Astropical's Pan-Latin Pop Was Written in the Stars

It’s a bit surreal, seeing two lions of Latin music Zooming from their cars. Beto Montenegro, the Latin Grammy-winning, velvet-voiced singer/guitarist of the vibey Venezuelan pop group Rawayana, calls into our chat from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he has pulled over to the side of the road, still wearing his seatbelt. Li Saumet, the renowned singer of Colombian electro-cumbia pioneers Bomba Estéreo, is in the passenger seat in seaside Santa Marta.

Technology! It’s how the duo began collaborating on Astropical, their sunny side project whose self-titled debut album incorporates Afrobeats, electronic dance, and pan-Latin rhythms with the tenets of astrology. Rawayana’s indelible sense of pop melody and Bomba Estéreo’s beach-baby kineticism combine into a breezy party album that would sounds great on a playlist with Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti (which, incidentally, featured Bomba Estéreo). Saumet sent Montenegro a text asking him to work on a song together, but their collaboration—first over email, then over a few days in a Santa Marta studio alongside Bomba producer José Castillo and Rawa drummer/guitarist Andrés “Fofo” Story—was so fruitful they eventually had enough songs for an album. Saumet, a Capricorn, first reached out from the impulsivity typical of her star sign: She got a feeling, she tells me in English, that said, “You have to do a song with this guy in this moment.”

Saumet and Montenegro were continents apart as they wrote that first song together, “Me Pasa (Piscis),” a syncopated dreamscape with acoustic guitar and gaita flute propelling their lyrics about two free spirits connecting across eternity. These two free spirits also connected across WhatsApp, trading guide tracks for a song they eventually finished in two hours. Months later, finally together in Santa Marta, with the studio doors open to the Caribbean air, they realized how beautiful their voices sounded together, Montenegro’s buttery-smooth baritone complimenting Saumet’s more urgent, slightly craggy soprano. “My voice is very sweet and it's very calm. It is a nightmare for me sometimes,” deadpans Montenegro, an Aquarius. “And her voice is always up in the heights, and she's kind of like a rapper but also a singer. So it's a very honest and beautiful balance that feels like it already exists, you know? You listen to it and you feel like you’ve heard it before.” Like—they’ve met in another life, perhaps? 

Astropical’s name comes from Saumet’s interest in astrology, a practice which predates colonial history in Latin America and continues to resonate across the diaspora (Walter Mercado is smizing from the grave). They wrote each track with the vibes of a particular sign in mind; passionate Scorpio, for example, gets “Corazon Adéntro,” a smoldering Afropop love song about a love so strong it supersedes planetary alignment (“Ni mercurio retrógrado pueden parar con esto”—Mercury in retrograde cannot interfere). Montenegro suggested the theme after he noticed Saumet kept identifying their bandmates’ traits according to their signs— “You are so Virgo,” she’d say. Montenegro compares their musical “aha” moment to a certain rodent-chef’s firework-laden awakening in a classic Pixar film. “You know that Ratatouille moment,” laughs Montenegro, “when the rat takes the cheese and the strawberry? It felt like that.” 

Astropical emphasizes dance and love and living in the moment to ameliorate sorrow. “I think it’s a responsibility, a gift, to share your music with people,” says Saumet. “If one song can change one life, it’s okay for me. And this world is beautiful. There are many bad things, but we focus so much on the negative, but we can focus on the beauty, too.” She aims the phone out her car window: “Look at this! The sun, the sky, the ocean. Look at this!”

Saumet’s energy and appreciation for beauty has always been contagious—I think of my favorite-ever Bomba Estéreo song, 2012’s “Pájaros,” which feels like a prayer to freedom and presages the electronic dance influences in her new group’s sound. Astropical album opener “Brinca (Acuario),” is propelled by producer Izybeats’ amapiano-invoking log drums and subtle, heavenly synth; “Llego El Verano (Sagitario)” is a propulsive champeta that fans out into a late-night bass thump over which Saumet and Montenegro rap sweatily about burning one down on dancefloors across Latin America and Ibiza, a Sagittarius-ass song if one ever existed. 

Astropical is a blithe summer album, or one that invokes summer if you’re currently in the Northern Hemisphere and sitting in spring’s armpit. “We have to be optimistic, because the world is a crazy place right now,” says Montenegro. The members of Rawayana are currently living in exile; in December, they canceled a tour back home in Venezuela after being attacked by President Maduro over their song “Veneka,” which reclaims a derogatory term for Venezuelan migrants. “It doesn't matter where you’re from or what your context is, it’s just about being awake to the beautiful things in life, and that’s part of what we want to say in this album,” Montenegro continues. “There’s so much crazy stuff that we listen to that’s in the algorithm, and for us Astropical is like an invitation: Life has to be beautiful and happy, and we have to chase that.”