Colombian singer-songwriter Gusi is making his U.S. touring debut this spring with a cease at Chicago’s intimate Martyrs’ music venue.
The efficiency on March 26 will mark the Grammy-nominated singer’s first time bringing his tropical pop sound to town.
“It’s one of many cities that I most wish to get to know,” stated the singer, formally often called Andrés Acosta Jaramillo.
“Gusi” is a nickname given to him as a baby by his mom. Everybody calls him that now, he stated.
“I began making my first demos, and I spotted that Andrés didn’t belong to me,” he stated. “These days folks name me Andrés and I don’t know if they’re speaking to me.”
On tour, he’ll be taking part in a few of his hottest tracks and alternatives from his upcoming studio album, “Vallenato Social Membership,” set to launch on April 23, produced by Cuban American musician/movie producer Emilio Estefan. The brand new album options one quintessential style of Colombia, vallenato, which interprets actually to “born within the valley.”
Gusi lives in Santa Marta, Colombia, a city that sits on the Caribbean Sea simply beneath the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain vary.
Every track on the album is a vallenato made in collaboration with totally different Colombian and Venezuelan artists throughout varied genres. Gusi additionally wrote all 12 songs with every singer’s distinctive type in thoughts.
The second single from the album, “Yuquita,” options Alfredo Gutiérrez and his well-known accordion. He was a founding member of Los Corraleros de Majagual, a Colombian group broadly identified for his or her cumbia, porro and vallenato music.
“He’s an artist who has been together with his accordion on his chest for greater than 60 years,” Gusi stated about Gutiérrez, whom he considers a “grandfather” of music. “That for me is one thing very thrilling; to have the expertise in my flight log of getting been with him in a studio, composing a track, making a friendship, having the ability to sing the track stay.”
Additionally featured on the album are singers Iván Villazón, Elder Dayán Díaz and Rafa Pérez. It’s a cross-generational challenge that options trade legends alongside newcomers.
“Emilio is a vital hyperlink between Latin American tradition and American tradition,” Gusi stated about Estefan’s contributions to his newest challenge. “He is aware of tips on how to rework all these songs and switch them into one thing very huge.
“And that’s how I used to be in a position to create this nice membership, the Vallenato Social Membership, into a spot the place all of us slot in,” he stated, “the place we are able to all share our music and the place we are able to all unite, and I consider that united we’re extra.”
Music has been part of the artist’s life from the minute he was born. He credit his mom for introducing him to music. She is the one who had a guitar in the home, Gusi stated. When he will get collectively together with his prolonged household for the vacations somebody all the time takes out a guitar.
“My father has all the time been a music lover,” Gusi added. His father’s aspect of the household is Caribbean Colombian, he defined. “He has collected music from everywhere in the world and he, too, has a great, well-honed ear. I’m the inheritance of these two issues.”
“We now have a present that we’ve to make the most of,” his mom and music academics would remind him, he stated, and so they inspired him “to make the most of that present and use it to rework folks.”
When Gusi was round 13 years outdated, he started studying tips on how to compose music, immersing himself in music schooling by attending impartial singing and classical guitar workshops. He studied music for 4 years at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.
“The musical language opened one other perspective … that was what led me to report my first albums and to proceed rising on this world of music,” he stated. “I used to be in a position to say all the things I used to be feeling by way of a track.”
Gusi stated he’s most trying ahead to spending time in Chicago as a result of he’ll have a day without work between exhibits right here. He’s a “lifelong fan” of the Chicago Cubs, and needs to discover the native meals and jazz scenes, too.
He’s additionally excited to attach with audiences throughout the U.S., particularly those that’ve needed to depart all the things behind in Latin America for an opportunity at a greater life.
“I believe music is likely one of the solely issues that has the superpower to take us again in time,” he stated. “That’s particular for us. … We Latinos, though we stay by way of very difficult occasions, we’re all the time in good spirits, celebrating, laughing.”
