Run out of the city into the jungle, with its buzzing insects, its saturated color. It's sloths and blossoms, it's crazy chaos. There you'll find Costa Rica's Cocofunka, the regionally adored band whose latest album Chúcaro (OUT FEB 26) consciously mirrors the easygoing, lush vibe of their homeland's rainforests.
"When we started developing our texture, we wanted to find the sound of the jungle here," says Javier Arce, the band's frontman. "It was a guideline for the music. If you make an album you wouldn't play here, that's not at home here, it's not right."
Produced by local icon Mario Miranda and Bomba Estereo's sonic mastermind Felipe Alvarez, the album folds soca and calypso beats into rock and reggae, all to express the melancholy joy and wonderful heartache of living. To reflect the full range of influences on their music and scene, they invited jamaican reggae icon Andrew Tosh (who appears on "Temprano"), Guatemalan-born singer Estefani Brolo, and Panamanian rock icon Lilo Sánchez (of Señor Loop), who wrote the uplifting lyrics for "Alma Valiente" after battling cancer.
Like Cocofunka's previous work, it has a point, though it's subtler than mere politics or social critique. "In the songs on Chúcaro, we're trying to reflect an inner revolution, not our political outward stance," notes Arce. "Nature is really present, as a metaphor and as an influence, and is represented with the delay, with the effects. The lyrics are more about the inner self, how people can question themselves about life and existence."
Chúcaro closes with a slow-burning track based on a Julio Cortázar short story... until it takes a trippy dash out of the city, into the purring rainforest at its margins. Those margins sparked Cocofunka.
The bandmembers were all playing around the scene in the capital city of San Jose, in underground ska and punk bands. Several of them hailed from Costa Rican musical families: keyboard player Gustavo Gutierrez's grandfather wrote the lyrics for the country's national anthem, for example, while percussionist Ricardo Machado's grandfather composed the music of the historical song "Caña Dulce." For fun, they'd get together on Sundays at guitarist Nacho Paez's house, out in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the jungle, and jam.
"We all came from different backgrounds, grew up with different kinds of music. So it all evolved naturally," explains Machado. "It was a strange phenomenon: we all were in bands w/ spec genres and we couldn't play with the music the way we do in Cocofunka. We never said, oh, we have to write this song or that song. If we had planned everything, it wouldn't have turned out so well."
It turned out so well, the band took off, first in Costa Rica and then around Latin America. They became water ambassadors, played major festivals and share bills with everyone from
Los Amigos Invisibles to Novalima, gaining a passionate following. Red Bull tapped the band as thought leaders and agreed to support their next album.
Cocofunka wanted the recording to be a departure from their past work and decided to head into the jungle of sound where they got their start. They dug deeper into Costa Rica's own musical landscape, discovering Caribbean connections that seem unexpected to outsiders. Soca, the carnival sounds of Trinidad, and calypso have made an impact on Costa Rican music, with pop hits that hail back generations. "Somehow, that influence began, even for our parents, perhaps even earlier," says Arce. "Some Caribbean elements have defined the parameters of Costa Rican music." Soca beats filter into the more rock and reggae grooves, especially on the title track.The bright, bouncing guitar lines are inspired by old-school calypso players like Costa Rican musical elder Walter Ferguson.
Yet the roots are only part of the equation.
Cocofunka worked closely with producers to give these roots, these elements a radically new feel, one that evokes the sparkling, luxuriant surroundings where sorrow and joy mingle. "We were looking for a real sound," says Alvarez, "one with true character and depth, textures on melodic instruments and vocals with tons of delays, bringing the essence of the song to an almost psychedelic state."
The band turned to vintage Moogs and analog effects like dubbed-out delay, to find that dreamy place on tracks like "Oso Perezoso" (about the life lessons of the sloth), the psychedelic reggae of "Aunque Llueva," and "Melancolía" (a call for more room for emotional sensitivity).
The bittersweetness runs through the lyrics on Chúcaro as well. "Latin American music has this very particular dynamic," muses Arce. "You can have joyful, colorful sounds but the lyrics are about a broken heart. The calypso has it too, sad realities expressed in joyful music. You can't tell anyone that being sad is wrong, but you can sing about it in a joyful way. We often do the same; it's in our DNA."
This DNA is a guide, not a limit. "Everything we play with has to remind you of the original genre, but had to sound fresh," says Machado. "We play reggae but it's our reggae." "We hate to be purists," adds Arce. "When we feel we're doing something too strictly, we challenge ourselves."
Image accompanies press release
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