I spoke with Estrada, 24, in early January, a week before the release of her debut album “Marchita.” The Mexican singer-songwriter called in from Mexico City, where she is preparing for her upcoming 25-city U.S. tour. In the new release, Estrada chronicles her first romance, found and lost in late adolescence. Years later, she revisits the astonishing sorrow she felt in the break-up’s aftermath. The result is a compilation that carries listeners through her story of first love, and, inevitably, first heartbreak.

“Marchita,” whose title translates to “wither,” takes as its point of departure an array of Mexican music styles like son jarocho, a folk genre from Estrada’s native Veracruz. But Estrada’s sound on the album is mutable, as she roams freely into indie and jazz territories as well. The recordings are spare, her voice unadorned apart from the pluckings of her Venezuelan cuatro, some accompanying strings, or a piano. A backing chorus joins on occasion to invoke moments of high drama. Overall, the album speaks to those who are masochistically wistful: the brooding heart-achers who turn over memories like stones in their mouths and who, in Estrada’s words, like to “scratch at wounds.”

“Marchita” provides deliverance for this forsaken lot. The emotional landscape of the album is childishly hopeful at times, as in “Un Dia Cualquiera,” when she croons “quiero ser apenas murmullo de tu boca / A veces verso alegre, a veces mariposas” (I want to be just/a murmur in your mouth/sometimes joyful verse/sometimes butterflies), atop the rhythmic stomp-and-clap characteristic of son jarocho, like a playground chant for the yearning. At other times, however, Estrada’s world is barren. “Tristeza,” a highlight of the back half of the album, opens with a sigh of a note, which slips upward in pitch until it grows sharp and uninhabitable. The tracks wander through tableaus of love’s inaugural scar, eliding the exquisite and the wretched.

Fittingly, the singer-songwriter’s working style is reclusive and focused.  “The whole thing about being an artist is that it depends a lot on silence. To put me in a position where I can actually create, I don’t only need like, a whole afternoon. I need the whole day. Months go by.” Estrada is not afraid of being alone. She believes her creative process demands a degree of isolation from friends and loved ones. “Maybe I’m exaggerating,” she equivocates. But then she shakes her head, in hard work, Estrada muses, “you can be at peace with your loneliness.”

Silvana Estrada was born in Xalapa-Enríquez, a mid-sized city in Veracruz. Xalapa is ringed by volcanoes and tucked into the austere peaks of the Sierra Madre. Both of her parents are luthiers, craftsmen who make and repair string instruments. Her father made the cuatro, a small, four-stringed guitar she currently plays. Surrounded by the exacting artistry of music-making–witnessing creative labors that depend upon painstaking precision–Estrada has inherited her parents’ commitment to craft.

Estrada was raised in her family’s extended artistic community, singing Mexican son jarocho and Baroque choir music. By age 13, she was performing in local bars. Around this time, she fell in love with English-language jazz, which she would later go on to study at the University of Veracruz. This training shaped her tremendously, so much that her voice began to emulate the sounds of Sara Vaughn and Billie Holiday. Over the years, she has experimented stylistically, putting out a striking collaborative album at 19 with jazz composer Charlie Hunter after the pair met in a music workshop. Then came a smattering of eclectic singles that seemed to defy any genre at all.

In recent years, Estrada’s career has grown as Mexico’s indie fans have embraced her sound. She has performed both with indie-alternative artists like Julieta Venegas and David Aguilar and with Latin music giants like Natalia Lafourcade. Now, after completing a sold-out solo tour across Mexico, she is the first Latin American artist to sign with Glassnote Records, a prominent indie and alternative rock label led by American music executive Daniel Glass.

Estrada had always been compelled by Latin American folk music, despite her formal training in Jazz and English-language music. She felt that only the Mexican musical and literary traditions could fully capture her subjectivity – the sounds of her parent’s workshop, the imposing mountains of the Sierra Madre, the colonial history of Xalapa. She followed the instinct to revisit the music of her childhood home: traditional Mexican songs, like rancheras from the post-revolutionary era, songs which have always reflected Mexico’s preoccupation with great love affairs and pastoral tragedies. Folk seemed the most fitting medium when she decided to write about her first great love affair.

