By Raeshelle Middleton (RaeROQ)
Photography by George Evan
The next act up is Navegante
Rae: So what is the name of your band and what inspired that name?
Navegante: It’s called Navegante. Reading a Pablo Pueblo book it jumped out at me one morning. It means navigator in Spanish so it made a lot of sense to me.
Rae: What type of category would you put your music in? Is it single a genre or a mixed genre?
Navegante: It’s very mixed, I’ll play what I feel. What it is, is a lot of electronic music like programmed beats and synthesizers. The mixture is organic with live musicians. We have live bass, live guitar, and live drums. The set-up is really elaborate and really crazy.
Rae: What attracted you to music in the first place.
Navegante: My older brother played and I didn’t really like music at the time. I was just a crazy kid doing crazy things. One day my grandmother passed away and I kind of went to my brother’s rehearsal just to kind of hang out. This guy was there and he asked me “Do you sing?” and I was like “No” so he said, “Why don’t we try?” and he pulled the guitar out and I wrote a song about my grandmother who had just passed. I really liked that experience. It was an encouraging first step into the world of music and it gave me a relief that I didn’t expect, I had no concept of it. From there I just kind of went all out.
Rae: How did you meet your other band members and how did you guys finally collaborate?
Navegante: The bass player, Eillo, was in a band called Yereba Buena and they play Afro-Puerto Rican music. He’s been playing in that band since he was 16, now he’s 22. We became friends through performing on the same nights and I asked him “Why don’t we just jam it out sometimes” He came over and he’s a great guy and we’ve been playing together ever since.
Rae: What are some of your current projects?
Navegante: Right now I’m working on an elaborative release whether it’s a mix-tape or an album. I’m working on a song with the Oxymorrons which I am every excited about. I’m working on songs with a lot of different artist. Young Chris from Philly, hopefully the Roots we are working on that, just recently met with them and lots of other people. Just me producing music and collaborating.
Rae: Would you say that you’re more of a producer?
Navegante: No I’m an addition. This band has made me become that because I started doing music with the electronic keyboard and drum machines and it just started evolving into me producing all of the music. When people would ask, “Who did this beat?” I would tell them “I did it” so then people would ask me to do it for them. So it’s a new experience and I embrace it, I love it. I love collaborating with other people it’s like you get to share their dreams and insights for that period of time. You learn a lot and it’s cool, it’s a lot of fun.
Rae: How important is performance to you?
Navegante: Performance is everything to me, it means the most. It’s an experience that you can’t take away. Its something that you can actually store, people feel it, its very spiritual. When you have that moment in a concert where you just love what your hearing and you love what your feeling.
