Gotopo, a rising Afro-Indigenous-Venezuelan artist and producer, is creating bold, brilliant sounds that examine colonization, generational trauma, and Indigenous traditions.
“I am older than all the trees that surround me,” she tells. “The good thing is I can’t remember my age. That’s why my life works — because I can’t remember exactly that age.”
Such a statement describes Gotopo’s project very well. Since her debut single, “Malembe,” her goal has been to create a futuristic universe rooted deep in her Afro-Indigenous ancestry, which she’s eager to remember and reclaim. Through her music, she’s proven to be an exciting artist and producer on the rise: Last year, Gotopo was one of several artists who received the Female* Producer Prize given by Sony Music and Music Women* Germany , which highlights the work of female producers there.
Gotopo’s beats are an oneiric vehicle, designed to surface the pain caused by colonization. One way she does this is by inviting people into her realm and encouraging them to move, as she proposes on “Sacúdete,” lead single and title of the album. The first srefers to the ritual of shaking it in the club. The second is a shaking of the mind — a kind of dancing that can interrogate and heal generational trauma.
“Gotopo can make you dance, can bring you joy, but is also going to make you think and interrogate many things,” she says, adding that the main subject of what she’s interrogating in her music is the deep wound that project of America has meant. She describes it as a persistent and untreated flu: “It is like a wound that doesn’t scar, that continues to bother you over time, continues to hurt you, continues to cause you problems.
Gotopos’s relationship with music started when she was a child. She played the cuatro and sang Venezuelan traditional music. During her teenage years, the most popular genres in her neighborhood of Barquisimeto were ranchera, vallenato, and.
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