“Marchita” does not sound like an album from this century. In fact, sometimes I am not sure if Estrada is from this century. With her belief in love as the animating force of existence, she seems more suited for a bygone era, one in which people composed odes, wept over love letters, and died from longing. There is little that is stylistically contemporary about this album, with its lonely string quartets and unhurried percussion. Estrada’s sound is deliberately nostalgic, somewhere between Chavela Vargas, Violeta Parra, and Patsy Cline. Much like these artists, she exudes pure ardor. “‘Marchita’ is an album that could exist like 50 years ago, or could be done in 100 years, and would still be essentially alive,” says Estrada.

For example, in “Marchita,” the album’s eponymous track, Estrada shows mastery of the ranchera, a genre known for its theatrical, passionate narratives. Estrada describes this plaintive ballad as, “The first time I could really say, OK, this happened to me.” She wanted to capture “the drama” and “the humor” of heartbreak – the simultaneous comedy and cataclysm of young love – with a sound and emotional register that felt fundamentally Mexican.

If Estrada could offer any piece of advice to her former self, it would be: “You’re not crazy. And if you are, you’re gonna be like this for the rest of your life. So better get used to it.” When her voice hitches with sorrow or mewls with longing, it is undoubtedly clear that Estrada is the rightful heir to the musically lovelorn, the heartbroken, the 19th-century crooners that came before her. Those timeless emotions have remained unchanged.

A more conventional break-up album might follow Estrada through the linear steps of firsts: boy meets girl, girl falls in love, girl falls apart. But Estrada isn’t afraid to say what most of us struggle to consciously admit: heartache is nauseatingly circular, like a malfunctioning amusement park ride. “It’s the most horrible thing you’ve ever felt, but it’s also not. It’s good,” she tries to convince me. And if anyone could persuade me to relive my most despairing moments for the sake of extracting some higher beauty, it would be Estrada.

While the tracks on “Marchita” seem like spontaneous outpourings of emotion, they are carefully crafted. Estrada began writing the album long after her breakup and worked on it for three years before she felt it was ready for release. But in some ways, the self-excavation that fueled the album came naturally to her. “It’s easy to find beauty, in darkness, and in pain,” she says, while I try to determine if her artistic impulse is sadistic or brilliant – or, more plausibly, both.  “And I feel like that’s because, when you’re happy, that’s all there is. But to describe sadness – it’s so difficult, you know?”

For all her blues, Estrada was far from a melancholy presence when we spoke. On the contrary, she strikes me as someone composed entirely of light. It’s not that she masks her sorrow; it’s that she deems it the essential prerequisite for sweetness. “For me, it’s way more profound to travel through my sadness, than it is to explore my happiness,” says Estrada. She is the kind of soul who, in the swarm of our modern world, moves through life slowly, with earnest appreciation for its beauty. Her quiet composure bears the mark of sublimity, of someone who has loved, lost, and survived that turbulent encounter.

Credits:
Photography by Flordalis Espinal

The post Silvana Estrada and the Cataclysm of Young Love appeared first on Latina.

As consumers, millennials with expendable income are often in pursuit of ethical alternatives to traditional choices. As the climate crisis escalates and awareness of the human costs of global consumerism grows, this consumer class endeavors to be eco (-friendly, -aesthetic, -conscious) in its consumption. Tulum has come into fashion as a chic alternative in a world of harmful mass tourism, attracting both long-practicing New Age acolytes as well as influencers and young professionals. Investment bankers and spiritual guides alike seek paradise there, hoping to dabble in clean, luxury living and ethical merry-making. 

The version of Tulum seen by tourists and on Instagram is molded in the image of “eco-chic,” an umbrella term defined by an amorphous combination of lifestyle, ecology, politics, spirituality, beauty standards, and virtue — anything we can buy, sell, or do that promises absolution from our ecological sins. But “eco-chic” isn’t merely the marketing of moral postures to consumers. It traffics in the aestheticization of everyday life. According to Chris Hudson in the anthology “Green Consumption,” green is more than just good — it’s a sensory delight. An eco-chic Instagram photo is beautiful because it holds a promise that the serenity represented on screen can be translated to material life. 

