There are international artists who come to Córdoba to play and there are others who never did but have come to the city for other reasons. This is the case of “Beto” Montenegro, singer of the rising Venezuelan band Rawayana.
“Beto” was at Lollapalooza days ago, along with Danny Ocean, with whom he did a collaboration with Rawayana that has been hitting Spotify, Bikiniwhose video was filmed in Caracas and combines sounds of reggae, dance hall and pop.
After playing at the festival, Beto spent several days in Córdoba, a city that he has visited countless times for a family reason: his sister, a Venezuelan living in Córdoba, lives here with her husband from Mendoza.
“I am visiting my nephews who live here in Córdoba, they have a tune, right now I have it identified. Every time I come to work in the south I stop by here. We were at Lollapalooza with Danny Ocean, premiering the song there and it served as an excuse for me, ”he tells VOS.
“Beto” already has his frequent visitor card to these lands: “I already heard the quartet, I drank fernet and I became a fan of barbecues. I met incredible people, I really liked seeing the movement of the quartet and I like the city in general, its size, when I come I feel calm. I did everything but play,” he adds.
Rawayana began as a group in Caracas, in 2010, and since then they have been releasing singles and albums that have positioned them, given them Latin Grammy nominations and made them grow in audience. The collaboration with Danny Ocean consolidated the path traveled. And now they are preparing to launch their new album.
“When Danny appeared on the music scene, he knew about the project, we began to cross paths within the industry and a friendship was forged. It is a bond of friendship. We have sat down several times to make songs together, and this time, for some reason, we were very enthusiastic about Bikini. Honestly, you don’t know the answer to why it hits it. For now we enjoy how people are receiving, more and more, the madness of Tiktok, Spotify and Twitter ”, she says.
–This time in which the networks grew, did it help them to take off?
–When we were born we went viral on Myspace, then on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter. Although it is true that the birth of new platforms helps to have exhibition spaces to propose what you want to do.
–Rawayana is usually presented as a reggae band. Do you feel comfortable in that label?
–Rawayana was never classified as a reggae band, but it did happen that out of 15 songs, the three reggae ones are the ones with the most streams. We always live the reaggae scene as alien to it, we don’t feel identified with its ideology, lifestyle or culture. We were oblivious to the movement. But right now, I think that the queue that formed after Marley as a pop cultural explosion in Latin America generates other priorities. Today, yes, since everything is cyclical, perhaps it resumes the importance it had a few years ago. Although the priority of the public is with other genres.
How do you feel about them?
–Quite well, we love it from the United States (where I spend most of my time), to see what spaces Latin music has gained in European and American markets. That opens the doors to possibilities for Latin Americans. Everything feels very urban in the world and that is nice because it is the expression of the streets in spaces maisntream.
–What are Rawayana’s plans in 2023?
–We are about to release an album this year, with several songs, and a world tour that is taking shape now and that will be interesting. I’m sure we’ll go through Argentina, hopefully through Córdoba too.