[music]

Matt Katz: This is All of It from WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Alison Stewart, and now it's time for a listening party.

[MUSIC - Daymé Arocena: Por Ti]

That's Afro-Cuban singer and composer Daymé Arocena, with her new song Por Ti, which means for you, a single from her first full-length studio album in five years. The LP is titled Alkemi, and it's a follow-up to her 2019 album, Sonocardiogram.

The acclaimed jazz artist's new album combines Cuban folk music with the sounds of jazz and R&B. Rolling Stone called it a gorgeous reinvention of her sound that blends tradition and modernity. Daymé Arocena is here with us today in the studio to discuss the new album ahead of her Album Release Party tomorrow, right? At the Sultan Room in Bushwick at 7:00 PM. Daymé, welcome to All of It.

Daymé Arocena: Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure for me to be here.

Matt Katz: Oh, it is so nice to meet you. I'm loving this album. I've had it on repeat. The album's title is Alkemi. It's a Yoruban word from West Africa for alchemy, right?

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: Tell me about the title. I'm so curious.

Daymé Arocena: Oh, well, at the very beginning, the idea was to find a title that was good to describe mixing things, like putting things together, like mixing genres and mixing instruments and rhythms and things. At the very beginning, it was all about music but then when I started working deeply in the album, it started actually transforming myself because the difference between alchemy and chemistry is the cosmovision inside. The chemistry scientist is like you put things together to transform it and make something new, but there is nothing spiritual.

In case of alchemy, you are trying to do something that is actually spiritual. If you are mixing things, you are actually singing or performing or praying to get the result you want. Now I can say that Alkemi is not just a musical thing, it's actually trying to find the best version of yourself. That's the way I describe this album and it came from myself and then I'm ready to share it to the world. It's not something that I planned to do it that way, it just came out that way, and I enjoy the process of trying to find the best version of myself.

Matt Katz: This mixing is not just happening musically, but also it's personified in this album culturally too, right?

Daymé Arocena: Yes, exactly.

Matt Katz: It's a Yoruban word. You grew up in Cuba. You live in Canada, right?

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: Are all those cultural influences and the spiritual connection to that, that's all mixed into this album, too, right?

Daymé Arocena: Also the spiritual connection is more focusing me as a woman. My journey as a Black Latina woman, how I faced all the violence that society puts into women and how I got to succeed on that. I'm a woman that I no longer look at myself at the mirror to judge me. Now when I look at myself at the mirror, I dance.

Matt Katz: Wow.

Daymé Arocena: That's why I said I succeed because normally the way we are set is to be judging ourselves all the time, especially women. I discovered many things of myself that I didn't know before. I discovered my own beauty through this album. It was a long journey. I believe that's why it took me a little bit to finish it. Honestly, I'm so happy that I am a totally different woman after this album. I created an album, and at the end of the day, the album created a new version of me.

Matt Katz: That is beautiful. This was different from your prior projects.

Daymé Arocena: Oh, for sure. All my projects were focused on music. This one is focused on music, too, but I let the music transform me. I didn't want to prove myself anymore as a killer performer in this album. I just wanted to be honest. I wanted to share my story as a woman. When I finished this project, I just felt lighter. All the heaviness that I had on top of me, like in my back is no longer here.

Matt Katz: Wow. That is transformative. That's remarkable.

Daymé Arocena: Yes, exactly. That's what Alkemi means, transformation.

Matt Katz: That's exactly what you experienced.

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: Maybe that's something that listeners could experience by--

Daymé Arocena: I believe everybody should try to make their own Alkemi. It's just because most of us, we don't like ourselves. We don't like who we are. We don't like our body. We don't like our life. We don't like our energy. Alkemi is trying to find the balance in between all of that.

Matt Katz: Wow. You've often referenced African spirituality in your music. The song Gods of Yoruba from 2016 album, One Takes. The song Eleggua in 2017 album, Cubafonía, and your last album, Sonocardiogram, which we mentioned before, and it dedicate songs to deities of Santería. How do you feel about inviting listeners who might come from different spiritual backgrounds, inviting them into this intimate aspect of yourself?

Daymé Arocena: I believe spirituality is just one. What we call or what we think is religiosity is just an institution. For me, spirituality is way bigger than that, and we all connect through that. The way I express my spirituality is through the rituals of my ancestors, but there is not any conflict with other ancestors and other rituals from other cultures and people. When people talk about freedom of religiosity, sometimes people confuse that with freedom of institution or something like that. In my opinion, when you connect with someone that is deeply connected with their spirit, you don't care what religion is behind that. It doesn't really matter.

We cannot call things the same way if we are different, if we are from different cultures, if we are from different countries. For me, if I met someone that is connected to its spirits and identifies as Shintoista, so that's the institution, but what I see is the spirituality and I connect with that. This album is actually just giving my spirituality to people to connect with way more bigger than any religion's name.

Matt Katz: I want to play another song from the album. You wrote the song American Boy about 10 years ago.

Daymé Arocena: Yes, for the New York guy. [laughs]

Matt Katz: Yes, I know. Tell us as much as you want about the backstory there.

Daymé Arocena: Oh, I could say anything, but his wife is not going to like it.

[laughter]

Matt Katz: Fair enough.

