Elena & Los Fulanos

An interview with Elena Lacayo before her show Saturday, September 12 at Casa Fulano. Panda Elliot from Argentina headlines.

You’re writing songs in both English and Spanish– do you find one language more conducive to songwriting than another?

Elena Lacayo: When I started writing music, I was really conflicted about finding my identity through language. I felt that if I solely chose one or the other I would not be true to myself, so I decided to write in both. While I tend to write more in English, I find it much easier to complete lyrics in Spanish because a lot of times things sound corny in English. In Spanish, ordinary phrases somehow sound more poetic. I also have the added element of having to determine what language the song is going to be in before I start writing lyrics at all. Sometimes the genre or a phrase that comes with the melody determine it but other times, I just have to decide!

You mentioned language as part of your identity. Has your time spent going back and forth between the US and Nicaragua also made an impact on your songwriting or identity?

EL: Oh, most definitely. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to parents who had just recently moved to the states, fleeing the Nicaraguan Civil War. We lived in the US for the first years of my life (mostly in Miami), and then returned to the war-torn Nicaragua when I was 8 years old. I then lived there until I decided to go to college in the states and I have been in the US ever since.

Now, even though I have lived in in the US for more than 10 years, I go back to Nicaragua to visit my family 2 or 3 times a year. Every time I go, I play for my relatives and friends down there and feel a greater responsibility to represent my country and culture in my performances and music. When I was growing up, I used to think that Nicaraguan music and tradition was boring and I preferred American music. Now, I think to myself how amazing it was to grow up in such an interesting and unique place, so I am making a greater effort to incorporate Nicaraguan themes into my music. There are not a lot of Nicaraguan artists out there, so I need to make it count.

At what point in your well-traveled life do you remember hearing music, and being moved to sing or play?

EL: So, legend has it that the first thing intelligible thing my parents heard out of my mouth was not a word, but a melody. Allegedly I sang the melody to Johann Stauss’ Blue Danube before I spoke a word. Part of me thinks that story is just a cover-up for them not remembering my first word, but I prefer to think that it’s true. Regardless, it is a testament to how long I’ve been singing. I also grew up in a musical family and my brother played trumpet and french horn. He would play along to orchestral pieces all day long and would practice scales and such, which I think became a form of informal ear training for me. Even though I loved going to his concerts when I was little, I simply refused to take lessons. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I picked up guitar and piano. There was a period of time when the electricity would go out for four hours in Nicaragua, so I would just sit and secretly figure things out on guitar. I didn’t want anyone to think I was actually learning, because I didn’t want anyone to ask me to play for them.

Have you ever traveled anywhere abroad specifically for the sake of playing or hearing music? What kind of music have you heard abroad, and incorporated into the songs you write?

EL: I have traveled a bit in the US to listen to music, but I haven’t yet bought an international plane ticket to do so. I think the closest I have come was going to Buenos Aires partly because it is the home of two of my favorite artists: Jorge Luis Borges (author), and Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo, an epic rock en español band. I really just wanted to see the world that had inspired their work, but I didn’t exactly go to watch a show or meet anyone in particular (even though that would have been awesome). However, I did get to see Cerati in Central Park in New York in the summer of 2006. I got there at 11:30 am (first one in line!) and he didn’t play until around 9pm. I had to sit through three concerts, including a Calle 13 reggaeton show, with no food in 100 degree heat to watch him. I was front and center and it was well worth it. It was awesome.

The new album, Miel Venenosa, actually comes from a song of his called “Fue.” I love that song, but didn’t realize it had the lyric “miel venenosa” in it until I had already decided to name the song and the album. I did a google search for the term to see what else would come up, and the lyrics to that song, which had apparently subconsciously filtered into my brain came up. So, it turns out that I unintentionally referenced one of my musical inspirations in my own work. The mind works in mysterious ways!

What influences are you pulling from for this album? How have you changed as a writer and musician since you first began? How much of those developmental stages can we hear in “Miel Venemosa?”

EL: I would say that the greatest way in which my music-writing has evolved has been the process by which I write. In the beginning, before I had a band I wrote songs with a guitar and notebook. Since I wrote a number of songs before I had a band, the arrangements for them were really left to their discretion when we first formed. More recently however, I have started writing songs on my computer where I can take my time and write multiple parts by myself and be more intentional about the instrumentation and arrangements. There are tracks from both sides of that evolution — songs like “Quizás Sí” and “Last Kiss” were some of the songs I wrote earliest, so those fall into the first category while the title track “Miel Venenosa” and “Tonight,” a jazzy ukulele beach song, fall into the latter category. I am really excited about this new writing process and look forward to exploring it more in my future work.

We originally ran this interview July 31, 2014. - Brightest Young Things

03 Septiembre 2015 | 12 a.m. | Edición Impresa

Esta semana, Elena & Los Fulanos tiene un reto. Intentará enlazar todos los rincones de Nicaragua con su música, a través de los conciertos que realizarán en León, Granada y Managua.

Esta es la primera gira que realiza la banda en el país, caracterizada por su rock folclórico bilingüe y la experiencia de su cantautora, Elena Lacayo, quien creció entre los Estados Unidos y Nicaragua.

“Creamos música que mezcla el idioma y la cultura para ayudar a apreciar un mundo cada vez más multicultural”, indican en su sitio web.
Gira

La gira empezó ayer miércoles 2 de septiembre en el Bar-café La Olla Quemada de León, donde dieron a conocer su nuevo álbum “Miel venenosa”, que contiene 13 canciones, tanto en inglés como en español, con estilos variados, tales como pop, rock y folclor, mostrando así la identidad bicultural de la que están hechos.

También fue nominado para un premio “Wammie”, otorgado por la Asociación de Músicos de la Área Metropolitana de Washington, DC (WAMA).

