Diandra Interviews Okan: Music History For Our Future
Can I be frank? It is really hard to leave your country, especially when you are leaving generations of family that never traveled the world and could not really afford their own one. Admittedly, that has kind of been my story. For many Latinx, there is a feeling of homage to our origin nations and roots because we still have family there, who look at us like beacons of hope for upwards social and class mobility. This communal pressure can feel amplified when you are an artist because for many music does not fund their livelihood. If anything they invest in music, and hope the rewards come someday. Thus, you really have to do music out of love because it might not pay you back. In our interview, Okan, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne, discuss their new album, Espiral, and how music reminds them that Cuba’s rich history can mean a richer future.
Diandra: How is the pandemic treating you?
Elizabeth: We are doing a lot more, but getting paid less. It is really hard as artists because we have to keep investing our own money even though there is less money to invest now. We have to invest in cameras, lights, microphones, and embrace that the new way of releasing is on you.
OKAN – Espiral (Official Video)
Diandra: That is refreshingly honest, and only a few artists have brought it up, but financially this is a nightmare.
Elizabeth: Yeah, like, for example, some of the cities are opening and saying, “We want to have concerts now,” but there is less money and the venues can’t pay us that well. So, my fear is that when we go back, the industry will say, “Didn’t you do this for 700$ back then . Why do you want a 1000$ now?”
Magdelys: (laughs) I have to tell her to calm down because these are really dark times. We don’t know the future, but it already has been so hard as artists. But, we have to stay positive, and, because we are artists, we are used to creating solutions and coming up with ways to overcome situations.
Elizabeth: What makes it incredible is now people are considering more artists and looking for new art because there is nothing else to do but to listen to music. Art is what is keeping everybody busy.
1000 Palabras OKAN (All female collaboration)
Diandra: It must be harder though because, as Latinas, we already get the short end. It is not like we get paid equally. So if everyone is getting a short end, we will get an even shorter one.
Elizabeth: Exactly! Mhm! Mhm!
Magdelys: You’re right!
Diandra: So, with that being said, Okan means heart. How would you describe your heart and why it keeps beating to be an artist?
Elizabeth: In my case, my art is definitely wild. I think, for both of us, we don’t belong to one place. Our hearts are open to new people, cities, and adventures. Every single day we are fighting for our dream and to keep moving on.
Magdelys: I am the more sensitive one. I am more chill and grounded, and I try to find the positive. I am not always as positive as Elizabeth, but I try to find Iight in the music I am making and to surround myself with people that inspire me. We have faced darkness, even in peoples’ behaviors, but our music is so diverse. We get inspiration from everywhere which helps go through the waves.
Elizabeth: You have a very beautiful, deep heart.
Magdelys: Thank you!
Elizabeth: Our experiences as immigrants have molded us. Once you leave your home country, you are free. You can do anything after that.
Magdelys: It is like the ultimate new beginning, and it is hard. If you are capable of leaving you’re home, you are capable of going anywhere.
Diandra: I was talking to a Korean-Canadian band recently, and they were saying how they felt too Korean for Canada but too Canadian for Korea, and music really helped them find their place. I’m wondering if you feel the same? Like music gives you a passport to a new world with more acceptance?
(They laugh)
Elizabeth: That is for sure! Because our Cuban passports don’t get us anywhere!
Magdelys: It is really is! Music is a way out for anyone.
Elizabeth: We are hybrids. Toronto is a major, multicultural city. We have Turkish, Indian, and Brazilian friends! All of them inspire our music! It human nature to go with your own community because you like your people, but here it is like we all run into each other.
Diandra: One thing that I do love about your music is that you approach social issues, like poverty, with that typical, Latina capacity to make it sound fun while it actually is quite devastating. Our music always does that!
Elizabeth: Yeah! Like, one of the most famous songs from Cuba is El Cuarto de Tula. Everyone is dancing and love the lyrics, but when you actually listen, it is about a woman that forgot to put a candle out and burned her house down. She fell asleep and her entire home caught fire while she was in it. You see everyone dancing and shouting the verses.
(We laugh)
Elizabeth: You know, the struggle in Cuba is very real. People are struggling now. Our mothers are struggling. They are happy if they just have food that day, and it is like, really that is what makes you so happy. It takes a lot for women to put food on the table, and I think women, in the end, will take down the dictatorship. It is really difficult for people to speak up in Cuba because your own neighbors will report you to the government for speaking up and talking against it.
Magdelys: They are so local in their control. Anyone can report you, and you can be taken away from your family and put in prison. So now that we are out, and, in this different place, we try to speak up and put that freedom of speech in our songs. We are trying to do better here for them over there.
It is really sad, and we try to remind ourselves, when things get too crazy, that we have family there and we are fighting for their future, as well. We are trying to stay positive and understand we are trying to do big things. That takes time and strength.
Elizabeth: Imagine living in an island where they don’t feed you fish because they have to save it for the tourists. We are surrounded by water and fish, you know! But, nothing can stop people, if it is not now, it is the next generation.
Diandra: What about Cuban history and culture has your own music made clearer to you or more connected?
Magdelys: I think it has made clear people’s cultural habits, and made us aware of how people consider their freedom when they are from the same background, religion, and beliefs. I am from Santiago and Elizabeth is from Havana. They are the the biggest cities with the biggest populations. Santiago has a big Haitian community and a lot of Cubans from Haitian descent, and it has its own history and so does Havana. So you have these cities with their own history, filled with communities, that have their own history that we don’t even talk about. So we try to play with that in our music, in the flavors of it and how we explore the details of our history that even we have to learn. It is nice to find out about who you are as a person by observing that side.
Elizabeth: I think, for me, a part of Cuban history that really connects with me is los Mambises de Cuba, whom are considered the African mothers of Cuba. They are the slaves that fought to free Cuba from the Spanish, and I wish other Cubans remembered that part of our history to inspire us to fight more.
OKAN – A short documentary about a women-led Afro Cuban group by Alafia Films
Diandra; Well, you have said this album has Pilon, which is a genre born from working in the sugarcane and coffee fields. So your connection is rooted in every way to history.
Magdelys: That genre is inspired by hard-working women. It is inspired by the movement of the pilon that women used to smash the coffee. It was the sound.
Elizabeth: We covered many genres. We mix Afro-Cuban chants with the countryside music guajira, which is not often done. Even though it is an island, like Magdelys said, different places have their own histories and musics. Like when you go to Havana, the music is very modern and new.
Magdelys: We really try to make an awareness through our sound of how rich our culture and history is so that we can see a new path to the future. There is so much to us that music reminds us how much more we can be.
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