Bridging continents, cultures,
languages, and musics, Opaluna weaves together a rich variety of influences and
impressions to craft a vivid and decidedly modern spectrum of sound. On their
self-titled debut, due out August 26 via Ridgeway Records' Rising Star series,
versatile vocalist Susana Pineda and inventive guitarist Lu Salcedo freely
explore Latin rhythms, electronic textures, rock grooves, folk expressiveness
and genre-spanning jazz freedom in a distinctive and entrancing duo setting.
"Opaluna" combines the name of
a multicolored gemstone with the Spanish word for "moon," capturing
the duo's hybrid identity in a single word: two languages combining to form one
meaning, a combination of vibrant colors and bold luminescence. Like their
name, Opaluna's sound is also a portmanteau, bringing together two singular
voices into one harmonious sound. Pineda melds the sounds and traditions of her
native Colombia with a passion for modern jazz, while Bay Area native Salcedo
brings his rock background and penchant for experimentalism together on the
frontiers of Latin-inflected jazz.
"Our music is a blend of two
cultures, two stories, two backgrounds and two languages creating one,"
says Pineda. Salcedo continues, "We didn't want to do something that had
been done before. Working together, we got very excited about how much we could
do."
The pair met while both were students at
Berkeley's California Jazz Conservatory. Pineda began studying jazz in her
hometown of Medellín but decided to move to the States in 2013 at the
encouragement of her mentor, singer Claudia Gómez. She chose CJC due to the
program's emphasis on a range of Latin traditions supplementing its core jazz
focus. Salcedo came to the school with a more straight-ahead jazz interest, but
his partial Mexican heritage led him to begin exploring Latin music. He and
Pineda came together in a class on Afro-Venezuelan music and soon recognized
their shared passions.
Soon the duo embarked on a journey of
sonic experimentation, at first playing music for one another, then arranging
jazz standards together to determine a common ground, and finally improvising
together in an effort to discover a unified voice. "We would start from
scratch, just improvising out of nowhere and seeing what happens," Pineda
recalls. "We knew that we didn't want to do the traditional swing thing or
play bolero normally. We wanted to blend everything we are, and we wanted to do
it in a modern way."
A professor at CJC, Ridgeway Arts
founder Jeff Denson heard the burgeoning duo during a lesson and immediately
sensed a special chemistry in the nascent pairing. He invited them to record
for the San Francisco-based non-profit's Ridgeway Records label, mentoring them
through the process from a crowd-funding campaign through recording and
post-production, producing the album at the legendary Fantasy Studios and also
contributing his remarkable bass sound to three tracks. Fellow CJC faculty
member and Bay Area percussion legend John Santos also guests on two cuts.
"I was drawn to Opaluna's music and
wanted to produce them because of their creativity and passion," Denson
says. "They inhabit a colorful world of sound, beauty and social
consciousness that crosses cultural and musical boundaries and really draws you
in. Working with Susana and Lu at the California Jazz Conservatory, I found them
to be sincere, motivated young artists that care deeply about their craft. I
wanted to mentor them further with the creation of their debut recording
because I believe in their vision and see their great potential. Now more than
ever, the world desperately needs art and music that inspires creative thought,
generosity and compassion and Ridgeway Arts seeks to promote artists and
projects with this same goal in any way that we can!"
Both members of Opaluna give Denson
ample credit for helping to hone their sound and teach them invaluable lessons.
"Jeff is an amazing musician, and having the opportunity to engage in a
back and forth with him about musical aesthetics was extremely helpful,"
says Salcedo. To which Pineda adds,
"He always wanted to keep Opaluna and not change who we are. He
just wanted to take our music and our sound to another level."
Opening track "Bridges" sums
up Opaluna's approach while paying homage to the multi-cultural diversity of
their Bay Area home. "It's pretty startling to be able to walk down one
street and travel the world at the same time," Salcedo says. "The
song is a metaphorical journey form one side of a bridge to the other, and
during that trip across the bridge it changes feels and tempos from one
cultural subject to another, which is something that really resonates with us
because we're trying to bridge all these different stories and
backgrounds."
The album is itself a journey, beginning
with the chirping samba-funk of the co-written "Bridges" and
continuing through the intoxicating sway of "Instinto Ornitológico,"
with Denson on bass and backing vocals. The Cuban classic "Dos
Gardenias" is rendered with a swirling romantic atmosphere, cut through by
Salcedo's incisive solo, while Wayne Shorter's "Mahjong" starts as a
folk tune with a supple wordless vocal and percussive acoustic guitar before
being subsumed in a psychedelic haze.
Salcedo wrote the intense "Does It
Rain on the Moon?" with lyrics taken in part from the immortal children's
tale "The Little Prince." A fluid Afro-Caribbean groove fuels
"Champeterapia," while both the wistful "Young Bonds" and
the ethereal "Once We're Gone" were built around Pineda's evocative
poetry. Pineda's "Pétalos" is an intimate take on modern jazz, while
"Baile de Opuestos" reimagines the childlike standard
"Inchworm" as a Colombian joropo.
After spending three weeks touring
Colombia this summer, Pineda and Salcedo's collaboration has truly bridged the
duo's respective cultures. Their musical partnership has been an ongoing voyage
of discovery, resulting in an uncategorizable sound that finds them meeting
somewhere in the middle - or, perhaps, some other, completely unexplored new
territory. "After all this time playing together," Salcedo says,
"everything morphs into what we both need it to be."