The implicit appeal of landscapes off the beaten path helps explain the rising popularity of ecotourism hotspots like Tulum. Like any other product marketed on a feed, the natural world is used in service of moral and aesthetic gratification. The common thread is consumption; eco-chic is above all an “economic regime” of things or places, Hudson writes. Thus it is not only the objects of consumption in Tulum that travelers covet, but also Tulum itself, as both a signifier of virtue and luxury and as a visual product for social media. But this product requires construction and maintenance, along with labor, land, and capital. 

Hungry for Meaning

If you visited Tulum in the 1990s, you would find a small town with a population of about 2,000, a few beachfront homes and only one or two hotels, all of which lacked consistent electricity and running water. There would be ample space for sleeping on the beach, of which adventurous backpackers would take advantage, stringing up hammocks or roughing it in the sand.

Today, security guards patrol the white-sand beaches in front of boutique hotels to keep out trespassers. Travelers to Tulum will not hear the rustle of haphazardly-pitched tents or the creak of hammocks. Instead, they will see a marvel of design and photogenicism; Tulum’s wellness centers and beachfront yoga studios are straight out of an Instagram feed — drop in a bronzed, wind-blown model and you would have an ad for the luxury brand of your choosing. The earth tones, rattan chairs, and pale pink accents of the restaurants and bars inspire whimsy and delight; beach clubs are both rustic and manicured, a triumph of eco-modernist aesthetics.

Tulum is a triumph of digital culture. Its rise as a site of visual pleasure, one that can be photographed and disseminated, parallels a cultural shift towards non-material goods as markers of elite status. Consider Matcha Mama, a plant-based juice bar and one of the “more Instagrammed places in Tulum,” as American co-founder Ryan Rafferty says. He and his partner, Mexican Alexis Madero, founded the business in 2017. 

Madero is proud of the work they’ve done to make the space beautiful. Its white interiors, beach swings, and pink-flamingo wall decals can be seen all over Instagram. The design matches, or rather signifies, Matcha Mama’s appeal, which Madero says is “really what people are looking for these days. People want to be healthy and have a healthy mindset.”

It comes as no surprise that the eco-chic movement, along with its call to return to the moral simplicity of a former time, has become popular among the traveling class.  Ryan says that he founded Matcha Mama on the principle of “the simple life,” but during the pandemic the desire to “feel good” heightened.

Is it the chlorophyll water that customers love consuming, or the idea of a healthy lifestyle? As sociologist John Urry argues, the late 20th century offered forms of specialized consumption like tourism, where, “use value was usurped by symbolic value, and the consumption of signs rather than material goods became key features of the global economy.” In “an economy of signs and space,” a trip to an Instagram-worthy vista becomes just as attractive to the consumer as the purchase of traditional luxury goods. 

“The Pleasurable Periphery”

Tulum is a product of the late-stage tourist economy. Across the globe, humans have re-organized entire regions, labor patterns, and supply chains around tourism. ​​In the past century, tourism has gone from a rarefied privilege to an integral part of contemporary social life despite being prohibitively expensive for most individuals. Tourism is a sign of upward social mobility, class distinction, and leisure.  But the right to tourism — and the perception that we are entitled to it — is widely accepted in the West.  

Tourism became a consolidated industry after the Second World War. As consumer power grew in tandem with the emerging middle class, mass tourism rose in popularity for those with expendable capital in wealthy nations. Beginning in the 1980s, international organizations like the UN World Tourism Organization began to articulate tourism as a crucial component of human fulfillment. Since then, tourism has become the fourth-largest export sector in the world.

The Yucatan Peninsula’s international tourism trade originated not in Tulum, but about 80 miles northeast in Cancun. In the 1970s, Mexican bankers identified Cancun as ripe for development. The bankers saw in Cancun the ideal “sea, sun, and sand” destination and a convenient alternative for hosting US tourists to Cuba, which had closed its borders to Americans. The official committee in charge of selecting resort sites had two criteria. The first was that the location be visually pleasing, with an appropriate ecology for leisure activities and the second was that the site be located in “underdeveloped” zones. Once the committee approved the “Cancun Master Plan,” the city was built up almost from scratch, using primarily Maya labor from surrounding areas. The region became Mexico’s first mass tourism destination. Historian Fernando Marti writes of the plan: “[A] group of bankers conceived an absurd project: found a tourism city in dense jungle with the basic idea of capturing foreign exchange.” 

