Nicola Cruz is the country’s breakout star: he was named one of 2019’s artists to watch in The New York Times and has played at festivals like Sónar, Worldwide and Fuji Rock this year. His most recent albums, 2015’s ‘Prender El Alma’ and this year’s ‘Siku’, take roots music of the Andes and add Afro-Ecuadorian influences, using native instruments like the charango, a type of lute, and the siku pan-flutes of the title.
Ecuador is rich in indigenous culture, and since its dictatorship ended 10 years ago, Cruz has gently led a shift among young people towards embracing their pre-colonial roots. “Ecuador has always been very racist,” he says, “but this music flies in the face of that – it’s beautiful.” His sound has taken off, unprecedentedly, and Cruz says now he gets 20 new tracks in this vein from local musicians in his inbox every week.
Cruz says that Ecuador’s relative isolation has helped to encourage young producers to have no boundaries, and Quixosis – aka Daniel Lofredo Rota, a Quito electronic artist currently living in Berlin – agrees. “Ecuador can be a very difficult place to be an artist,” he says, “especially due to the fact that we live in a very small country. We simply lack the population to foster mass culture phenomena.” But he says it also means they can “exist in a tangential space, outside the mainstream in every way”, and without feeling the need to bend to trends like reggaeton. “Thankfully,” he adds, “we still have certain ‘islands’ free of ‘Despacito’ and EDM pop.”
He adds that “the lack of financial opportunities has always given our music and art the undertone of being ‘authentic’” – though clearly the scene’s links with the ancient rituals of indigenous culture (ayahuasca, anyone?) also appeal. Mateo Kingman, however, argues that what binds him and his peers is not just a spiritual interest but the influence of nature. Kingman is the Adam Ant-style frontman of modern folk group EVHA, has just released his second LP with his solo hip hop/electronic project, and is DJing at La Ideal in a few days. He grew up “surrounded by indigenous people” in Macas, a place where the Amazon meets the Andes – though he emphasises to us that he didn’t “live like Mowgli”.