iLe on Song and Protest

We've been through so much.

It takes away your energy and you feel like, yeah, like you're stuck, but at the same time, like we have to find a way to give each other strengths. I was focusing more on the courage that I feel that we all have inside of us. That is actually what makes us react and gives us the strength and the impulse that we need to send the message that we want to send.

From Futuro Media and pr X, it's Latino usay, I'm Maria no posa today. Puerto Rican singer songwriter Ile on the evolution of her music as a form of protest. For Puerto Rican singer songwriter Ileana Cabra, better known by her stage name Ile, music has always been a way to understand the world around her, even from a young age.

I was a little one in the house where I grew up, so I kind of absorbed all that musicality that my whole family was listening to.

Ille remembers listening to salsa and boleros with her family, often taking note of the political messages in the lively, danceable songs.

My dad always likes to try to find the background of songs that he likes so I remember, for example, there's a song from Ruin Bladles that is called Tiburon, and he wrote it in Puerto Rico, and it is very connected to the history and our situation still being a colony from the United States.

In Tiburon, Ruben Blades sings about a ruthless shark, symbolizing the United States. It praised on the Caribbean, and for Ile, songs like this cemented the relationship between the musical and the political. They often went hand in hand.

Even though you enjoy it and you danced to it, when you sing the lyrics, it is very powerful.

When Ile was a teenager, she began to sing with her older brothers Rene Perez and Eduardo Cavra, also known as Residente and Misitante from the rap duo Kaye. Under the stage name PG thirteen. Ile performed with Gaietrese through her mid twenties, but even as Ile was touring the world with Gaietrese, she continued to explore the rich legacies of music in the Caribbean, and in twenty sixteen, she decided to go solo, releasing her debut album Ileviabre with

La gobardiadu Frere.

Ile often sings about power Baya. Her second album, al Madura, was released in twenty nineteen, and Ile wrote these songs in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

And.

The album draws from a vast range of Caribbean musicality to talk about the politics of colonialism in Puerto Rico, her.

Home now Elimpiamano.

And in her twenty twenty two album Nakarile, the singer looks within.

Thenlcorazon Expresto.

The album brings together the personal and the political, getting introspective about how she moves through patriarchy and colonialism without losing Pope recently released her first new song since Nakarile. It's a personal one about the end of a relationship. And Ele has confirmed that she's working on a new album. So while we wait for that release, we wanted to bring you this piece that we originally aired in twenty twenty three. In this episode, I reflects on her artistic journey.

My name is Ile. I am from Puerto Rico and I am a singer.

Where I grew up, there was a lot of music going around, like from different types of.

Genres as Puerto Rico's.

We listened to salsa and boleros, but at the same time we heard like rock music and also throw a like more folklore from Puerto Rico Latin America, and also there are a lot of protest songs.

I think maybe in.

My teenage years, suddenly I feel that I was missing out on listening female singers in this type of music like salsa and boleros that I've heard so much.

And I remember having that transitional moment in my life where my dad presented me to U La Lupe.

Yeah, because it was like, oh my god, she's like this is deep stuff.

What she's singing, the way she's.

Doing it, like there was a lot of emotion going on that I wasn't expecting, and I remember that I felt her so real and so passionate and so breath taking. The way she sang and the way she interpreted the song she was singing was like a shock for me, and it captured my attention a lot to listen to this real, feminine.

Powerful voice and I've always sang since I was little, but I've always seen singing as more of a hobby. Little by little, I.

Started digging more into more female voices in that genre of saxam Boletto, and I keep digging even more, and I've learned from them, you know, even if I've never met them before, I feel like I do in a way, like they are my teachers. In Ilea, my first album, I was coming from a big transition in my life. I was like ten years touring with my brothers with their group. I really wanted to experiment on side of me that I've always wanted to play with that Polero.

Very more classic.

But for me, the risky part was how to play with all that in this moment, you know, in this time where I feel very different from the songs that I listen to.

You know, even though I enjoy.

Them and I feel a lot listening to them, I'm in another moment, you know, from another generation, see.

Is upper.

So I was thinking a lot in myself, you know, as a woman, but mostly the women in my family, the women that surround me, and how normal it has been for us as women to.

Struggle so much.

And I think especially in relationships, you see so many abusive patterns, So yeah, maybe represents more that side of me of just like confronting the reality that the tough reality of what it is to be a woman.