Concurrently, across the Caribbean, post-colonial countries like Jamaica and the Bahamas were pursuing modernization and economic sovereignty through one of the few avenues available to them in the age of neoliberalism: mass tourism and resort economies. Resort tourism, conceived as the “industry without chimneys” became a national development strategy. It hinged on creating the perfect balance of authentic “Third World” exoticism and modern, familiar comforts — a “pleasurable periphery,” as tourism historian Louis Turner coins it.

Yet the pleasurable periphery is as unstable as it is manufactured, subject to the whims and tastes of the globe-trotting leisure class. In the 1990s, as the environmentalist movement gained traction, scholars and tourists alike began to criticize mass tourism for its hyper-commodification of local ecologies and communities, according to Matilde Córdoba Azcárate’s ethnography “Stuck with Tourism.” When activists suggested “ethnic” and ecologically oriented tourism as a solution, private and public actors jumped at the chance to cater to the newly conscientious spending classes. Enter the “conscious” traveler who aims to find the most unadulterated pockets of nature — scenic reassurances that parts of the world still exist in uncorrupted form in the post-industrial age.

By the early 2000s, the global elite shunned mass tourism and places like Cancun. Suddenly, surrounded by sky-rise condos that blocked views of beachy paradises and shantytowns that prompted shame and discomfort, the conscious traveler understood the perils of consumer capitalism. She sought a subtler, less egregious form of luxury. She wanted a traveling experience that confirmed her conception of herself as laid-back and low-maintenance. So the “pleasurable periphery” shifted once again, seeking ever-more virgin land to develop. Investors and entrepreneurs set their eyes on Tulum, which they could market as the more authentic alternative for those dissatisfied with cities like Cancun.

Tulum, as the perceived undiscovered world apart, was not already there, waiting for visitors. It had to be imagined and constructed in the image of the adventurer’s desires. Its construction did, however, displace the long-standing Maya communities that were already there. The disruption forced Mayas to abandon agricultural production and adopt wage labor as a matter of economic survival. Tulum’s “ejido” system, in which land tenure is communally held and village-based, facilitated the waves of gentrification and dispossession. 

The “ejido” system dates back to the post-revolutionary Mexican government, which aimed to redress landlessness among peasants through a policy of land redistribution. Ejidos were government land grants given to communities who would then collectively maintain the land, without owning it. This land distribution process also entailed promoting non-indigenous settlement on indigenous lands. In the 1970s, the government provided peasants from states like Michoacán and Tabasco with grants to land deemed “uncolonized” in the states of Quintana Roo, where Tulum resides. In Tulum, Mayas, who before the “ejido” had de facto ownership and control of the territory, suddenly found that the state now owned and regulated access to the land, and could give “ejido” titles to Mexican and Yucatec developers who sought to take advantage of the program.

Despite post-revolutionary efforts to curb land encroachment, the “ejido” system yielded mixed results. In 1994, land redistribution programs virtually ended with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA paved the way for the privatization of “ejido” lands by making it permissible for “ejidatarios,” members of the ejido, to sell, rent, sharecrop or mortgage land parcels to foreign capital. “Ejidatarios” could now sell parcels of land to developers. For some “ejidatarios,” in the Yucatan, many of whom are Mayas, selling their land was a lucrative economic opportunity, albeit a singular one. With agricultural production waning across the region, there were few other options to make a living. Many “ejidatarios” thus sold their land off to developers. As a result, developers in Tulum only had small squares of land to develop, and could not build the mega-resorts seen in other parts of the Riviera Maya. The solution was to build small, exclusive “eco-hotels” that now house the legions of wealthy travelers who come to visit. 

Mental Gymnastics

Tulum’s infrastructure is only designed to sustain around 7,000 people. Now the town, which had only 3,000 inhabitants in 1995, hosts more than two million tourists per year and has a local population of 35,000. Tulum’s coastal area lacks proper access to the power grid, and hotels rely largely on diesel generators to power their air conditioners and other appliances.​​ The city also lacks waste management and drainage infrastructure, and for years dumped its garbage in open-air landfills in the jungle. As it decomposes, the trash leaches into the region’s fragile underground water system and eventually the drinking water. 

