The Dogs / Scarlet Island

There are songs that speak for multitudes, born from artists who understand that music, like art itself, responds to the context and place where it arises. In Cuba, one of the few that takes the risk of creating a coherent discourse between our reality and creation is the duo Isla Escarlata. This is not accidental, of course. Since the foundation of the project in November 2020, Samuel Delgado and Javier Sampedro have been clear about their intention to use the song as a reflection of the country they inhabit. And, as they themselves would say: to difficult times, consistent songs.

that contains Dogs, the recently released second EP by the duo and, although my intuition told me that I wouldn't find a Samuel singing to Jaruco, or some artists blindly throwing darts at a target, they never cease to amaze me with this narrative. I speak of narrative because the three songs that make up this production have a discursive unity that travels, first, through The fear, then by Dogs -second track namesake to the material—and finds its outcome in the shouting.

When you create a project as well thinking as this one, the following happens: independently, each topic makes sense, but if they are analyzed as a whole they acquire greater meaning. For example, in the first track is heard, as an element that invokes fear: If I exist, their dogs find me, delete me… In the second, a transition is already noticeable: …if you let your dogs out here I'll wait for them, I'm not going to run. Fear no longer exists, it has evolved. And, once we get to the third track, the release happens, to complete the circle: Today I bit the chain. Today I bury my sorrows. My veins bled. His rage does not condemn me. I go out to the street to celebrate with shouting. I go out with mine to form the shouting. 

But let's do the reverse exercise, and analyze each song separately. What do we hear? Causing? In recent days a close friend told me that The fear transported him to a scaffold, with a choir of people praying for the soul of the one who will be hanged and that also reminded him of War, of Resident. Precisely that is The fear: a song to helplessness, persecution and the fright of freedom; a song in memory of the censored novelist Reinaldo Arenas in the 60s and 70s that expresses accumulated grudges and hatred. And, as redundant as it sounds, a song about the fear of fear itself. However, I find in her a rare hopeful feeling. Maybe it's the voice of Frank Mitchell, which adds softness to the melody, like the very desire to live in a country, without fear. 

Dogs, meanwhile, is a song that doesn't pretend to be pretty because it doesn't need to be. In the background, a roll of drums and a mixture of sounds refer imaginarily to stuff  military. It sounds like claims, demands, not a request for concessions. But where do these demands reach their highest point? In the street, in the community, in the cry that emerges; first content, during the subtle guitar arpeggios that sound while Scarlet Island —at the height of the 57th second of the shouting— warns: “we are going to form it”, and then break, unrestrained and in full color, with the clattering of the batá, in that kind of samba, party and celebration that implies breaking the chains of the oppressor.  

That's how good songs are. They have the ability to portray different realities, different feelings. As if they managed to adjust to what the listener lives and suffers. It doesn't matter when they were recorded. They are, without fear of exaggeration, enduring. Invincible to time. This EP, for example, had its first seed in February 2022, after the performance of the duo in an event of the cultural project La Jeringa. After its recording, Samuel and Javier agreed on its appearance for September, seven months after its gestation. They did it without guessing that the 30 —day they would complete the narrative with the launch on all platforms of the last track— the streets of the country would become a social hive. the shouting It would be, then, a howl in the midst of the chaos that many of us could only hear days later, due to connectivity and electricity cuts. Notwithstanding that delayed, there was no better time for that song to exist. Maybe that's why I like it so much. Because Scarlet Island knows that a song by itself does not change history, but it knows its ability to tell it.

 Talk about Dogs, the EP, is also talking about the audiovisual proposal that accompanies it. This is not the first time that Samuel and Javier have been in charge of directing a video clip. In December 2021 they directed Respira, a song in collaboration with Yoyi Lagarza. Precisely, as a kind of intertextual game, some of the scenes of that audiovisual open the video of The fear, which begins in a kind of room, where the Scarlet Island look at a television that plays fragments of the aforementioned single. From the first moment, the duo seems to warn us that they have passed a stage. A stage that he now contemplates and accepts with maturity. 

In the first scenes we see blood, clashes; elements that reinforce the violence of the lyrics. By way of contrast, we also find allegories to peace, love and hope. It is then that something that I particularly like about Scarlet Island is revealed to me: its ability to say without explaining. Each piece is loaded with symbolism, there are no elements located by a simple aesthetic, each person or object plays a role in the narrative. I make a parenthesis for the lighting, in charge of Ernesto G. Guerra and Rafael E. López, which gives —with mainly blue, red and green tones— a chilling aspect to the scenes, according to the “dark” intention of this project . Also the clapping for the costumes, by Marlon White, which shows a totally irreverent Samuel and Javier, ready —I repeat— to take risks. 

And that is, perhaps, the great value of this new proposal. Those who have followed the path of Scarlet Island until today, those who previously listened to his first EP Cerrar los ojos, released in July 2021, will understand the rudder turn. Unlike that first production, marked by an eclectic sound, where trap, conga, a ballad, a guajira converge, in the second both artists move away from the typecasting that says that "to represent a country you need to interpret its traditional genres". On this occasion, they embrace rap as a means of expression, drinking from its confrontational, anti-establishment, anti-establishment speeches; and, at the same time, with tremendous daring, they are committed to organically incorporating into this genre all those sounds that they, as artists, go through. They owe nothing to anyone. They are sincere and authentic. And that's heard when you play Dogs.