In the midst of our era’s anxieties, the New-Yorker Colombian band tries to find healing in its new video and upcoming album.
Following “Memoria”, “Babalawo” and “Oya”, “Yo Me Lo Merezco” is the fourth and last in a series of auto-fictional narrative videos with prominent queer and trans performance artists from Combo Chimbita’s upcoming album IRÉ. The track features Teresa Karolina seeking abundance from Yemaya, orisha of nourishing waters, while the video follows her emerging from her everyday routine and into a dreamy dimension.
“I wrote this song as a gift to myself as I try everyday to better understand who I am, my worth, my calling, and what I have to offer in this world,” lead singer Carolina Oliveros explains. “It’s a healing proclamation to firmly believe in oneself and walk headstrong with the radiance we know shines deeply through our spirit. That revelation is something I had to summon yesterday, remember today, and will continue to honor tomorrow.”
Combo Chimbita is the creative unity of Carolina Oliveros (vocals, guacharaca), Niño Lento es Fuego (guitar), Prince of Queens (bass, synthesizers) and Dilemastronauta (drums), all Rooted in Colombia and based in New York. Just like their 2019 album Ahomale, IRÉ will be released via ANTI- Records, and will address “the anxieties of systemic racism, capitalist decadence, totalitarian governments and the attempted erasure of queer and trans people” through the band’s signature psychedelic rock influenced cumbia. The writing of the album began in 2020 in the middle of Covid and Black Lives Matter protests, and ended in Puerto Rico where the band witnessed the “suffocating complexities of the island’s imperialist tether to the U.S.”
IRÉ by Combo Chimbita, out on January 28 via ANTI- Records.
Listen to “Yo Me Lo Merezco” in our Songs of the Week playlist on Spotify and Deezer.
