Nemegata Pieces Together “El Rompecabezas”

“Ancestral post-punk: battering beats and guitar clamor build a buzzing hysteria like the whole of Hycha Wy.” So ventured the Chronicle in July when the South American power trio from Austin dropped its full-length bow. Local producer Beto Martinez put it more succinctly: “The Nirvana of Colombian rock folklórico.” Take “El Rompecabezas,” for example.

At the heart of the sulfuric LP, “El Rompecabezas” (the Puzzle) and rejoinder “Oro” (Gold) stack Hycha Wy’s longest tracks and aortic muscle, staggering roots possession haunted by Southern Hemisphere mythos. The former cut, premiering a video here, ignites burning bush guitar (“deliriously lit solos,” we wrote) and bone-rattling Spanish poetry from frontman Victor-Andres Cruz: “Las llamaron brujas y así las quemaron/ They called them witches and so they burned them.” Photography took place in Colombia, near the singer’s hometown Guatavita.

“The inspiration for ‘Rompecabezas’ comes from Afro-Colombian and indigenous rhythms/sounds, and other Caribbean and Cape Verdean elements,” emails the song’s author, who credits bandmates Fabian Rincón (drums) and César Valencia (bass). “I wrote this song back when I lived in NYC a few years ago in my tiny little room in Sunnyside, Queens. Then, Cesar and Fabian came into the picture and interpreted the sounds with their own touch and magic.

“The song is basically about reconnecting to the root. Acknowledging where you come from, who you are, and not denying it. It’s about trying to piece together this big puzzle, which was violently scattered all over the place, but while trying to put it together we can see the true story of our own selves as Latinx peoples of all ethnicities.”

“The video was shot between the towns of Guatavita and Guasca in Cundinamarca, Colombia,” explains Cruz. “It’s close to my hometown of Cogua. Guatavita is known for the ‘Leyenda del Dorado.’ The Spaniards thought there was a big city made of gold, and gold statues, etc., but really, there is a deep lake on the top of a mountain where the Muisca people would celebrate the coming of the new Psihipkwá (Cacique or chief).

“The Muisca people did a lot of gold ofrendas to the Earth, the water, forest, funerals, etc., to maintain the balance with everything. The Cacique would go on a raft with all the shamans and they would get his entire body covered with gold dust to represent the new seed of the sun. He would then jump into the water as if the seed goes into the womb to create more life, be grateful, and maintain balance.

“Lakes and bodies of water are a very sacred thing around that area of Colombia within that cosmology. They are basically temples. A lot of stories and even superstitions revolve around the lakes in the region. Some elders say you can’t play or joke around a lake, or it’ll take you by surprise and drown you.

“You have to be respectful.

“Based on these ideas about the lakes and the ancestral memory they hold, we wrote an idea of a script as a band, which later got adapted and rewritten by the director Pepper González Forero. It is a cry for identity. To reality. The need to write and not being able to find the true story, the one that shows us our true genealogy. The one that, from an outside perspective, connects us again with Abya Yala [the original, pre-Columbian continent], with the ancestral languages, and wisdom of their territories.

“It is also veneration to our grandmothers, mothers, and women of the countryside, of the mountains, possessors of a knowledge that they have inherited for generations, and that still persists and resists. And with it, we empower ourselves, we close the gaps, we remove the mask, and we manage to understand in more depth what we really are in order to learn from the Earth, love and respect it, and know that our ancestors are always there, advising us, guiding us, taking care of us.

“It’s about using our ‘intelligence,’ but the one that our grandfathers and grandmothers left us. In the Muisca language, pyky chié means “light of the heart.”

Glimpse more of Nemegata’s flaming heart in this recent live session. Eradicated live shows in 2020 hurts even more when peaking into the group’s bewitching sound being created in real time. For some of us, this could be the best local show of the year.