Suenalo

One of the better live acts in Miami, regardless of genre, Suénalo is infectious and engaging. There's also often somewhere in the vicinity of fifty members to be found on the stage at any given point. But even though the proceedings are carnivalesque, they always remain under control. So far, this notorious "Afro-Latin, baby-makin' descarga funk" big band has recorded two albums, which thump and hump just as hard as the live show. So if you ever have a bunch of wallflowers over at your crib for a party and it's time to get them moving, Suénalo can help. - NewTimes Miami

Suenalo’s on stage, horns blazing, drums pounding, a fat bassline digging in, the smooth-voiced Dominican-American MC, Amin De Jesus, spitting rapid-fire rhymes in two languages.

If someone killed the sound just as you walked in on this gig, if all you had to go on was the sight of the crowd grooving to one of Suenalo’s songs, perhaps you’d be puzzled. If you’re from someplace other than the 305, that is. True, some folks are rocking out and some are bringing the funk. There are others busting hip-hop moves and still others are doing some sizzling, salsa-worthy hip-swinging.

But there’s nothing out of place here. No contradictions. This crowd is as authentically Miami as it gets, a product of blurred borders and blended cultures. And they like their music the way Suenalo delivers it: home-brewed and high-octane, a fiery fusion of funk, rock, Afro-Caribbean and Latin that speaks English as effortlessly as it speaks Spanish. Though its default is that growing American reality, Spanglish.

“I started rapping when I was 11,” says De Jesus, 33, who works as a graphic designer by day. “I was into Wu-Tang Clan and all that hardcore stuff. Then I got into Native Tongues, dancehall,” he says. “Also, industrial rock — Nine Inch Nails.

“But then I went to school in New York, and after being away from Miami for a while, I started feeling the itch for those family parties that I grew up with, the Dominican merenguito, all that tasty Latin music. That feeling of missing out made me appreciate my Latin side more, and I started working on blending all of my musical influences together because in the end, that’s what was natural for me.”

Earlier this year, the nine-member Suenalo, which has been on the scene for more than a decade (with a few lineup changes along the way,) released its fourth independently produced album, Keep It Groovin’. There’s an overriding funk groove to the project, which is spiced with son, salsa, rock, rap, R&B hooks and old school Miami bass & booty.

“There’s no other place that could produce a sound like this,” says one of the band’s oldest members, Chad Bernstein, who plays trombone and conch shells and wrote about half the songs on the new album. He’s also a longstanding member of that other only-in-Miami band, Spam All-Stars. Spam helped give rise to the fresh musical movement of which Suenalo is a key player — and includes other genre-busting local bands such as Palo!, Afrobeta and Elastic Bond.

“Maybe another place could come up with a different fusion that has some of the same elements of Suenalo’s fusion, but it could never sound the same because Suenalo’s sound is uniquely Miami. It’s like the New York bagel. There’s something in the water. It just doesn’t taste the same anywhere else,” says Bernstein, who has played or recorded with Shakira, Pitbull, Jennifer Hudson, Daddy Yankee, Arturo Sandoval, Natalie Cole, Paul Anka and other big names.

Suenalo, which bills itself as an “Afro-Latin-baby-makin’-descarga-funk band,” embraces its members’ variety of backgrounds, and it prides itself on the constant evolution of its sound. The new music leans harder on funk than previous albums, for example. But what may come afterwards will happen as organically as everything else the band has recorded.

“We grew up on different music, and our sound shifts this way and that way. But when you put us all together, we definitely have a tight jam,” says De Jesus. “It just works.”

Vocalist Michelle Forman is Anglo and a native Miamian. Carlos Guzman, bassist and musical director, is from Venezuela, as is keyboardist Adrian Gonzalez. Abner Torres and Allan Ramos, drums and percussion, are from Puerto Rico. Guitarist Eric Escanes is French. Bernstein, the trombonist, is originally from Chicago. Juan Turros, on sax and flute, is Cuban-American and a former member of the bands headed by Maynard Ferguson and David Lee Roth.

Put them all together, especially live on a stage where inevitably, the high-energy jamming takes over, and you get a scorcher of a night on the town.

