We didn’t think it could become a Latin song.
The first time we talked about Despierta, we didn’t think it could become a Latin song. And we couldn’t imagine it would become a song built on the effort of a lot of friends. We didn’t even had a theme, only an idea and an obsessive beat. We, Randomized Coffee, namely Tommaso and Massimiliano, were more prone to develop a Mediterranean sound with a touch of the wonderful percussions you can hear in the most beautiful African music. But we wanted a voice. Someone to help us work on the melody, someone who could catch that minimal drop of music in our minds. One day, a couple of friends of ours, Cristina and Gianni, both amazing people and passionate about music, told us about a singer they knew. “Actually she is my singing teacher, and she’s a composer. She managed to make me sing, and it’s something quite impossible” Cristina said. We heard a couple of her tunes before meeting her, and it was a blast: we had found our voice in Noel Gilda Cristante, aka Noel GC. When we met, we suddenly started changing the song and re-tuned our directions on the virtual map. We didn’t have to go south; we needed to go south-west, heading towards the Latin America we had always loved but barely explored. And also, we found out that we needed more people to develop the community vibe we were searching for. Despierta has become a song of many people: ours, of course, but also of our friends. And it was like that idea had found an incredibile new route to express itself, a wake up call to stop being selfish and start sharing everything you love, you feel, you live, with the people you care most of. Noel GC created the melody and the lyrics while the Randomized Coffee guys worked on the beat, even asking Chiara, Massimiliano’s girlfriend and amateur bassist, to record Despierta’s first bassline ever, and involving our friend Gabriele to play the first trumpet. In the meantime Noel received the lovely help of the husband Moises to make the lyrics perfectly fitted to the song, and in the end Moises shot the pics for the promotion. Also, we all felt the urge to make the sound rawer, more analogic and physical, such as you are listening to a live band playing in the streets: an incredible session with Román Villanueva (trumpet), Carlos Guerreros (guitar) and Hernán Meza (bass) took us to the sound we were searching for. This is how Despierta was born: with people, for the people. We would have never written, produced and made Despierta without our loved ones.
Hope this will inspire your listening.