This has not stopped travel to the region. Although Tulum’s pollution has worsened, it remains somewhat hidden behind the image of paradise manufactured for our enjoyment. According to the Washington Post, the number of American tourists visiting the state of Quintana Roo in 2021, where Tulum and Cancun are located, has increased by 23 percent compared with 2019. 

Some of these travelers have even decided to stay, extending their week-long vacations into full-time residency. Tulum has recently become a hot-spot for the “digital nomad,” individuals who work remotely so they can travel the world, promising a relatively affordable escape from the demands of a former life. While the rest of the world shuttered, more and more digital nomads flocked to Tulum, forging ahead with their individual paths to self-discovery. Groups on Facebook, like “Digital Nomads in Tulum,” have grown to nearly 4,000 members in the past year. 

Nazieh Fazil is one of many who traveled to Tulum during the pandemic. She is the founder of CoWorking Tulum, a “premium CoWorking community and experience,” that she started last year with her brother. Fazil lived in one of the most expensive parts of Manhattan, so close to her office that she could walk to work. Then her company went remote. “It didn’t make sense for me to be paying rent when the U.S. was completely shut down.” As Fazil pointed out, economic incentive is one reason why Tulum is so attractive to remote workers: the rent is cheaper than cities like New York, London, or L.A. 

The locals and expat community, she says, are very conscientious, and know that they are guests on the land. They are “actively working to try and mitigate as many risks as possible.” She tries to see the spaces for hope which tourism offers. “Part of the positive includes the impact on the economy, the impact on the local people, the impact on jobs, and Tulum becoming an innovation hub, because of the minds that are coming in and converging here.” Among these innovative minds, she lists, “social media people, Bitcoin miners, and neuro-hackers.” Yet it seems unlikely that such a milieu could continue to grow its ranks without displacing existing ways of life, further entrapping locals and working-class populations in an economy where the only choice is to serve in the tourism industry.

Recently, certain environmental harbingers have made reality harder to obscure. In the past few years,  the invasive algae sargassum has barraged Tulum’s beaches, turning the clear water into red muck. Neither the vista nor the contracted laborers who are hired to shovel it away by hand make for a photogenic view. The private sector has worked tirelessly and invested large sums to remove sargasso daily from the beaches in front of their hotels.The public beaches in Tulum, where locals go, receive no such cleaning. 

The cleanup effort is concerned mainly with appearance. Many hotels lack an adequate disposal site, and once they clear the sargasso off their beachfront, they do not dispose of it properly, leaving it to rot in parking lots or piles on the beach. Decomposing sargasso is a serious source of contamination. Once the macro algae have decomposed, they release gases and liquids that end up draining into bodies of water. For the hotel owners, there is little else to do but continue with the Sisyphean feat. Their patrons were promised white-sand beaches, not invasive algae. 

Excessive Growth

Tourism’s promises attract equally those who want to raze jungles to build mega-resorts and those who want to protect those environments. And it is an intoxicating promise of improvement. Countries locked out of other economic production can, at least, produce these spaces, both in the imagination and in concrete form. But the meticulous expansion of these curated “wilds” — and indeed, Tulum’s entire economy — depends on the continued exploitation of a Mexican labor force. 

Tulum’s tourism industry relies on migrant laborers residing in Cancun, that densely populated metropolis now considered tacky by the elite traveler, as well as on local Maya communities. Dr. Bianet Castellanos, an anthropologist and a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, has spent over twenty years studying Maya migration and the tourist trade in Cancun. She commented that Tulum’s boutique hotels and beachfront clubs source the majority of their labor this way, noting that “to have the labor necessary to run these places, you need to have a high concentration of people — cheap, expendable labor.”  

This is the Tulum that visitors don’t see — or rather, try hard to ignore. Is handing out paper straws and becoming a zero-waste enterprise like Matcha Mama enough in the face of such structural inequity? Peripheral communities absorb the unsavory elements of this predatory labor relationship, allowing Tulum to appear both ethically and aesthetically pristine. This obscures the fact that paradise implicates even the well-meaning developer with the social and economic forces that surround them, revealing their position upon eco-capitalism’s scales of power. 

While many “eco” property owners and businesses want to play a role in making Tulum sustainable, they often feel victimized by the growth from which they profit. One way eco-chic businesses handle the dissonance is by an act of differentiation. There are people like themselves, who are invested in the community, and then there are the “bad consumers” who just want to party and take pictures, along with the broods of developers who enable them.

