Band Profile: Debajo del Agua
The sounds from six different instruments fill the room. Words of a foreign language accompany each note. Individual components flow together, forming a vibration of love and unity.
It is the third time the song has been started, stopped and restarted again. But, with every continuation of this pattern, the song dances closer to approval from each member of the band – a nod of the head.
Pablo Kee Cornejo, 24, begins by explaining how he envisions the song. It will start with rhythm guitar, followed by a lead guitar. Pablo plays a verse and gradually each member joins in as if they had played the song together a million times, but this is the first time anyone except Pablo has heard it.
“This song is about where is my true North Star?” Pablo’s mother Marcia Warner Cornejo explains to me. “Where is my true leaning?”
Pablo begins singing in Spanish: “Donde esta mi verdadero norte? A donde esta?” Pablo’s brother, Elías Cornejo, 20, and his father, Pepe Cornejo, 52, join in with wooden flutes from the Andes called queñas. Soon, six instruments are joined in a symphony, lyrics are sung in Spanish, raps are spoken in English, blending varying cultures in unison.
Debajo del Agua is a group composed of individuals from different countries and backgrounds, with different languages and talents, but formed for one reason: to promote activism in a positive and enjoyable way.
Pepe and band member Rogelio Ransoli, 50, met 20 years ago, after Pepe moved to the United States from Chile. While living in Chile, Pepe found himself in the middle of a musical movement called Amincha that strived to bring music back from the Andes.
For Pepe, Amincha went beyond a movement and represented the exclusion of any borders, nothing illegal existed.
Pepe found his place in Colorado, where he met his wife Marcia and raised three boys. The couple never kept instruments away from their children, always encouraging them to pluck at strings, blow into pipes and bang on drums.
Music is a form of art that can convey messages otherwise ignored by opponents of the message, Pepe said.
When music unfamiliar to him is being played, he said he just wants to join in.
“In politics and religion, when you meet someone that doesn’t believe what you believe, or think the way you think, you start arguing,” Pepe said. “In music, it’s the opposite. You join. You welcome the difference and you truly welcome the diversity. The more you learn from other sources, the more you grow, and I think choosing this form of art as a way to convey our beliefs is a great thing.”
The band’s passion goes beyond sharing their music. They also strive to promote activism to their audience, occasionally performing for special events. On Jan. 31, Debajo del Agua appeared on the CU campus for a national teach in-day for climate change, called Focus the Nation.
“We chose to have Debajo del Agua perform because they are very socially aware, diverse and talented,” said Amy Harris, a senior environmental policy major and the University of Colorado Student Union sustainability director who helped organize the teach-in.
Harris recited one of Debajo del Agua’s lyrics that she said she felt represented the event: “Who are you fighting for? Who are you fighting against?”
“In activism, you have to understand what you’re standing up for and why,” Harris said. “You can’t have a one-sided view.”
All members of Debajo del Agua agree that too much of the music on the radio sends a negative message and fails to truly move the listener or, beyond that, represent those different points of view.
“The rhythm (of a lot of commercial music) will get you moving and you start to nod your head,” Dani “Descrybe” Martinez-Cornejo, 26, said. “The nodding of the head is an act of affirmation – you’re affirming what’s going on. If it’s a negative message that’s degrading to women, a negative message of materialism or a negative message that’s degrading yourself, you’re nodding your head – you’re affirming that negative message.”
With each song the band writes and each rhythm that flows from their instrument, they want to change that message the audience is nodding their head to.
“Instead of nodding your head to a message that can be potentially detrimental, you’re nodding your head to a message that can be self-empowering,” Dani said.
The band writes lyrics in English, Spanish and Portuguese. And, although not everyone can understand what’s being sung, or spoken, in a song, Dani said the vibrations created by the instruments and the voices accurately represent their message.
“Through the vibrations of rhythms and voices and instruments, they still get that good feeling even if they don’t understand the language,” Dani said. “They still move their bodies and dance even if they don’t understand what’s being said.”
Elías said Debajo del Agua became whole about four years ago. Collaborating with him are his two brothers, Dani and Pablo; his father Pepe; and three family friends, Rogelio, Stephen “Mano Dura” Smith Contreras, 27, and Ricardo “El Guanaco” Ransoli, 31. Each member contributes their own language, their own cultures and their own hearts to the music.
The band’s name, Debajo del Agua, literally translates to “under the water”. Elías said the band name means more than its simple translation.
“It’s something that’s not apparent at first glance, like the typical impression of everyday people, and then once you look beneath the surface it’s very apparent,” Elías said. “It’s like a whole culture, a whole life under that surface.”
At first glance, Debajo del Agua plays instruments, sings lyrics and struggles to make money just like most local artists. But, listen closer and a trilingual flow of rhymes presents a band with its own culture.
The song begins one more time: “Donde está mi verdadero norte? A donde está?” Pablo strums his guitar, Dani and Rogelio join in with theirs, Ricardo plucks the bass, and Pepe and Elías exhale into the queñas. The song continues for more than three minutes, from the beginning to the middle to the end. As the last verse is sung, each member is playing their instrument, listening with their ears, closing their eyes and nodding their head in affirmation.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Heather Smith at heather.smith@colorado.edu.
