in New York City. Raquel and Luis had just released their second EP and confirmed a performance in that year's Coachella Music Festival. Around this time of success, Raquel and Luis also decided to move back to Puerto Rico. It was a significant life change, but when they were certain they wanted to make as artists and as new parentsless Reggaisa Buscabuya's debut album follows Raquel
and Luis in their journey back home. Through their dream like sound, we access a subtle portrait of hopes and anxieties brought on by their return to the island after living in New York City for many years. In the video for their song Neil, you can read the sign of an upcoming tourist resort in the town of Aguadilla. It's weaved in with scenes of the gritty, pink and green masks of the traditional festival Las Mascaras. The song lyrics give a war to those who think that they
can own what isn't theres Creque Sandres. In this segment of our How I Made It series, Raquel and Luis join us from Aguadilla Puerto Rico to tell us how they got there.
My name is Raquel and I do vocals, kis and sampler.
My name is Louise and I play the bass and drums sometimes as well guitar as well, a little bit of everything.
And the name of our band is I am from Trujeerio, Alto, which is fifteen minutes from the capital, San Juan. It's a mountainous part of Puerto Rico and very tropical and and lush.
I am from the town of Bones in the south.
It's much drier than someone like really hot summer afternoons.
Luisa and I met in New York. They're both Puerto Ricans, so I think that it was sort of destiny and we were bound to probably bump into each other because Puerto Ricans in New York really look for each other. My mother was born in the Bronx. My great grandmother migrated there when things got really bad in the forties here in Puerto Rico.
At some point, you know, I had worked on music enough in Puerto Rico and things were starting to fall apart with my band that I had, you know, growing up, I just had to make a decision of what to do next with my life, and I think the logical thing for a lot of Puerto Ricans is is to go to New York.
We met at a friends party, Puerto Rican Thanksgiving Day party, so there was a lot of dancing.
Rachael had this girl group with her her best friends, you know. They they sort of wanted to start playing live, and I was like, oh, well, you know, I could play drums, I play guitar, I can play all this stuff. And there was this one night where they were playing their cover of like a Lady Gaga song. There playing a bad romance cover that they had sort of translated
to Spanish. It's called mild Romance. But they were always mess up in the chorus chords, and I remember, like I was a stepping and I was like, I remember those chorus chords.
That's how I earned my way into the girl group.
And we started talking about music, and I had already been working on some sort of weird demos and I just you know, showed them to him without really thinking that much of them. And then he got really really excited and he saw a lot of potential and he thought that I should keep going and that we should really like start collaborating and working on stuff.
The first thing I remember us really working together on was a cover of a song called Tuloco Loco Fiodrin.
I believe it was an assignment that you had for piano class.
Yeah, your composition and piano class.
She came home, she had this assignment.
She had to rearrange an old classic sal satoon and then she was like, Yo, can you help me like sort of finish.
This, and of course obliged.
We were already living together at that point, so it's all very informal, you know, it's not like one day I was like, we need to do something together and it has you know, they excited about music and saw that in each other, and it started naturally sort of building up.
After Hurricane Maria, all Puerto Ricans in US mainland and big cities, we all felt very in depth and everybody kind of that everybody wanted to help, and you know, helping independent artists was sort of the way that we could help. Prima was kind of this labor of love. Prima means Puerto Rico independent musicians and artists. It supports and it also amplifies the voices of independent musicians and the island our independent scene a small but very rich
and very varied. I mean, I think after a while, like once you kind of feel like you've sort of discovered what you want to do, and you start doing it, and you start establishing yourself doing it. You know. Really, what we started to feel was like how we wanted to just really have more time to kind of expand as artists. And not only that, but also I mean, we all dream about going to New York, but as a Puerto Rican I think a lot of us also
dream about coming back home. I also really wanted to take advantage of all the opportunities that the city was giving us. But eventually it all started to kind of feel very hectic and stressful. We had a baby. We only really want our daughter to be back home, to learn Spanish, to be close to he abuela an auelo, and in a way like while we were in New York, like our dreams became really about coming back home and making music here.
I remember feeling super emotional on the plane ride. As soon as we got to the plane and we were on board, I think we all hugged and it just seemed like something that was never going to end. And suddenly we were here and we were Homeregresa.
Was in the way that I see it as you know, I remember. I think it was our drummer who once told me, you know that each album that you work on is sort of a chapter of your life, and that is very, very true. And I think that because of the fact that we knew that we were were going to go through this process, that it was worth
sort of pouring those emotions into the music. You know, the marching band drums really were inspired by going to all these carnivals in the island and seeing sort of the school marching bands, and the energy and the charge behind the rhythms is really kind of the way that I was feeling when I came back home, where I felt that there was so much to do trying to create from that space, and it was really really hard. The transition was really hard, and I think I was
confronted very much with myself and my fears. The record really kind of captures this moment in time when we come back, you know, the joy and the sorrow of being here.
Sort of macro difference, which was our mindset in trying to make a narrative that cast a wider net was more complex and longer. We did get some help producing it, especially in one track called Glube Doo. We had our friend Robert to lange Lade record a sort of string and horn arrangement.
It's very cool.
And it's the first song I've sort of wrote for the band.
It's kind of a dystopiano. It's a song.
About us, you know, I guess us ends in Racquel and I being together, having a kid, have going through this whole experience together and moving out here together as well, just the loneliness that can exist even within the security of a relationship.
Nydia, I feel, is a pretty special track because I feel it's sort of the hinge in the record, and most of the songs before Nydia are about of angst and existentialism and wailing in a way I think, and then when Nydia comes along, it's sort of the turning point and the record, and it means a lot because Nadia is actually named after Nidiacato, who is actually the woman speaking the words at the end of the track. A song of hers that was pretty popular in the seven is called Ela More.
What she's saying translates to the darkness can be your impulse. Towards the light, and then she says, you can't see the stars without a dark night.
And it's really about kind of like coming to terms with your own fears, coming to terms with accepting flaws and being okay with it and not beating yourself over. And it's also about just trying to really pull yourself up from kind of a dark place. But the interesting thing is, like, you know, this quarantine feels a lot like, you know, I would talk to my dad after the hurricane. My dad didn't get power for at least like I think it was maybe like five months after the storm hit.
People didn't know, people couldn't communicate, people couldn't buy food, couldn't get water, you know, and people took it day by day. The album is very much about that, is about, you know, the angst and the hardship of trying to live in an island in the present moment and how you just really want to stay here and you want to persevere and you have to persevere.
The words of Raquel Verrios and Louis Alfredo de Vaye, best known by indie fans as Uscaulla. This episode was produced by Adrianatakia and Gini Montalbo. It was edited by Louis Trees and mixed by Julia Caruso. The Latino USA team also includes Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Lean Junior, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Lori mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi and Nancy Trujillo. Penileei Ramirez is our co executive producer. Our
director of engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed by I'm Your host and executive producer Maria no Josa. Join us again on our next episode and in the meantime, I'll see you on social media. See you there as bye.
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And Catherine T.
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