Manuel Saracho is a Mexican citizen who is the sales director of Xel-ha, an archeological site and a key port for the Maya in the first century and. It is now a crowded theme park and ecotourism development near Tulum. Yet even Saracho, whose career depends on mass tourism, regrets Tulum’s non-exclusivity. “We don’t want those Daytona Beach Spring Breakers. But unfortunately, that’s what Tulum has become.”

Alexis Madero, Matcha Mama’s co-founder, thinks Tulum is no more exploited or exploitable than locations across the globe that undergo development booms. “All over the world, there are these beautiful, perfect paradises. And, now these secret places, like Tulum, are exposed because of social media.” Madero is now leaving the town she helped brand. She, along with her partner Rafferty and their three-year-old are moving to a gated community thirty minutes away from Tulum. 

Other business owners place the blame squarely on the Mexican government. Saracho thinks that tourism’s effect on the town’s local population is “deplorable, everything that’s happening with assaults, and drug addiction. The government’s role has not caught up with the amount of investment here.” Saracho’s girlfriend, Irene, hails from Cuernavaca and owns an Airbnb in Aldea Zama, Tulum’s biggest real estate development. Aldea Zama’s sustainable ethos compelled Irene, who wanted a place to pass on to her kids, to invest. 

“Unfortunately, the government is more focused on seeing how much it can rob and generate in profits,” she says of her frustrations with Tulum’s governance. Yet Aldea Zama is not immune to the flawed systems that fuel excessive growth. Aldea Zama’s website states that the development mixes the “antiquity and the mysticism of Tulum with a contemporary lifestyle.” But it is owned by MayaZama, a Mexican real estate company whose partners have been linked to cases of property fraud and corruption across the peninsula. Despite the invocation of  theMaya people in the name, the partners of this company tend to be upper-class Mexicans who have leveraged their capital to buy “ejidos” or businesses.

It’s no wonder that the current conception of paradise is a place that can fortify an individual’s moral selfhood, where, ideally, she would be able to go about one’s wellness routines and career without experiencing pangs of guilt, or dread, or fear. Tulum’s developments and hotel zone have been designed to be enclosures of luxury, visually and spatially separate from the shantytowns that have cropped up along highways and in the outskirts of town. In eco-paradise, the traveler lives apart from the system she upholds — away from the “bad” consumers and the greedy developers of places like Cancun — and can believe she is outside of it. 

But where will the “good consumer” go once the predatory logics of tourism in Tulum become too visible and too unpleasant to bear? Perhaps, as many Tulum lovers say, the virtuous will stay put, working to improve ecological conditions and empower local communities. Or perhaps they will set their sights on other idyllic landscapes. On undeveloped pockets of the world where it is easier to be good. Where escaping the ambivalent moral regimes of late capitalism is just a matter of getting on a plane and going.

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Special thanks to Dr. M. Bianet Castellanos, Dr. Ana M. Juárez, and Dr. Matilde Córdoba Ázcarate. 

The post How Opportunism Made Tulum an Eco-Chic Playground appeared first on Latina.

Álvaro Zooms me from his AirBnb in Mexico City, where he is recording his forthcoming album, “Felicilandia.” Díaz looks straight out of a streetwear ad, wearing a black pullover and a red-and-white cap with a distorted Mickey Mouse printed on it. He is in the final stretch of “Felicilandia,”” with only two songs left. Díaz, with his bashful smile and round, rosy cheeks, is charming, though he says he is “the shyest person ever.” It is an unexpected admission from someone who is so at home in his performance of the Trap genre. “If I feel comfortable, I’ll talk. But if not, you have to take the words right out of my mouth,” says Díaz, which confirms my suspicion that, despite the debauchery and cockiness he plays up in his songs, he is secretly the baby-faced cherub of the Latin Trap world. 

