Telmary returns with Maradentro under the Colibrí label

June 18, 2021

This woman treads firmly and beautifully, with the legacy of her ancestors and all the influences of the present, making music that leaves no room for doubt—it is unique and it is hers, although it has ingredients for everyone. We spoke with Telmary Díaz about her most recent album release, Maradentro, which belongs to the Colibrí label.

The previous album, Fuerza Arará, set the bar very high, with a Cubadisco Award and Latin Grammy nominations

What are you going to surprise us with in this new release? "Fuerza Arará was an album where I experimented a lot with Afro-Cuban rhythms, with afrobeat; it's an electronic and acoustic album.

Maradentro comes with a mix that maintains much of that same line—it's like continuing the path of Fuerza Arará, but I really make a fusion here with other genres that are completely new, like the influence of Brazilian music, which is the part that Munir Hossn and Alan Sousa bring, who accompany me, influence also from soca, and of course timba is always present—that is, Cuban rhythms, but something more traveled, more pop, which is the song Enamora'o, the bolero with Puras palabras; Quién te mandó and Equivoca'o, which continue to be timba-style songs, but Quién te mandó with strong programming using beats to give it an urban sound; with rumba, since Fuerza Arará has a lot of folklore, but there isn't specifically a rumba, in this one I come with a rumba alongside Osain del Monte and, well, a strong presence of Afro-Cuban mojugba as a form of improvisation".

So there is great sonic diversity in Maradentro—does that have something to do with the variety of guests you have on this production?

"That diversity you're talking about comes precisely through the guests. This is a journey, it's a party, it's an album where I'm celebrating twenty years of artistic career, so I was very careful in choosing the guests. Many of them are debts I had pending, collaborations I had pending for a very long time and I managed to mature them in this album".

And as for the themes—what does Maradentro tell us about?

It's an album that speaks of nature and its resilience, it's a disc dedicated to Yemaya, to the waters, to these difficult times of spiritual searching, of personal reaffirmation, always speaking of our Cubanness, of our roots, defending our musical heritage, but also a little bit taking Cuba to other corners of the world. There's a featuring with Wesli, who is Haitian and lives in Canada, with Omi, Cuban who lives outside the island and collects sounds from around the world and that's seen in the song Calienta el bombo. It has a beginning for the waters and an ending with the waters with the songs Maradentro and Háblate, it's dedicated to the waters, to the feminine deity and to the empowerment of women. "I must say that I have collaborations with three women whom I love very much, one is a song with Omara, a brief participation from Yusa, which is a dream come true and the other is a song with Ana Torroja, former singer of Mecano, a singer I listened to as a child, whom I admire and respect very much and who gave us her magic in the song Enamorao, a song made from a distance that has that peculiarity of how we both flow, how we connect, despite not being together in a studio recording and also a song dedicated to the love of my life".

What other projects are keeping Telmary busy these days?

"Well, these days and since the pandemic began, I had the idea of creating this venture called Tumbao de Telma, which is my personal and commercial brand, dedicated to African heritage, dedicated to Telma's look, but also dedicated to cancer patients. The idea is to standardize the turban as a garment that these patients wear during the chemotherapy process and that they feel they are wearing something that is fashionable, something trendy, something trending.

This keeps me busy, Tumbao de Telma, of course my family and my family's achievements and the future and my daughter who just started at music school and, of course, it's a bit complicated to develop her instrument...

Besides already working on the next collaborations, on the next album, I don't stop, I don't pause, dreaming of doing a bit more television, theater, film and at some point planning a hip hop opera, that's my immediate dream.