Their recently released first video (for the song 305) is a soulful, funked out mash-up of horns, drums, heavy bass, hardcore rock guitar riffs and more.

“We’re like the Sazón Completa of musical fusion,” Turros likes to say about the band.

As 305, their ode to the Magic City, says:

“From Hialeah to the Grove, from the Beach to Perrine to the Ridge to the Seven Mile Bridge — it’s mine! Kendall to Carol City, it’s go time. O-town to Homestead, we’re so grime. From la Souwesera to the Northside, Allapattah ducks from the po-9, Little H to Doral … Represent that 305!”

There have been other homegrown bands that have blended Latin and American musical influences —Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine come immediately to mind.

But Suenalo is of a fresher generation, born into an already well-established, Miami brand of multiculturalism and embodying a fluidity that keeps it from creating divisions based on language, ethnicity or beat.

“I’d say the godfather of this newer only-in-Miami sound was [Cuban-American singer and songwriter] Nil Lara,” says Turros, who by day is director of Miami Senior High’s band. When he was a student there, playing in the band himself, the director was Victor Lopez, who at the time was also trumpet player and arranger for Miami Sound Machine.

“Some people argue that Miami has never really had much of a music scene. But that’s just not true. We actually have had a pretty rich music scene for years. But I’ll never forget being on South Beach in the 1990s and somebody saying let’s go check out Nil Lara,” Turros says.

“I had never seen him live. Andrew Yeomanson [DJ Le Spam of the Spam Allstars] played guitar with him. There was this huge percussion thing going on and a girl doing some Yoruba chanting. I thought, wow, this Nil Lara guy is Bono meets Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. And then I find out he has tuned his Les Paul guitar like a tres. That was kind of mind blowing. He inspired a lot of the local musicians who came after to do this kind of fusion that’s so Miami.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/23/4076064_lunch-with-lydia-suenalo-and-the.html#storylink=cpy - Miami Herald

Meet our pick for Best Latin Band: Suenalo. What's that, you already know it? Of course you do. Hell, even if you've spent the past ten years living under a rock, if that rock sits in Miami-Dade County, this local ensemble has gotten a party cranking within earshot of your geological habitat at some point or another. And we're not choosing it as the best because it's hands down one of the hardest-working bands on the scene. It's because nobody busts la rumba like these dudes. New Times issues you this challenge: Catch them performing live anytime, anywhere you choose. Then try to not let your hips move and your ass shake. Good luck with that one. Suenalo's signature blend — funk, reggae, Latin jazz, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and electronic elements, among others — is the quintessential embodiment of Miami as melting pot. And the band's irresistibly infectious descargas provide the perfect soundtrack with which to celebrate the harmonious melding of differences. - Miami New Times

Meet our pick for Best Latin Band: Suenalo. What's that, you already know it? Of course you do. Hell, even if you've spent the past ten years living under a rock, if that rock sits in Miami-Dade County, this local ensemble has gotten a party cranking within earshot of your geological habitat at some point or another. And we're not choosing it as the best because it's hands down one of the hardest-working bands on the scene. It's because nobody busts la rumba like these dudes. New Times issues you this challenge: Catch them performing live anytime, anywhere you choose. Then try to not let your hips move and your ass shake. Good luck with that one. Suenalo's signature blend — funk, reggae, Latin jazz, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and electronic elements, among others — is the quintessential embodiment of Miami as melting pot. And the band's irresistibly infectious descargas provide the perfect soundtrack with which to celebrate the harmonious melding of differences. - Miami New Times

Suenalo fever

Marcel "The Funk Pusher" Lecours, the manager of Suénalo Sound System, is watching all 10 members of the Little Havana-based band stare into the lens of a single TV camera. "I don't even know who we're doing this for," Lecours admits. "Some TV station in Colombia, I think. But I don't care who they are. I'm in ass-kissing mode. We'll smile for anybody."