Photography by Guillermo Visuals

Díaz, who first began posting his music on Soundcloud in 2012, was one of the first artists in a new wave of Latin Trap, which later became a global sensation. Latin Trap has its origins in Puerto Rico, where rappers and reggaetoneros began to riff off of the sonic and lyrical themes of Trap and classic hip hop, while adding a distinctly Latin sound. In “Ga$tar,” a track Díaz made in 2013 with artist Fuete Billete, you can hear Trap’s influence on his early work: thickets of dense, languorous basslines, like a song in slow motion. But before the backtrack lulls you into a daze, Díaz adds his own twist, spitting out deft verses, and you are wide awake again. This playful experimentation continues on his later EPs and albums. Díaz has established himself accordingly as an unorthodox artist who eschews the influence of reggaeton, which was for a long time a dominating presence in Latin hip-hop, and instead embraces the sounds of rappers like Kanye West, 50 Cent and Kid Cudi. 

On stage, Díaz requires no coaxing. Performing is his favorite part of music.“When I’m performing, I’m another person. But I don’t know who,” he says.  When we spoke, he had just performed his first live concert since the pandemic, in Mexico City. “It wasn’t the biggest show I could have done,” Díaz admits. But he cares less about the numbers than he does about the crowd’s intensity. He grins, reliving the thrill. “Numbers can tell us one thing, but I have songs that ain’t got that many numbers. Those are the ones my fans go the craziest for.” 

“Díaz Antes,” Díaz’s first studio album, is also his most ambitious project to date. “Díaz Antes” is based on the concept of flipping through the radio. The album is divided into five highly varied “stations,” each with its own premise. It is a genre-bending trip, unlike any other in the Latin Trap universe. Some “stations” drill dense trap beats, while others loop over ‘80s synths, or submerge you in a din of jaunty dance music. Many of the tracks in “Díaz Antes” are teasing and wry, importing the bravado of the Trap genre for a boasty, assertive rapport.

Díaz is at his most innovative in the fourth “station” on the album: “La Ciudad de Los Niños Tristes.” The section is a batch of five tracks which are, as the station’s tongue-in-cheek title suggests, downbeat sounds for a generation of sadboys. “Reina Pepiada” stands out as a chill-hop-track-turned-banger, recruiting spacey lo-fi beats and an infectious hook to outstanding effect.

“I was the shy guy that didn’t tell nobody I sang,” Díaz recounts of his childhood in San Juan. But even if he wasn’t going public with his talent just yet, he was watching artists at work all around him. “My mom always used to sing to me when I was little,” says Díaz of his mother, an interior designer. (He is a self-professed mama’s boy — his mother is a member of all his fan clubs on social media, and responds on his behalf to every fan that will write to him). The list goes on: his dad used to play instruments like conga and trombone, and his grandparents write books. The artistic influence has cohered in Díaz, whose lyrics can be astonishingly poetic: “Sembré algodón y coseché una nube/Para construirte una casita en el cielo/Y ahí vivir, y ahí morir, enrolladito a ti como un gongoli.” 

Photography by Guillermo Visuals

For Díaz, the come-up hasn’t been easy. Latin Trap is the more underground cousin of reggaeton, and thus Díaz’s music was not afforded the same degree of investment by record labels or promoters as reggaeton was. In 2016, Díaz toiled on a full-length album, “Díaz Buenos, Díaz Malos.” But it didn’t work out. “[The labels] weren’t able to see what this new movement was able to do. People like to see it being done before they believe in it,” Díaz gives me a what-can-you-do shrug. But his frown reveals the extent of his disappointment. “I wanted a Grammy, you know? But it just wasn’t the time,” he says, of an industry where timing is everything. Ultimately, every track from “Díaz Buenos” found its way into another project, but the setback was demoralizing.

As if to nullify the question of finding the right moment, Díaz has become prolific in his output, ensuring that he doesn’t miss a single opportunity. He is an irascible stream of ideation. Even as he finishes recording “Felicilandia,” he is half-way through writing another album. He composes and produces his own music. He also has a fashion line, LV CIVDAD, and is part of a music collective of the same name with his friends. His creative reserves never deplete in part because he extracts his source material from the everyday. His songs are, if not strictly autobiographical, a melodramatic adaptation of the truth. “I’ve exaggerated things,” Díaz says. “Like, maybe we went to a club, and I look at you and you look at me, and that’s all that happened. In my song, I’ll exaggerate that story. But it came from a true moment.” 

