Bedroom producers are essential to Latine music’s innovations, connecting with their immediate community by finding inspiration in collaborators to their surroundings to enrich their sounds. In partnership with vitaminwater, for the third year in a row, we’re spotlighting three producers who are bending the rules, mangling traditional styles and genres to create seldom-heard sounds.
When harnessing their magic, bedroom producers often work in their rooms. Spending long hours synthesizing their ideas into something unique, they often need a handy way to nourish themselves, and vitaminwater plays a big role in helping them stay hydrated to pursue their visions. As a brand with roots in NYC, vitaminwater shares many distinctions with these musicians and their surroundings.
When it comes to places that brim with inspiration, New York City is one of the most vibrant cities in which to find it. With so many people from different cultural backgrounds, one can simply stick one’s head out the window and listen to at least four different genres blaring from homes, cars, small storefronts, parks, and everywhere else. It’s the ultimate producer’s playground.
These producers we’re about to meet all come from different countries and backgrounds. However, they all found a home in NYC as well as a strong pull from all the music that the city has to offer everyday. From Latine rhythms from all over the culture to music from the other side of the world, the Big Apple can be an infinite jukebox that musicians can tap into for inspiration. In their hands, these sounds become some of the most exciting new music out there.
This time, we’re focusing on three New Yorkers who understand the vibrancy and diversity of their environment. All three producers work with different sounds—from cumbia, mariachi, and bachata to techno, hip-hop, and contemporary ballads—making some of the most exciting music and bringing a new vision of what Latine music means.
Mireya Ramos
Mireya Ramos is a walking example for young Afro-Latinas who dare to dream big and find their voice. She was born in California to a Mexican father and a Dominican mother and grew up in Puerto Rico. Ramos was bound for musical greatness.
She’s a vocalist, instrumentalist, composer, producer, and arranger, probably best known as the founder of Flor De Toloache. This all-female mariachi ensemble transcended the trappings of its genre while respecting and perpetuating its tradition. She’s won a Latin Grammy and collaborated with various musicians in genres like classical, salsa, hip-hop, rock, and much more.
Her fusion of styles goes one step further, blending and changing into different styles through the magic of digital recording technology.
Felipe Quiroz
Like many Colombians, Felipe Quiroz, a.k.a. Prince Of Queens, feels cumbia’s impact from deep within. Born in Bogota, Quiroz internalized many of these styles so that he recognized their elements in genres from around the world.
Moving to NYC, he also encounters many different styles of music around different boroughs—especially Queens—and connects the dots in his particular style. Quiroz has many different sides to his music, creating electronic music that fuses Caribbean genres, techno, and house, revitalizing club music. He also plays bass and synths in Latine rock powerhouses Combo Chimbita, providing a big part of the groove.
For Quiroz, music constitutes a community of sounds that can be forged into irresistible rhythms.
Faustino
Growing up in the Dominican Republic before relocating to NYC, singer, songwriter, and producer Faustino Armando Ortega Toribio describes making music as a way to bring a delicate balance between peace and the city’s noise. It allows him to communicate across cultures, establishing conversations that transcend roots into something more cosmic.
He taps into the multicultural environment of the streets around him and forges it into something entirely his own. Namely, his music blends his Dominicano roots with the vibrant energy of the Big Apple, resulting in a fusion of bachata, Latin rock, pop, and folk. His guitar-based music harmonizes melody and rhythm, resulting in marvelous passages and hooky tunes. Indeed, for him, the guitar is more than just an instrument; it’s a conduit for the universe’s messages, as he explains in the video.
In his hands, Ortega Toribio crafts songs that heal, inspire laughter and evoke tears, giving listeners a wide range of emotions as much as life has to offer. All this is done from his room and broadcast to the rest of the world.
Check out the playlist below, featuring some of our favorite bedroom producers.
