16 May 16-22, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | Never Stop Singing Daymé Arocena’s meteoric ascent from Cuba to the global stage. BY SEAN LEVISMAN Y ou’d be hard-pressed to find a more impressive case study of artistic self-determination than singer-songwriter Daymé Aro- cena’s career. As a millennial born in 1992, Arocena grew up in abject poverty during Cuba’s Special Pe- riod, the dismal economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Food was scarce in the Santos Suárez neighborhood of Havana, where she was one of 14 people shar- ing a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with no electricity or running water. Music was never lacking in her family’s home, however. It was an abundant source of spiritual sustenance, no matter the material privations. “We didn’t have electricity most of the time, so we would sing and dance every day,” Arocena tells New Times. “My earliest memo- ries are of my family making music them- selves with no instruments, only their voices and anything that could be a musical instru- ment — a table, a fork, and a knife. Everything became an instrument.” Cuba is widely considered one of the world’s richest and most prolific music re- gions, spanning dozens of distinct folk genres. Arocena, a devout practitioner of Santería and the African diasporic Yoruba faith, can trace the island’s ever-flowing mu- sical spring back to the continent of her once-enslaved ancestors. “My family was really, really poor, but they never stopped singing, and they never stopped dancing because we are Black, of African de- scent,” she says. “In Africa, music is medicine. It’s a tribal thing. No matter how hard a situa- tion is, the way we heal is through music.” Of course, Arocena was also a child prod- igy who, from the age of 10, was weaned on Russian classical sheet music at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory. If her destiny as a pro- fessional musician had been written that early on, perhaps her fate as a Cuban exile would have been sealed then as well. “We have been banned from the music in- dustry,” she says of her generation of strug- gling Cuban musicians. “Because Cuba is a communist country, they stop any access to the industry. We don’t know what Spotify is. We don’t know how to monetize YouTube. We don’t have access to any of these plat- forms, and we don’t even have credit or debit cards to pay for a subscription or get paid.” Leaving Cuba was a must for Arocena to fulfill her globe-circling artistic ambitions, and she finally did in 2019, first immigrating to Canada. But she admits the transi- tion has not been as effortlessly liberat- ing as one might imagine, especially for a career musi- cian. “Many of us leave the island with a dream to be seen, but once we leave the island, if we get to leave, it’s like taking a time machine into the future,” she says. “Once we arrive in a different country, we don’t even know how to live in a different so- ciety. We don’t know what a credit card is. We don’t know how to pay for food with the card. Do you need to start washing cars? By the time you start getting the vibe of the place, you’ve already spent ten years. Your time is gone. It’s a really unfair situation for us.” Life in exile has been easier for Arocena since she discovered the enchantment of Puerto Rico, where she recorded her new album, Alkemi, with Grammy-winning producer Eduardo Cabra (AKA Visitante of Calle 13). “I went to Puerto Rico, and my idea was, ‘I’m just going to record an album,’ but then I discovered that I’d arrived in a place that felt like home,” she explains. “I realized that many of my favorite artists globally are actu- ally from Puerto Rico, and I said, ‘Hey, this is my place to stay.’” “I believe that I’m so lucky to have what I have,” she stresses. “One of my dreams is to give hope to my people. I would like to grow and be global, not just for my ego or my own success, but also to give my people, my col- leagues, the hope they need. They need to see the representation of Cubans on a global level.” As she pivots from the ecstatic Afro-Cu- ban jazz of her critically acclaimed first four albums to a more sensual and polished ur- bano sound, Arocena’s new album and music videos also see her vying for the representa- tion of Black women in Latin pop. “It’s been a really long journey as a Black Latina woman,” she says. “There are no refer- ences to Black Latinas in the corporate scene. We’re working hard to change that.” Of course, the fight for representation must begin with body-positive self-love. “I wanted to show myself now as a woman who loves what she sees in the mirror,” she discloses. “Now that I’m in my 30s, in this new stage of my life, I feel more beautiful than ever and more at peace and in balance with my body. I’m not afraid of my body anymore. I don’t judge my body any- more. I look at my face, and I love myself.” Daymé Arocena. 8 p.m. Saturday, May 18, at the Citadel, 8300 NE Second Ave., Miami; es- calasonora.com. Tickets cost $29 to $45 via seetickets.us. [email protected] ▼ Music Daymé Arocena Photo by Alex Ayala “I WOULD LIKE TO GROW AND BE GLOBAL, NOT JUST FOR MY EGO OR MY OWN SUCCESS, BUT ALSO TO GIVE MY PEOPLE, MY COLLEAGUES, THE HOPE THEY NEED.”