And that's exactly what the band members do, as the camera scans from grinning musician to grinning musician. It's difficult not to envision this ever-evolving group as some PR madman's idea of the international boy band of jam bands. The musicians' hometowns range from Paris to Caracas, Venezuela, and the personalities include an angel-faced hip-hop guy, a scruffy trucker-hat wearer, a Rasta man, a Johnny Knoxville Jr. in dark shades, a cartoon-Afro boy … "And a half-Jew," guitarist Phil Maranges adds with a laugh.

As the women in the audience here at Bricks Nightclub and Sunset Lounge in Miami quickly find, simply kissing each member of the band in congratulations of its new CD, Suenalo, can be exhausting. They must reapply their makeup and adjust their skirts midway through kissing the band, and then go back for seconds to make sure they didn't miss the trombone player.

Suenalo Sound System is so large a band that even traveling from gig to gig can be a problem. Rather than riding together in a single van, the musicians often arrive at a club in 10 separate cars. "We can't travel out of town," saxophonist Juan Turros complains. "We just can't."

The band is simply a monster. But put that monster on a stage as small as the one at Jazid in Miami Beach, and the result is more mesmerizing than terrifying. Half the group has to perform on the floor, where the congas go off like grenades, horns blast like freight-train whistles and guitars sound like wailing women.

At Respectable Street's anniversary party in West Palm Beach July 30, Suenalo played early, when the turnout was meager at best. No one was ready even to start drinking watered-down Malibu bay breezes, let alone dance in the street. Vocalist El Chino was still digesting a brownie sundae from O'Shea's on Clematis Street, taking his time getting into a rhythm onstage. "I wasn't even quite there yet," he recalls. "But the crowd was." Two songs into the set, the band erupted.

"It's infectious," Turros describes. Turros holds a master's degree in music and has worked with everyone from David Lee Roth to Audioslave, but he can't stay away from Suenalo. "I would get together with them on and off," he explains of his joining the group. "But I was finally like, 'Please, let me play with you.' "

Chad Bernstein, the Chicago gringo who plays trombone and conch shells, also refused to be denied by the band. "I felt I had to be part of it," he says. "I tried to sit in a couple of times, and they were kind of assholes about it, kept blowing me off. Then one night, I stopped at Jazid, and they're like, 'Oh, sorry. This is our last song.' But that was it. I said, 'Fuck you guys,' and got my horn out. They couldn't stop me."

The contagiousness borders on the ridiculous, as if Suenalo is cooking up some kind of musical meth onstage. "I don't even play an instrument," fan Karla Ruiz says as she reaches for one of the free rum-and-passion-fruit cocktails Bricks is serving. "But every time I see these guys, they look like they're having so much fun up there I want to jump up onstage, too."

Ruiz isn't crazy or alone in her craving. The energy Suénalo creates is so alluring, everyone wants to leap onstage and play with them -- and not just in the musical sense. The band's performances make listeners want to run up there and dodge the trombone's slide, trip over conch shells, fly over an amp, bonk off a conga and keep going full-tilt until someone slices his foot open on a guitar pedal and has to get stitches.

So it's only fitting that ground zero for the band is a place called Monkey Village, an artists' colony in Miami. A few days before the CD-release party at Bricks, Maranges is sitting at El Pub in Little Havana and trying to explain Suénalo's history, which began in 2002. The band was his brainchild, or orphan, if you will.

"I saw all these disenfranchised and disconnected artists, photographers and musicians in the community," the guitarist remembers, "and I wanted to try and pull them together."

Maranges organized a small festival at the since-closed Absinthe House theater in Coral Gables. "We charged 15 bucks, and people came," he says, still sounding amazed.

Suenalo Sound System spent the next two years playing Saturday nights at the now-defunct Paco's Tavern in Miami Beach. "It became a social scene," Maranges explains. "Our organic sound mirrors that underground movement. My big vision was to have a jam band with Latin and hip-hop elements."

Today, that vision seems small. Beyond representing Hispanic rock and hip-hop, the band generates a crashing wave of - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Suenalo fever

Marcel "The Funk Pusher" Lecours, the manager of Suénalo Sound System, is watching all 10 members of the Little Havana-based band stare into the lens of a single TV camera. "I don't even know who we're doing this for," Lecours admits. "Some TV station in Colombia, I think. But I don't care who they are. I'm in ass-kissing mode. We'll smile for anybody."

