Astropical's Pan-Latin Pop Was Written in the Stars
A chat with Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet and Rawayana’s Beto Montenegro about their breezy, beautiful new supergroup.
It’s a bit surreal, seeing two lions of Latin music Zooming from their cars. Beto Montenegro, the Latin Grammy-winning, velvet-voiced singer/guitarist of the vibey Venezuelan pop group Rawayana, calls into our chat from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he has pulled over to the side of the road, still wearing his seatbelt. Li Saumet, the renowned singer of Colombian electro-cumbia pioneers Bomba Estéreo, is in the passenger seat in seaside Santa Marta.
Technology! It’s how the duo began collaborating on Astropical, their sunny side project whose self-titled debut album incorporates Afrobeats, electronic dance, and pan-Latin rhythms with the tenets of astrology. Rawayana’s indelible sense of pop melody and Bomba Estéreo’s beach-baby kineticism combine into a breezy party album that would sounds great on a playlist with Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti (which, incidentally, featured Bomba Estéreo). Saumet sent Montenegro a text asking him to work on a song together, but their collaboration—first over email, then over a few days in a Santa Marta studio alongside Bomba producer José Castillo and Rawa drummer/guitarist Andrés “Fofo” Story—was so fruitful they eventually had enough songs for an album. Saumet, a Capricorn, first reached out from the impulsivity typical of her star sign: She got a feeling, she tells me in English, that said, “You have to do a song with this guy in this moment.”
