Santiago Cruz, far from complaining about the overwhelming success that Colombian urban music has in the world, celebrates the fact that in that country a small – but important – group of performers add “a lot of value” to the sounds that are produced at that point of the earth.
“There are many of us doing different things,” the singer said in a recent interview. “There is Bomba Estéreo, Manuel Medrano, Monsieur Periné, I […] This diversity seems to me to be one of the most beautiful values of Colombian music at the moment”.
And then he abounds in an issue that has to do with the farms and where the urban music points and where the romantic or love music, which is what he interprets.
Urban music and reggaeton, he explains, point to the hip, to the sexual part of the human being. Not so the one he writes.
“I talk about things of the heart, not necessarily romantic,” he explained. “But things of the heart; from time to time I also point to reflections of our environment, of our reality”.
On this occasion, Santiago is promoting “Casi”, a song he wrote inspired by the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And since he does not want to reveal details so as not to spoil the experience for those who have not seen the film, he limits himself to saying that the subject speaks of the possibility of erasing the memory of a person’s memory.
“It seemed to me that the approach of that movie is very nice,” he said. “The idea is that if I only have one memory of that person, I want to say ‘this’ to them before the memory is erased.”
This theme will be part of the new album that Santiago will release in 2023, of which, by the way, he preferred not to reveal the name.
And no, the album will not include any urban themes, although record companies insist that singers must record that rhythm because “everyone” is listening to it.
“I move in that spectrum of romanticism,” said the artist. “It’s what I like to do, it’s what I feel; I have done it for many years and will continue to do so.”