And that's exactly what the band members do, as the camera scans from grinning musician to grinning musician. It's difficult not to envision this ever-evolving group as some PR madman's idea of the international boy band of jam bands. The musicians' hometowns range from Paris to Caracas, Venezuela, and the personalities include an angel-faced hip-hop guy, a scruffy trucker-hat wearer, a Rasta man, a Johnny Knoxville Jr. in dark shades, a cartoon-Afro boy … "And a half-Jew," guitarist Phil Maranges adds with a laugh.

As the women in the audience here at Bricks Nightclub and Sunset Lounge in Miami quickly find, simply kissing each member of the band in congratulations of its new CD, Suenalo, can be exhausting. They must reapply their makeup and adjust their skirts midway through kissing the band, and then go back for seconds to make sure they didn't miss the trombone player.

Suenalo Sound System is so large a band that even traveling from gig to gig can be a problem. Rather than riding together in a single van, the musicians often arrive at a club in 10 separate cars. "We can't travel out of town," saxophonist Juan Turros complains. "We just can't."

The band is simply a monster. But put that monster on a stage as small as the one at Jazid in Miami Beach, and the result is more mesmerizing than terrifying. Half the group has to perform on the floor, where the congas go off like grenades, horns blast like freight-train whistles and guitars sound like wailing women.

At Respectable Street's anniversary party in West Palm Beach July 30, Suenalo played early, when the turnout was meager at best. No one was ready even to start drinking watered-down Malibu bay breezes, let alone dance in the street. Vocalist El Chino was still digesting a brownie sundae from O'Shea's on Clematis Street, taking his time getting into a rhythm onstage. "I wasn't even quite there yet," he recalls. "But the crowd was." Two songs into the set, the band erupted.

"It's infectious," Turros describes. Turros holds a master's degree in music and has worked with everyone from David Lee Roth to Audioslave, but he can't stay away from Suenalo. "I would get together with them on and off," he explains of his joining the group. "But I was finally like, 'Please, let me play with you.' "

Chad Bernstein, the Chicago gringo who plays trombone and conch shells, also refused to be denied by the band. "I felt I had to be part of it," he says. "I tried to sit in a couple of times, and they were kind of assholes about it, kept blowing me off. Then one night, I stopped at Jazid, and they're like, 'Oh, sorry. This is our last song.' But that was it. I said, 'Fuck you guys,' and got my horn out. They couldn't stop me."

The contagiousness borders on the ridiculous, as if Suenalo is cooking up some kind of musical meth onstage. "I don't even play an instrument," fan Karla Ruiz says as she reaches for one of the free rum-and-passion-fruit cocktails Bricks is serving. "But every time I see these guys, they look like they're having so much fun up there I want to jump up onstage, too."

Ruiz isn't crazy or alone in her craving. The energy Suénalo creates is so alluring, everyone wants to leap onstage and play with them -- and not just in the musical sense. The band's performances make listeners want to run up there and dodge the trombone's slide, trip over conch shells, fly over an amp, bonk off a conga and keep going full-tilt until someone slices his foot open on a guitar pedal and has to get stitches.

So it's only fitting that ground zero for the band is a place called Monkey Village, an artists' colony in Miami. A few days before the CD-release party at Bricks, Maranges is sitting at El Pub in Little Havana and trying to explain Suénalo's history, which began in 2002. The band was his brainchild, or orphan, if you will.

"I saw all these disenfranchised and disconnected artists, photographers and musicians in the community," the guitarist remembers, "and I wanted to try and pull them together."

Maranges organized a small festival at the since-closed Absinthe House theater in Coral Gables. "We charged 15 bucks, and people came," he says, still sounding amazed.

Suenalo Sound System spent the next two years playing Saturday nights at the now-defunct Paco's Tavern in Miami Beach. "It became a social scene," Maranges explains. "Our organic sound mirrors that underground movement. My big vision was to have a jam band with Latin and hip-hop elements."

