Two years after blessing us with her stunning album Afrotaína, Dominican singer Carolina Camacho returns with a powerful feminist missive titled “Tingó.” Her new single is a tribute to activist Florinda Soriano Muñoz, better known as the afrodominicana Mamá Tingó, who became the face of the ongoing struggle for agrarian reform, and was shot dead after defending her own land back in 1974.
Drawing from Mamá Tingó’s resilience and bravery, Camacho, una mujer afrodescendiente herself, pours her soul into a beat that taps into electronic music, trap, and Afro-Caribbean percussion, taking shots at the patriarchy from different angles. “Te criaron desde el miedo, no desde el amor,” she sings, addressing the sociological roots of machismo and deftly shattering male fragility. She then calls for a revolution in theory and praxis, fighting against oppression on behalf of every woman, including the ones whose voices have been silenced by abuse and violence. She closes the song with the phrase, “Quítame la mano de la boca/la venda de tus ojos/y camina conmigo,” highlighting the importance of solidarity in the struggle for equity and justice.
“When I wrote the lyrics for this song about a year and a half [ago], there was a lot happening in the world that involved women being abused or killed,” Camacho tells Remezcla via email. “This part [that] says, ‘Cuando me tiraste al suelo, yo misma me levanté y nací de nuevo,’ [is about how Mamá Tingó] was killed fighting, like a warrior, in a role that a lot of people think is something for a man to do, not a woman.”
Camacho cites her own desire to be more than a witness to normalized acts of violence against women as the inspiration for the track. “If I have a daughter, I don’t want her to feel insecure or question every step she takes; and if I have a son, I don’t want him to feel he can’t be emotional or do things that are supposed to be feminine. We need to unlearn things that aren’t helping,” she adds.
With her new song, Carolina Camacho keeps Mamá Tingó’s flame burning high and bright. Stream it below: