Tell Me Más: Meet Puerto Rican Experimental Artist Lúconde

Many fashionable musicians have created fictional alter egos as a method to discover new sonic avenues that they want to experiment with. David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, David Johansen had Buster Poindexter, Lady Gaga spent an entire season as Jo Calderone, and the much less mentioned about Garth Brooks’s Chris Gaines period the higher, however it definitely occurred. For them, it is a sort of efficiency artwork — an expression of their curiosity in stepping out of their consolation zone and giving the endeavor a theatrical aptitude as properly.

The debate about whether or not these may very well be thought-about merely publicity stunts is legitimate, however for some artists, there is a true inventive want to inhabit these personas. For Adriana Rivera, a Puerto Rican singer-songwriter, it is a end result of her dream to merge two creative outputs which have lengthy fascinated and impressed her: music and performing. From this want and its manifestation, Rivera set herself apart, and in her place emerged Lúconde and their debut album, “La Actriz: Acto I.” The EP is a magical assortment of alt-perreo, aware boleros, and progressive Latin soul. As Rivera explains, “Lúconde is basically the mother personality that serves as a vessel for other personas (or faces, as she calls them) to emerge.” For that motive, she invitations listeners to name her by both title.

Lúconde is an artist with a lot of concepts, who has been looking out a very long time for a method to categorical them. A baby of dancers from reggaeton’s early roots, when it was often called “underground” — her mom was a background dancer for Vico C, whereas her father danced for Ruben DJ — she grew up in a house that valued each music and efficiency and the overlap between the 2. Lúconde was enrolled in ballet, the place dance and expression are inextricably intertwined, and sang in her church’s refrain, the place she started to find her voice and take a look at its limits and vary.

Not quickly after, she was satisfied by associates to audition for her faculty’s drama membership. In a prescient twist, the monologue used for the audition belonged to a job a couple of character affected by dissociative id dysfunction.

“I remember researching a lot. I remember practicing [the monologue] alone at home. I had no training whatsoever, but I remember clicking with that a lot,” she says. “There was a lot of that process that clicked with me very deeply, and I remember thinking, ‘OK, I love music and I’ve always been involved with music, but I think [acting] is going to be something that I’m gonna dedicate myself more to.'”

For “La Actriz: Acto I,” Lúconde reached again and channeled the teachings from her days doing theater. She recollects being taken by the best way performing helped her to attach together with her inside ideas and widen her view of the behaviors of individuals round her.

“I learned [to] not take things at face value, which is something that I feel like I’m actively studying within myself and society — just looking at things from different perspectives,” she says. “There’s always more behind someone, which I also think in acting that’s what you [search for].”

During the downtime that enveloped the world in 2020, she started to consider how she might fuse her pursuits. She started to write down, pondering on matters that had been near her. She started to flesh out the overarching idea of the EP and conjured up what would turn out to be the roster of alter egos that embody every monitor: La Malasuerte, Näia Kiyomi, Lilu, Miss Quinn, Bo Aracnia, Adela, and Nina Sorei.

Executing out such a far-out concept for a debut EP was a dangerous proposition, however she was decided to carry it to fruition. Through mutual contacts she acquired in contact with Gyanma, an indie fan favourite who produces initiatives for himself and others out of his personal studio, known as Alas. Whatever trepidation he had in regards to the bold concepts she offered evaporated as quickly as he put her in entrance of the microphone.

“From the beginning, I recognized it was a very unique concept,” says Gyanma, who produced each monitor on the EP. “Throughout recording and producing the music, every track kept evolving, and when we listened to the final album put together, we knew it was something very, very special.”

As a companion to the album, Lúconde produced, directed, and starred in music movies for the tracks. It’s right here that her completely different personas can really be appreciated. La Malasuerte, a trickster changeling that occupies each body of “Macacoa” with mischievous intentions. Näia Kiyomi, closely impressed by Jennifer Check of the film “Jennifer’s Body,” enacts empowered, violent revenge in “6eis.” Lilu and Bo Aracnia each break the principles in favor of righteous anarchy in “Bendito Caos” and “Tus Cartas Póker,” respectively. In “El Frío del Alba,” Adela displays on the lengthy, sordid historical past and ache that girls have carried all through the battle for bodily autonomy, particularly within the face of eroding abortion rights.

“This is very autobiographical. What I’m doing is just taking the Stanislavski technique of acting and transforming it into a philosophy of life, because that’s who I am,” she says. “I feel like acting saved me. Acting gave me so much perspective of life, of people, of society, and of myself. That’s kind of where it all starts, because with each character I’m showing different sides and different aspects of myself, and the actor studies the gray area of life, the gray in people.”

When speaking about her future, Lúconde foresees extra initiatives in the identical vein as “Acto I.” For now, she does not see herself dabbling in additional mainstream songs divorced from this album’s conceit. In truth, she’s already brainstorming which personas she’ll make the most of once more, and new ones to introduce as properly. As the album’s title implies, it is merely the primary act of what’s going to slowly unfold as a bigger all-encompassing venture.

“This project is synonymous with where I am in life right now. I feel like I’m still in the midst of becoming. This project is a lot of the younger, naive aspects of myself,” she says.

She intends to totally broaden the visible aspect as properly, founding her personal manufacturing firm the place she’ll be capable of management that side of improvement in addition to assist different artists with their very own initiatives. “La Actriz: Acto I” was an effort that took a very long time to come back collectively, however for Lúconde it has been value all the pieces she invested in bringing it to life.

“Once I knew that I wanted to be La Actriz in the music industry, I had a direction,” she says. “For me that’s really important; I’ve always [felt] like I have to have some idea of who I want to be. In that sense, now I realize how lucky I am to know who I am a little bit. I still feel like I have a long way to go, but I’ve always had the vision. I’ve always nourished that. I’ve always protected that.”

The strands that hyperlink the sunshine and shadow inside each human being — and the best way they’ll carry folks collectively below higher understanding and empathy — are what Lúconde needs to underscore.

“Everything is connected: our spirituality, our physicality, our mind, our emotions. As an actor, my body, my mind, my emotions are my tools. The more familiar I am with myself, the better human I will be. That’s what I’m trying to explore with music. I always say, ‘Through my work I am whole,’ because I get to express all of these different aspects of myself.” It’s a ardour venture that not solely makes her really feel fulfilled, however hopefully finds followers who’ll additionally respect the completely different ranges of creativity that make it up. “I felt like I wanted to be a creator, and I feel like music allowed me to do all that. And I realized I didn’t have to sacrifice my identity as an actress. Maybe I could just be La Actriz.”

POPSUGAR: What is your favourite phrase?

Lúconde: Curiosity.

POPSUGAR: What is your favourite quote?

Lúconde: “You don’t have a right to anything in this life, but there’s nothing you can’t achieve.”

POPSUGAR: What is your favourite play?

Lúconde: “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre.

POPSUGAR: What is your favourite film?

Lúconde: Well, I like “Black Swan.” It was once “The Pursuit of Happyness.” I believe now, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

POPSUGAR: Who is your favourite fictional character?

Lúconde: Raven from “Teen Titans.”

POPSUGAR: What are you listening to nowadays?

Lúconde: Gesaffelstein, Belén Aguilera, and “Scarlet” by Doja Cat.

POPSUGAR: What particular person involves thoughts if you hear the phrase “inspiration”?

Lúconde: My grandfather. We had been very shut, and he would discuss to me about many issues. My favourite quote is one thing he’d at all times inform me.

POPSUGAR: Do you favor to be the hero or the villain?

Lúconde: I choose to be the villain that turns into a hero.