Today, that vision seems small. Beyond representing Hispanic rock and hip-hop, the band generates a crashing wave of - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Ocean Drive En Espanol - Sept. 2006
By Daniza Tobar

"The group's 10 members form a multicultural cocktail. Suenalo is one of the most ecclectic bands to emerge from Miami. "
(translated from Spanish to English) - Ocean Drive En Espanol

Ocean Drive En Espanol - Sept. 2006
By Daniza Tobar

"The group's 10 members form a multicultural cocktail. Suenalo is one of the most ecclectic bands to emerge from Miami. "
(translated from Spanish to English) - Ocean Drive En Espanol

New York Times - 9/3/06
By Abby Goodnough

"The dance floor gets hopping when one of the club’s regular acts, Suenalo, plays its addictive fusion of Cuban son and rumba, Dominican hip-hop, Colombian cumbia and American funk." - New York Times

New York Times - 9/3/06
By Abby Goodnough

"The dance floor gets hopping when one of the club’s regular acts, Suenalo, plays its addictive fusion of Cuban son and rumba, Dominican hip-hop, Colombian cumbia and American funk." - New York Times

Maxim En Espanol - Aug. 2006
By Juan Pablo Restrepo

"Without placing too much attention on the norm as far as genres are concerned, to them, their music can only be classified by one word Afrolatinbabymakingdescargafunk."
(translated from Spanish to English) - Maxim En Espanol

Maxim En Espanol - Aug. 2006
By Juan Pablo Restrepo

"Without placing too much attention on the norm as far as genres are concerned, to them, their music can only be classified by one word Afrolatinbabymakingdescargafunk."
(translated from Spanish to English) - Maxim En Espanol

Miami Herald - Aug. 13, 2004
By Kristen Bolt

"Born of 10 lives that have spanned from South America through the Caribbean and up to New York, this band is blowing up Miami with a fusion sound that's all its own." - Miami Herald

Miami Herald - Aug. 13, 2004
By Kristen Bolt

"Born of 10 lives that have spanned from South America through the Caribbean and up to New York, this band is blowing up Miami with a fusion sound that's all its own." - Miami Herald

Miami Living Magazine - Winter 2005
By Veronica Cancio deGrandy

"Most audience members agree: Miami-based group Suenalo Sound System's sound is as diverse as Miami itself." - Miami Living Magazine

Miami Living Magazine - Winter 2005
By Veronica Cancio deGrandy

"Most audience members agree: Miami-based group Suenalo Sound System's sound is as diverse as Miami itself." - Miami Living Magazine

Miami Herald - Nov. 22, 2004
By Jordan Levin

"But most of the time all you hear is a churning groove that has 800 people at this South Beach club chanting, dancing and yelling for more." - Miami Herald - 2

Miami Herald - Nov. 22, 2004
By Jordan Levin

"But most of the time all you hear is a churning groove that has 800 people at this South Beach club chanting, dancing and yelling for more." - Miami Herald - 2

New Times - Oct. 21, 2004
By Julienne Gage

"Suenalo Sound System's celebratory jam session takes you on a mental odyssey invoked by Afro-Latino rhythms, Caribbean raggamuffin and North American hip hop melded with horns and gyrating, wah wah peddled guitars that get you jumping in joyful praise." - New Times

New Times - Oct. 21, 2004
By Julienne Gage

"Suenalo Sound System's celebratory jam session takes you on a mental odyssey invoked by Afro-Latino rhythms, Caribbean raggamuffin and North American hip hop melded with horns and gyrating, wah wah peddled guitars that get you jumping in joyful praise." - New Times

New Times - Best of Miami 2005
Reader's Poll Winner

"Afro-Latin funk? Whatever you dub it, the Suenalo sound is buzzing from the fashionable warehouse parties of Wynwood to the trippy lounge scene of South Beach." - New Times - Best of Miami

New Times - Best of Miami 2005
Reader's Poll Winner

"Afro-Latin funk? Whatever you dub it, the Suenalo sound is buzzing from the fashionable warehouse parties of Wynwood to the trippy lounge scene of South Beach." - New Times - Best of Miami