Daymé Arocena: Basically, this is a beautiful song I wrote for someone that made a big impact in my life when I was like 22 years old. The impact he made on me was that he holded my hand in public and he walked down the street with me in public. At that time, I was someone so insecure of myself.

Matt Katz: Wow.

Daymé Arocena: He left, because he was in Cuba just for a jazz festival, and it happened back in Havana. When he left, I felt the darkness. I felt like when he was there, I saw the light because he was giving me a different version of who I was. I didn't notice my beauty at that time, and he was just so amazed of me. He changed in a certain way my perspective to see myself at that first stage. I felt so sad when he left. I remember that after growing up, I was like, "Hey, he didn't left me in the darkness. He gave me light."

Matt Katz: Wow.

Daymé Arocena: That light that I needed at that time to recognize myself. That's the song about-- that's what it says. Now we are really good friends. We have done projects together.

Matt Katz: Oh, cool.

Daymé Arocena: I'm married, he's married.

Matt Katz: Yes, everything is--

Daymé Arocena: Life is beautiful.

Matt Katz: Right. That one gesture from so long ago had that meaning for you.

Daymé Arocena: Exactly.

Matt Katz: That's beautiful. Let's hear a little bit of American Boy

Daymé Arocena: Yay.

[MUSIC- Daymé Arocena: American Boy]

Matt Katz: It's a little taste of American Boy from Daymé Arocena from her new album, Alkemi. Daymé, in the song, you can hear the traditional African-Yoruban rhythms, and there's some funk. You really composed this with the epic from a lot of different places. How did you think about the sound of this track?

Daymé Arocena: Well, I really wanted to make it that way, especially that one. There are other songs that my producer, Eduardo Cabra, made a big impact, and he directed their arrangements. In this specific case, I wanted the Batá drums, which represents a lot of my culture into funk, which represents the other American boy culture. It was like a crush. We had a crush, but we had actually a cultural crush. [laughs]

Matt Katz: That's great. You mentioned Eduardo Cabra from the hip-hop group Calle 13.

Daymé Arocena: Yes, exactly.

Matt Katz: Did he bring something unique to this album?

Daymé Arocena: Oh, my goodness, yes. I think that he was the perfect match for this album because Eduardo he's coming from the industry, so he knows how the industry works, and coming from the jazz scene, which is mainly away from the industry in many ways. It's not pop. It's not selling crazy amount of tickets or being a pop star or a rock star.

I knew Eduardo was the perfect person to combine things because he knows Caribbean music perfectly. He knows Cuba music perfectly. He understand the full charism and the roots of music. At the same time, he knows how to make it sound pop. I brought songs for him, I don't know, Rumba. I brought Rumba, and he turned it into Reggaeton Rumba, something like that.

Matt Katz: That's cool.

Daymé Arocena: He had that way that, I believe, he's just magnificent to transform songs too.

Matt Katz: You were recording in Puerto Rico.

Daymé Arocena: Oh, yes.

Matt Katz: In San Juan. That probably helped to be in that environment, I imagine.

Daymé Arocena: Yes, yes, for sure. I spent like four months at his house, working every single day.

Matt Katz: Really? To make this record. Wow. How about that? I was interested in learning that you're a Mellon Artist in Residence-

Daymé Arocena: Oh, yes.

Matt Katz: -at NYU's Hemispheric Institute right now.

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: What will you be teaching? What will you be talking about?

Daymé Arocena: Today I have a master class at 4:00 PM. We will be talking about Cuban music and genres. Then tomorrow, I have a vocal class, so I'm going to be giving some tips to the students of performance. Then I have another class the day after the show, which is March 1st, where I'm going to be debating about my new album.

Matt Katz: Oh, wow.

Daymé Arocena: How was the process and all of that, how we create.

Matt Katz: Getting into the technical aspects of it.

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: Very cool. I wanted to play one more, to give listeners another taste of the album before we go. Maybe, let's play A Fuego Lento.

Daymé Arocena: Ooh.

Matt Katz: Can you tell me who is on this track and tell me a little bit about the song?

Daymé Arocena: Oh, this is a duet with the one and only Vicente Garcia, one of my favorite songwriters from Dominican Republic. It's a song that is sexy.

[laughter]

Matt Katz: There's songs on this album that I feel like that you can sit and be with yourself and listen to, and there's other songs that you could just dance with another person too.

Daymé Arocena: Yay. Yay. Some songs you can add it on your bedtime-

[laughter]

Daymé Arocena: -playlist

Matt Katz: Right, right, right. Be careful, it's family show here, but we know what you're talking about.

Daymé Arocena: Yes, yes, yes. No worries. Life is beautiful.

Matt Katz: Life is beautiful. Let's take a listen to A Fuego Lento, and I'm going to say goodbye to you and then we're going to listen to it.

Daymé Arocena: Ah, thank you so much.

Matt Katz: My guest has been Daymé Arocena. Her new LP is titled Alkemi. It's out now, and there's an album release show featuring DJ Bembona?

Daymé Arocena: Yes.

Matt Katz: That is tomorrow night at the Sultan Room in Bushwick at 7:00 PM. Daymé, thank you so much.

Daymé Arocena: Thank you for having me here. It was a pleasure.

Matt Katz: Let's listen.

Daymé Arocena: Yay.

[MUSIC - Daymé Arocena: A Fuego Lento]

 

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