![]() I always thought of it as something fun." In a broader sense, she says, "Music was encouraged but it wasn't imposed. Her grandfather played maracas and sang Dalt's mother played guitar. The music was just there - very present," Dalt says. "The best way for me to describe it would be the memory of cozy meetings at home with my uncles, the family gathering and talking. Méndez and La Lupe became intertwined with Dalt's recollections of the place she most associated with the music, her family home in Pereira, a city high in the Colombian mountains. "I was here, they were there." The emotional thrust of music from artists La Sonora Matancera, José A. "You look at those memories in a different way, through the lens of nostalgia," Dalt says. Like so many people who experienced the pang of homesickness during lockdown, Dalt sought comfort in the music of her past. "I was slowly analyzing tracks and thinking, 'What is happening with this progression? Why does it generate this feeling of longing within me?' " "I had more of this introspective time," she says. It felt like the right moment, Dalt says, to pursue an album of tropical rhythms that would eventually require "very patient studio time." Each day the Colombian sat at her keyboard, listening, reflecting, and playing the music of her childhood. The musician was possessed by an "eruption of wild, creative energy," but when the virus arrived she was forced to slow down. She had recently wrapped up work with an orchestra in Chicago, recorded a collaborative album with Wolf Eyes' Aaron Dilloway, and produced material for an art installation at the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín in Colombia, all while recording and touring No Era Sólida. She started writing as the pandemic began in the spring of 2020, a period following some of the busiest months of her life. The Berlin-based musician summoned the "memory of rhythms" from her Colombian upbringing rather than precise, studied recreations. ![]() On ¡Ay!, which translates as "Oh!," Dalt has recorded her most dramatic transformation yet: an album of lushly arranged "bolero sci-fi," one that fuses tropical music, jazz and electronics but which - she makes clear - is no "fusion" record.ĭalt has been thinking about ¡Ay! for many years. prompted more reinvention - spoken word poetry on 2018's Anticlines, atmospheric horror on 2020's No Era Sólida. A pair of records on Human Ear Music solidified an avant-electronic sound before her move to New York-based label, RVNG Intl. Wild drawing instruments series#Across a series of albums released since 2005, the musician has occupied many forms, from creator of off-kilter indie pop (released under alias The Sound of Lucrecia) to purveyor of esoteric Colombian field recordings. "Other times, people ask me what the lyrics mean and I'm like, 'Preta is channeling time through her glandular gate.' It feels bizarre that I'm saying that in the context of a bolero song but, at the same time, it feels right."ĭalt has become one of modern music's most fascinating chameleons. "Sometimes I read the lyrics and I'm like, 'God, this is so insane,' " Dalt says. She laughs at the absurdity of pairing what she describes as the "tropical music" that she grew up listening to in her native Colombia - bolero, salsa, merengue - with the album's alien-driven narrative. Today Dalt is sitting in her Berlin home studio, dressed in a comfy woolen cardigan, backed by an array of synthesizers, a gigantic bookshelf and an ominous sculpted white hand. Together, the images and music conjure a world that is sensual, surreal, sci-fi and decidedly romantic. ![]() At another point, Dalt dances weightlessly because Preta is "organless," moving with a slow motion grace to a winding bolero rhythm. As Dalt explains over a video call, she was licking the rock because Preta is able to sense stratigraphy with her tongue - in a way, she is able to taste geological history. She was filming the music video for " No Tiempo," the lead single from her new album, ¡Ay!, playing the part of Preta, an alien newly landed on planet Earth. Three months ago, the experimental musician and composer Lucrecia Dalt was on the Spanish island of Mallorca licking a rock. From reworking conservative genres for new eras, to teasing out modern sounds from old-school instruments, these artists represent the wide range of experimentation that makes up contemporary Latin music. In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month, NPR Music is spotlighting a series of artists across Latin America who are engaging with their musical heritage in unique ways. ![]()
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