In this world. But a kilos.

Do well.

In Almadura, I wanted to play with my roots as a Puerto Rican Caribbean.

So knowing body though.

Nauba, I've always enjoyed so so much like percussion. I love percussion and I love rhythm, and for me, it was connected to the way that I was feeling as well. When I was creating that album, I was very angry towards Hurraca Maria, but it was like kind of disgusting to see the way the US government as well as the Puerto Rican government were managing the whole situation.

You felt not taken care of at all.

And it was like a big shock for us as a country to just realize that, Okay, like we are not going to receive the help or the attention that we were expecting, so we need to find a way.

To do it on our own.

And that's what we did in Hurakan Marian That's what we keep doing.

Like I just needed to let all.

That out and and that's what I did with with Alma, finding a way to heal myself at the same time. And for example, Contrato for me is the song that best defines the whole album.

Is the way.

We've been through so much.

It takes away your energy and you feel like yeah, like like you're stuck, but at the same time like we have to find a way to give each other strength.

I was focusing more.

On the courage that I feel that we all have inside of us. That is actually what makes us react and gives us the strength and the impulse that we need to send the message that we want to send. Especially after Maria, I feel that many people felt the obligation of having to leave the country and it was very painful to watch. A Gi is a song that speaks about people that stay and people that leave their country. Nadal sakamo that it says like no one gets us out of here if here is where we were born.

The dui YadA yea, the yucky, the duga ya yeah, yucky.

Twenty twenty, the year that we all thought was going to be amazing, incredible. I was actually going to tour, you know, with Almadura that year.

Suddenly everything changed drastically in the pandemic.

Like I was with myself a lot, and I couldn't go anywhere, you know, so I was just looking at the window and trying to escape, you know, from there, and composing and writing and trying to understand why I was feeling the way I'm feeling.

I think that this album NA focused on on me a little, You.

And suh better or not important.

Te Yoda.

And contra.

You know, sometimes when you feel so so so angry that you start crying. I don't know if that happens to you, but that happens to me a lot.

And I feel that I was like in this album, each song plays with a vulnerability of mind. I feel like this album became very personal and more introspective, like for me, because like I talk about things that I was like more afraid to talk about and that sometimes we feel ashamed to speak about, but we shouldn't be because it's it's normal.

It's part of life, you know.

The song that for me maybe represents the whole album is ning the song that I did with Treno. It defines how I was actually feeling, you know.

Lado than.

Coming and so Guerda Kiren Reportaken said control.

He took the song where he needed to to go.

You know, it was incredible because it made it about a fight with yourself and how to end up triumphant from that fight.

A consent, comment them and get them and go get the road. I never expected to have so many collaborations in this album.

The whole collaboration process was very.

New to me.

I'm used to working on my own. It was incredible to work with other people. And the experience of hearing other colors, other textures, voices, words, you know, like another brain with you was was.

An incredible experience to have. Working with ev was incredible.

She was like my female reference when I thought about Regaton female singers.

I mean, when I was little, like she was my only reference. She was not only just a woman doing I mean she.

Was speaking from a feminine perspective and she was very firm and very straightforward about it. Lina, I still can't believe that she's in this album.

For me, it is great. And also this song that for me, is so powerful, don't get.

Any Natarilla comes from a Puerto Rican phrase that we use a lot in Puerto Rico. The whole phrase is nacari loriente, kind of not on with a lot of attitude, and I love that phrase. Like we sometimes you said short like la caille, or sometimes we say nakinaki. And it was like my way of transcending a little the process of making this album that was in another difficult moment, like in the pandemic, with the quarantine and all that. So for me, Nakaili is just like a way of

I'm part of that, you know, sometimes I feel that way. But when I try to focus.

My perspective in the changes that are really happening, we have to.

Start from somewhere. That's how everything develops.

And for me, I'm I think maybe has evolved a little from that. Not focusing on how little it may seem, but how powerful the change can be.

This episode was produced by Julia Rocha with help from Elizabeth Lowenthal Torres. He was edited by Alejandra Salsad and mixed by Julia Caruso. The Latino USA team includes Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Dominiquinestrosa, Renaldo Lean Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lotez Crusado, Greis Luna, Lori mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Nor Saudi and Nancy Trujillo. Penileiramirez is our co executive producer along with myself and I'm your host Marianna Posa join us again

Appro Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, the John D.

And Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More at hsfoundation dot org.

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