“Queremos que nuestra música toque los temas que surgen cuando hay encuentros de culturas distintas, encuentros que están pasando en nuestras comunidades, en nuestras familias, y dentro de nosotros mismos. Por esa razón, para mí es muy importante exponerme ante el pueblo nicaragüense que me vio crecer, hay que comenzar en casa”, dice Elena.
Detalles

Su próxima estación es mañana viernes, en el Garden Café, ubicado del parque central de Granada una cuadra al Este. La fiesta empezará a las 7:00 de la noche y la entrada cuesta 80 córdobas.

Estos músicos despedirán su gira en Managua, presentándose el 5 de septiembre en El Garabato, situado del hotel Seminole dos cuadras y media al Sur.

Para echarle un vistazo a todos los éxitos musicales de esta banda puede hacerlo a través de sus redes sociales en Facebook y Twitter como elenaMusical y en su sitio web http://elenalosfulanos.com/ - El Nuevo Diario

WASHINGTON, DC -- My bilingual folk rock has a complicated identity. Like me, sometimes it feels a bit schizophrenic. But don’t all of us bicultural kids feel that way?

I was born in the New Orleans, Louisiana to a family of Nicaraguan civil war refugees. When I was eight years old, after spending a number of years in Miami, my family decided to go to Nicaragua where I lived until I completed high school.

You could say that my transition was rough. Up until I moved, I was just like any other eight-year-old American Latina – I understood Spanish but only spoke English, I loved McDonalds, fruit roll-ups and marshmallows more than anything, and I was used to the comfortable world of air conditioned rooms, hot water showers, and clean streets to which the US had made me accustomed. The U.S. had been my only home and I was happy.

But my parents longed to return to Nicaragua. And so we went with them, leaving behind all that I knew and replacing it with a dirty, war-torn, scary land that was filled with bullet holes in buildings, cold showers, spiders, and strange smells.

As a scar of Nicaragua’s many years of Civil War and the U.S. embargo, the country was devoid of any restaurants, chains, or brands that I could recognize (not to mention that it was virtually impossible for me to find any of the snacks I so cherished). Everything was in a language I couldn’t speak. Everything tasted funny. I missed the U.S. so much and came to idealize it as the embodiment of perfection.

Years later, I finally returned to the U.S. to attend college in Indiana. But a great deal had changed about me. I was now fully bilingual, speaking and writing Spanish fluently. I had a more nuanced view of the U.S.; I had learned about our country's complicated role in Nicaraguan history. The food I once thought to be disgusting I now cherished, like my beloved quesillos (a Nicaraguan meal made with cheese and tortilla). I loved the warmth of Nicaragua’s people and the breadth of Nicaraguan culture.

People like me live in a grey area in between the two worlds that we straddle. We instinctively translate not only words, but also worlds, culture, humor, and points of view. We intuitively bridge misunderstandings between cultures because we simultaneously view our worlds as both natives and strangers. We can go from engaging in a heated political conversation about the U.S. and whether we measure up to our values in one minute to rebanando (Nicaraguan slang for joking) over a salsa dance in the next.
""While I have stated that the purpose of my music is to enhance diversity, I suspect it may actually play a larger role in helping me come to terms with the diversity of my own identity – one that is both 100 percent bonafide American and Pura Pinolera, Nicaragüense por gracia de Dios.""

Now that I live in DC, I still have the opportunity to return to Nicaragua frequently to visit my parents, three brothers, and my extended family who still live there. I am not only fully bilingual, but also fully binational and bicultural.

We are true natives of both places, yet we don't feel completely at home in either one without the other home we carry with us. In 2006, I moved to Washington DC to work in social justice and quickly fell into working on immigration issues. I found the work compelling because it allowed me to serve a poor and marginalized population that spoke to my own family history. It was also a space in which my cultural and language skills were an asset.

It was during this time that I also really started writing music. I come from a musical family and have loved singing since the very beginning. I taught myself how to play guitar in middle school (during the regular power outages in Managua) and continued to play through college.

I was anxious to share my original songs with others but I was torn by the idea that I needed to choose a language in which to perform. I mean, I couldn’t write in both languages, could I? By the same token, neither language seemed right or complete to me. I didn’t know what to do.

Finally, after months of turmoil, I decided that even if it was difficult and unconventional, the only way to be true to myself would be to write in both languages because that is who I am. And so, with the help of some talented friends, who themselves came from different cultural backgrounds, I formed a band called Elena & Los Fulanos. Finally, about two years ago, I quit my job to spend more time on this project.

Earlier this summer, my band released its debut bilingual folk-rock album called Miel Venenosa. The songs are not only in English and Spanish, but they also include elements of different genres and styles within the folk traditions of both my cultures. For example, “Amor Migrante,” an immigrant mother’s love song to the child she left in her home country, is written with rhythmic Spanish-style guitars and even features some gritos. By contrast, the song “Carolina,” a folk-country tune with a rocking bass line and simple lyrics, showcases the quintessential American spirit that yearns to be independent and free.

Both of these songs, as well as the rest of the album, come from me. And while they are inspired from different worlds, I have to remind myself that they aren’t in conflict with one another – like the different parts of me, they exist simultaneously and in harmony. So, while I have stated that the purpose of my music is to “enhance appreciation of diversity in an increasingly multicultural world,” I suspect it may actually play a larger role in helping me come to terms with the diversity of my own identity – one that is both 100 percent bonafide American and Pura Pinolera, Nicaragüense por gracia de Dios

Elena Lacayo is the lead for Elena & Los Fulanos, a bilingual folk-rock band out of Washington, DC. Their debut album, Miel Venenosa, is available on Itunes and CD Baby. For more information, or to order a physical copy of their album, visit www.elenalosfulanos.com. - NBC News