Alt.Latino: Rawayana on their new album and a changing Venezuela

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🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Sometimes life imitates art - or at least the two can seem eerily connected. On Jan. 1, the Venezuelan band Rawayana released a new album, '¿Dónde Es El After?,' which began with a lyric that many interpreted as a wish for their country's leadership to be gone. A few days later, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was ousted from power and seized by American forces. For this week's episode, we chat with Fofo Story and Beto Montenegro of Rawayana to hear how the album came together, where its sonic influences lie, and how they're reflecting on the seismic changes underway in their home country.

(00:00) Intro
(01:54) How they decided to open the album
(06:26) On the song 'Qué Rico PR!'
(09:36) Caribbean influences growing up
(13:41) Childhood love for merenhouse
(16:13) Adapting tonada folk music
(21:58) Reflections on Venezuela in this moment

This podcast episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. The executive producer of NPR Music is Suraya Mohamed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What if the secret to cleaning up hazardous waste or slowing down climate change lives in our bathroom?
0:07.1	Weird, slimy things and showerheads, stuff growing in dishwashers, hot water heaters.
0:12.4	They're really strange environments.
0:15.1	Join us on a treasure hunt for microbes, which may hold clues for saving the world.
0:19.6	Listen to shortwave on the NPR app or wherever
0:21.8	you get your podcasts. A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language.
0:31.8	From NPR music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Felix is sadly once again away this week, but never fear.
0:40.7	I have my amazing, wonderful colleague Isabella Gomez-Armiento on the mic with me. Hello, Issa.
0:46.2	Olis, olis. Thank you for coming and saving me once again.
0:49.3	Thank you for having me. Anytime.
0:51.1	Okay, so on January 1st, something a little bit crazy happened.
0:55.0	The Venezuelan band Rawayana, which we've talked about a lot on the show, released an album that started with a line that felt like it predicted perhaps one of the biggest global stories of the year.
1:05.0	So to translate briefly, the song is basically saying, Rawa wishes you a happy new year,
1:18.9	and may all the expletive expletives leave.
1:22.3	It was a very loaded line, and although they're not naming anyone, it was assumed by a lot
1:26.5	of Venezuelan listeners that they were referring to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
1:31.0	A couple of days later, he was ousted by U.S. forces
1:33.4	and is currently in custody in New York City.
1:36.3	There's a lot we still don't know about a very much
1:39.9	real-time developing story in Venezuela,
1:41.9	but what we did want to do is take a minute to talk about this album,
1:45.3	Donde is a laughter from Rahuayana,
	...

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