POP
Pictured from left are Cordero bandmates Chris Verene, Omar Akil Little, Ani Cordero, and Eric Eble.
Ani Cordero wanted both interpretations for the title of her new album.
"The title is vague on purpose. 'Where are you from?' It's the main question I'm always asked," she says from her Brooklyn home. "I understand the curiosity, but the quest for authenticity is really annoying and misplaced sometimes."
Cordero, whose Latin rock band is also named Cordero, doesn't mean to sound prickly. If anything, she has always used her music to deal with cultural identity and our perceptions of it. She has Puerto Rican roots, but her history goes far beyond that.
Cordero was born in Boston after her parents moved here from Puerto Rico to study (her father landed at Harvard, her mother went to BU), but she spent most of her childhood in Atlanta. She spent some time in Tucson to perfect her songwriting and wound up in New York in 1999. A drummer first, Cordero played with various bands before assembling her own.
It's fitting, then, that a sense of duality and adventure is a common thread in her music. She acknowledges that Cordero, which headlines the Rock en Español Festival at the Casa de la Cultura/Center for Latino Arts, has meant many things to many people. The group's 2002 debut, "Lamb Lost in the City," introduced listeners to a lean, aggressive indie-rock sound. Cordero balanced the indie and Latin rock elements more equally on "Somos Cordero" (2004) and "En Este Momento" (2006).
"Ani, like a lot of people, is pulling from two cultures in her music," says Sandra Velasquez, leader of fellow Brooklyn Latin-rock band Pistolera, which includes Cordero on drums. "One thing she's always trying to do is bring them together, no matter how different her albums sound from each other."
Rightly so, Cordero doesn't confine her music to a tidy, three-word description.
"I used to say I play bilingual indie rock, but it's not fitting me anymore," she says. "It's like an outfit I wore 10 years ago. For the new album, I let go of some of the angst-ridden indie vibe of my last records.
Right now I'd say I'm moving more into the world of singer-songwriters."
"De Dónde Eres" is a gentler record, more percussive and introspective than previous efforts. On "Guardasecretos," Cordero, who considers herself a rather quiet person, on and off stage, writes about the burden of being the guardian of secrets for her friends and family. As she did with many of the songs on the album, Cordero wrote it for herself.
"2007 was a terrible year for me and my family," Cordero says.
"It was one of those years where, as soon as you stand up, another wave knocks you down. I was needing comfort for myself when I was making the record."
Cordero says her son, who was 6 months old at the time, developed a rare brain condition that left the family quarantined in their home for three months. He's fine now, but it took an emotional toll, and Cordero found herself writing songs "to keep myself from going crazy." But as personal as it is, the album doesn't document Cordero's sadness or anxiety.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
"This record makes me happy because I was right to have hope," she says.
"I was writing from the future, from the hope I had for the future. It was almost like I was telling myself everything was going to be OK."
"De Dónde Eres" is also notable for the fact that it's the first time Cordero has written an album entirely in Spanish. Her bandmates - including her husband, Chris Verene, on drums; Omar Akil Little on trumpet and keys; and Eric Eble on bass - don't speak Spanish. Cordero presents the songs to them first, and as they get closer to recording them, she'll share translations of the lyrics. Cordero says it almost feels unnecessary, though. "I've often been told that you get the mood of my songs, even if you don't speak Spanish, which is really important to me," she says.
And if anyone still wants to know where she's from, Cordero will give an answer that's as elusive and eclectic as her career.
"I'm from nowhere. I don't have a place," she says. "I'm just me, a person in the world. I'm from my memories."
© Copyright 2012, New York Times Syndicate