Díaz’s best work comes from his capacity for narrative world-building. His 2016 EP “San Juan Grand Prix“ is written as a series of surreal vignettes — fictionalized internal monologues spoken by a Formula One driver from inside the car as he completes a race. The EP is loosely referential; the narrator is based on F1’s Aryton Senna, and his love interest is a dreamscape version of Mia Wallace, from Pulp Fiction. Díaz populates his world with a colorful blend of fictional and real characters, a kind of trap-magical-realism. 

Díaz’s friends say the best thing about him is his creativity. But this superlative quality, when combined with unyielding ambition, gives him a sharp edge. “I’m a tough person,” says Díaz. “I like to do things the right way. I can get mad if that doesn’t happen.” When it comes to the process, he doesn’t play around. “In the studio, I’m really introverted. I’m vulnerable. I don’t like to be with a lot of people. I usually get mad when people start inviting other people to a studio while I’m creating,” says Díaz.  He works compulsively. “Every moment that should be dedicated to resting becomes finishing my work,” says Díaz of his non-existent downtime. “Going to the movies, going out, going to clubs to listen to music, even that becomes work. Because I’m studying it all.” In case you were wondering, he doesn’t sleep much. 

I sense behind Díaz’s boyish face and introversion a restless, exacting psyche. But his music is all the better for it. Díaz has proved to the world that Latin Trap is a moldable medium, and with “Díaz Antes,” he has laid bare both his and the genre’s versatility and range. It is a sweet payoff for an artist who has spent over a decade sizing the world up and spitting out what he sees.

Photography by Guillermo Visuals

The post Álvaro Díaz is the Baby-Faced Cherub of the Latin Trap World appeared first on Latina.

Para bailar, anhelar, and all the feels in between. We share our favorite music releases of the week.

The Marías “Un Millón”

A sepia-toned, ‘70s aesthetic? Platform boots and a plush red conversation pit? María Zardoya’s iconic bob and sleek bangs? Check, check, and check. With the release of their new music video for their sultry track “Un Millón,” indie-pop band The Marías has gifted us with a cinematic treat for our weekend. This trancey, retro video will make you want to put on a crop top and go dancing. Possible side effects include seriously contemplating giving yourself a bob and bangs using your kitchen scissors in an homage to Crush of the Week María Zardoya. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Flores “Mayahuel”

“Mayahuel” is a stunning, enigmatic music video that comes to us from Mexican American singer/songwriter Flores and director Mariano Renteria Garnica. The video is partly a tribute to the landscape of the borderlands (Flores is from El Paso, TX) and pans over sagebrush, city, and muted blue sky. It also serves as a stunning presentation of portraiture and a study of interpersonal relationships, offering a vivid, kaleidoscopic viewing experience.

Santiago Motorizado “Muchacha de los Ojos Negros”

Santiago Motorizado’s languid, folksy track “Muchacha de los Ojos Negros” is now our mandatory Sunday morning music. Sorry, we don’t make the rules. The Argentine singer, composer, and indie rock artist has a forthcoming album entitled “Canciones Sobre Una Casa, Cuatro Amigos y Un Perro,” and judging by this track, it’ll undoubtedly be a good one. Catch us calling all our friends che after listening to this song a couple times…Is it obvious we studied abroad in Buenos Aires?

La Dame Blanche, “Qué más quieres que te dé”

Call the president: we’re issuing a banger alert. Yaite Ramos Rodriguez, aka La Dame Blanche, is back and better than ever with new single “Qué más quieres que te dé.” Trap drums underscore propulsive rapping from Rodriguez, her voice equal parts plaintive and pissed-off (relatable!). The coolest part about this song is the operatic chant that picks up midway through the track. La Dame Blanche’s very own Greek chorus. It’s the theatrical trap-rant you didn’t know you needed.

Twin Palms Feat. Kat Dahlia & Demarco, “Tranquilo”

Yeah, we’re writing this from a desk, but listening to “Tranquilo,” we’re spiritually in the club. This song is about leaning into apocalyptic hedonism, which is definitely not a long-term solution, but sounds like a fun way to cope with your existential dread in the meantime. Consider this track your signal to go crazy. Enjoy the ride!

Featured Image Courtesy of Flores/Venice Music

The post New Releases from The Marías, Flores, La Dame Blanche, and More appeared first on Latina.