Astropical band fuses electronic music with Caribbean rhythms in an ‘optimistic’ album that ‘takes you to beach’

It was a cold and rainy night in Bogota, the Colombian capital, perched high in the Andes mountains. But that didn’t stop thousands of people from turning up to a musical festival to see Astropical, a pop band with a psychedelic touch and tunes that evoke much warmer places.

The group blends electronic music with Caribbean rhythms like champeta and merengue, a mix that has become increasingly common at nightclubs and music festivals in Colombia.

“This music takes you to the beach,” said Angel Zambrano, one of the fans who was swaying his hips and bobbing his head back and forth as the band played at the Estereo Picnic Festival. “You feel like you’re drinking some rum and hanging out with your friends.”

Astropical is a new band — but it’s fronted by two very well-known voices in the Latin music scene. Now, they’re joining forces to give their people something to dance to, even though times may be difficult.

Li Saumet, from the Colombian band Bomba Estereo, is famous for mixing cumbia with electronic music in hits like “Fuego” and “Soy Yo.” Her new bandmate, Alberto Montenegro, just won a Grammy with Rawayana, a Venezuelan band that was recently prevented from performing in its own country by the current authoritarian government.

The two singers decided to get together because of their similar music tastes and deep cultural connections, coming from neighboring countries.

They’ve now recorded an album together and are going on tour with an energetic show that invites people to stay positive, even through tough times.

“We want people to pay more attention to the beautiful things in life, to be more optimistic,” Montenegro said during an interview in Bogota, “because we’re living in a crazy world right now.”

Saumet, from Bomba Estereo, said that the collaboration between the two bands began a year ago, when they discussed recording a song together. 

But one song quickly turned into six after Saumet and Montenegro met at a recording studio. So, they ended up creating an entire album complete with 12 tracks. 

“It wasn’t planned,” Saumet said. “But more like an idea that came from the universe.”

They named the album “Astropical”, just like the band they’re touring with.

Saumet explained that the name is a portmanteau of her interest in astrology and her own tropical origins. And each song is named after one of the zodiac signs.

“Astrology was always in our culture,” said Saumet, who grew up in Santa Marta, a sun-drenched city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

“It was always in the newspaper, in the news, in school, everybody was talking about that.”

One big theme in the album is connecting with the present. The song “Capricornio” — also titled “Otro Nivel”, meaning “another level” — even tells listeners to seize the moment and put away their phones.

“What happens now is that everything in the media is bad news,” Saumet said. “But nobody says how many birds are born in a day or how many beautiful things happen. So, we decided to talk about that.”

The songs also hint at nostalgia, with sounds and lyrics that take you to different parts of the Caribbean.

One song called “Una noche en Caracas, or “A Night in Caracas”, draws inspiration from Bomba Estereo’s first performance in Venezuela back in 2022. Saumet said she was at a music festival that enabled many of the bands that had to leave Venezuela because of its economic and political problems to return to the country, and play in the same venue for the first time in years.

“I talked to many people and they told me they had been away for 10 or 11 years,” Saumet recalled. “I could feel all the emotions of the people there, and it was beautiful.”

These kinds of gatherings are rare in Venezuela nowadays under the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Montenegro’s band, Rawayana, had a tour of eight Venezuelan cities canceled in December, after Maduro went on TV to criticize one of their songs.

The song uses the word “veneka” to describe Venezuelan women. It’s a term that is sometimes used as a slur against Venezuelan migrants, which angered the president.

“It’s an insulting song,” Maduro said in one of his frequent nationally televised speeches, where he screamed that Venezuelan women “are not venekas.” 

Montenegro said that the playful song, which says Venezuelan women “don’t go to the gym but have an athlete’s body,” was meant to praise the women.

He believes he was targeted over other matters, like his support for a Venezuelan opposition candidate.

In July, Rawayana published a message on its X feed, formerly known as Twitter, where it urged people to vote for the opposition candidate in an election that the Venezuelan government has been widely accused of stealing.

“It felt like an excuse,” Montenegro said of the government’s attack on his song. “Venezuela is a very crazy political place right now.”

Montenegro said he’s not expecting to perform in Venezuela anytime soon, although he continues to tour different Latin American countries and the US with Rawayana and Astropical. 

“There’s a weird situation now with the concerts in Venezuela that hopefully will change in the future” he said.

Still, Montenegro said that with his music he’s trying to show the good side of Venezuela. The lyrics in his songs talk about a country with friendly people, beautiful beaches and what he says are “the best women.”

“When you talk about Venezuela it’s always about chaos and the political problems that we have. But there’s a beautiful side too,” he said. 

Now that Montenegro and Saumet are performing together, their sense of optimism is playing well with people in both countries. 

Naibe Melo, from Venezuela, went to Astropical’s show in Bogota carrying a Venezuelan flag. She also wore a T-shirt with the word “veneka” printed in big letters.

“Their fusion is great,” she said. “Plus, these two bands show that we are sister nations that can go forward together.”