La Chica – Cambio
a Canadian premiere

A collage of sound textures that brings together two worlds, Europe and Latin America

September 8, 2022

In Latin America, we manage to conceive and shape a world in which values are exalted in the communicative vigour of a multicultural reality.

– Carlos Fuentes, Mexican writer and essayist (1928-2012)

La Chica • Image: Baptiste Piéchaud

This reality described by Carlos Fuentes summarizes the significance of the project created by Sophie Fustec: La Chica. Her compositions, lyrics and style are born from this “multicultural reality” between Latin America and France, between Paris, Belleville and Venezuela.

La Chica brings these two worlds together through her music by proposing a collage of sound textures borrowed from her heritage and various modern influences while breaking the established codes.

It is around the piano and keyboards that her universe was created, mixing skillfully her classical inspirations, and her love for Debussy with the depth of the analogical synthesizer layers. Without disguises, she transmits a raw emotion, between abstract thoughts and poetic introspection.

About La Chica

Sophie Fustec was born in Paris to a Venezuelan mother and a French father. She grew up in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, Belleville, but also in Merida (western Venezuela) where she regularly visited her maternal family. Sophie started playing music at a very young age, first the violin and then the piano, which she studied for 13 years at the conservatory.

La Chica – OASIS

In 2019, La Chica released her first album, CAMBIO, which means change, or I change, an album that is incisive and raw, without completely abandoning the lucid introspection that marked her previous compositions. In this one, she expresses without ambiguity her desires for change or even metamorphosis.

Her words are more inspired by reality, especially the latest events in Venezuela, and the compositions are more focused, building a contrasted album where she knows how to go from a warrior’s song to a poem whispered to herself with happiness.

Listen to the album Cambio de La Chica on Spotify

Opening act: Chellz

Chellz is a Montreal MC of Salvadoran origin. His artistic work is mainly expressed in Spanish: conscious, powerful lyrics and improvisations soaked in Latin-immigrant and black urban culture.

After a career as a key veteran in the urban Latin scene in the metropolis that has led him to tour the Americas and Oceania as part of the bands Amérythmes (with Esmeralda and Monk.e), Heavy Soundz (with Rilabeats and several members of Teke::Teke), and his current band, Sonido Pesao, Chellz will be presenting his first solo EP, El Paseo del Alma (via the American label Normandie Records, based in LA).

Chellz & Boogát – Brujería

El Paseo Del Alma (written, composed and recorded during the pandemic) is an ode to all those evenings of motorized wanderings, spent daydreaming, listening to good music in old comfortable cars: Lowrider Oldies, Chicano Rap, Psychodelia, Buffalo Boom Bap, etc.

Composed and produced by his great friend Boogát, the songs of El Paseo del Almas have cinematic narratives with grandiose poetry that rhymes witchcraft, delirium, love, drugs and sex, with rebirth.

Featured image: Guillaume Malheiro

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