Huracán single & video release
-Press Kit-October 27th 2020-
Maria Jose Montijo is a Boricua bruja, casting spells with a luminous voice and powerful lyrics, whose songs invoke full-spectrum healing and celebrate the magic of the ordinary.
Huracán, the first single from her upcoming full-length debut, Esotérica Tropical, is an electro- bomba fusion that addresses colonialism, vulture capitalism and femicide. A protest song produced for the dance floor by Argentinian electronic producer Luis Maurette (Uji/Lulacruza).It features bomba percussion by Jesús “El Tambor Mayor” Cepeda of the Cepeda family, legendary Afro-Puerto Rican bomba culture keepers. The music video was directed by Claudia Escobar, an acclaimed Colombian visual storyteller.
THE ROOTS
Huracán is a song born out of the collective rage that Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora grappled with in the aftermath of Hurricane María. As an island-raised Puerto Rican living in the diaspora, MaJo felt a responsibility to denounce the socio-economic and political disasters that stem from Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The Fiscal Control Board, popularly called La Junta, is an unaccountable entity created by the federal government to oversee Puerto Rico’s economy while restructuring the debt. La Junta primarily serves Wall Street vulture funds and corrupt island elites, cutting social services through a disaster capitalism agenda. The result is that hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have to leave the island while neo-settler colonialists move in. The unpayable debt La Junta seeks to restructure has never been audited. This song speaks of the need for autogestión (self-governance), and the practices that colonial subjects engage in to embody freedom and grow their collective power.
This original bomba emerged out of years of study with Taller Bombaléle, an Oakland-based, queer-led drum and dance troupe founded by Jesus Cepeda’s daughter Julia Caridad Cepeda and Denise Solis, formerly of all-woman bomba group Las Bomberas de la Bahia. Denise joins Jesus Cepeda on percussion, with Denise playing el primo (lead drum). Also featured are an all-Puerto Rican, all-woman coro, and baritone saxophone from Bay Area Latin jazz virtuoso Charlie Gurke. Featured in the video are bomba dancers Julia Caridad Cepeda and Lío ViIlahermosa.
FULL BIO
Growing up in the paradisiacal landscapes of the Caribbean, MaJo learned the power of sound as a practice of resistance and nourishment. Singing professionally since age five, and with nineteen years of experience in traditional medicine, MaJo makes songs as spells for our collective liberation. MaJo’s life changed in 2009, on a beach in her native Puerto Rico, when a friend gifted her a Celtic harp. Since then, the Oakland-based acupuncturist and musician has been performing and composing medicinal music that sparks transformation. She enchants audiences with her booming voice, dreamy harp, and lyrics that are both transpersonal and political. She is a grant alum at Zoo Labs’ Music Entrepreneurship Program in Oakland, where she recorded her upcoming album. After releasing her first EP, Estrellas, her single Glaciar premiered on NPR’s Alt Latino. MaJo is part of Taller Bombaléle, an Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance ensemble, and has toured South America with the indie folk duo Alejandro y Maria Laura. She travels to Puerto Rico often, performing with local and other diaspora artists, helping produce live music events, healing clinics, and workshops. Expertise in the healing arts, a lifelong devotion to cultural resistance, and otherwordly sonic explorations all make up the universe of Esotérica Tropical.
>>>esotericatropical@gmail.com
PRESS HIGHLIGHTS
“Music this good transcends context and boundaries, so let “Huracán” fill your sails—whatever regimes you seek to overthrow this election.
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Joanna Lad • 48 Hills
“There is undeniable power in a music video. It requires a certain vision, one that can fuse the energy of the music and lyrics of a song with captivating moving images in a way that lights the song on fire and creates that explosion of art that only a great music video can achieve. It is the merging of these two worlds that can propel a music video to be such a powerful piece of art…“Huracán” has done just that..”
Laura Catana • Tigre Sounds
“The Oakland harpist and singer-songwriter makes dreamy, experimental folk music inspired by Chinese medicine and Latin American resistance. ”
Nastia Voynosvskaya • East Bay Express
Más/More
ESOTÉRICA TROPICAL COMING SPRING 2021
Esotérica Tropical, María Jose “MaJo” Montijo’s full-length debut LP, is an album that celebrates a universal sense of resilience, rooted in the notion that to heal is to decolonize.The music on Esoterica Tropical blends Latin American electronic landscapes with bomba, folk harp, and lyrics that are feminist, alchemical, and affirming of deep ecology — songs that are prayers to both our ancestors and our future selves.
