Angélica Garcia has shared her new cumbia-inspired, avant-pop single “Juanita”, the track is available today via Partisan Records, The song is accompanied by a video string Angélica, and directed by Sonia Malfa, an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Puerto Rico, and explores liberation from restrictive gender roles through its dualling characters. Steeped in Angélica’s love for her culture and passions for visual poetry and storytelling, the black and white video further explores spirituality and Angélica’s Latin heritage.

“Your voice, the sound of stars/Not even the gods can draw you,” Angélica sings on “Juanita,” an expression of beauty in a song that also probes the chaos inherent in cycles of generational trauma, and the possibilities of breaking them. Or as Angélica puts it: “I wanted ‘Juanita’ to feel like the story of my life, but one that was also true in a past life. I wanted the song to have a never-ending quality.”

The track has its roots in 2020, as Angélica was sitting before an altar that she constructed in her bedroom, a culmination of her new inquiry into ancestral veneration: looking into the past to inform the present with familial knowledge. Raised by an Episcopal priest father in a traditional Latino family structure, Angélica has devoted her recent years to the process of deconstructing religion, spirit, heritage, and womanhood, confronting grief and healing.

On the production style and lyrical weight of the song, Angélica adds, “Many cumbias have lyrics about pain and longing… My intention was for the tension and confusion in the song to feel like remembering a past life. I wanted to capture what the shadow side of grief does to us. ”

2023, was a productive year for Garcia, who toured with Blonde Redhead, made her two video/track debut for Partisan, as well as releasing her single “El Que” remix from TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek.

Produced by Chicano Batman’s Carlos Arévalo, “Y Grito” and “El Que” marked Angélica’s first music sung entirely in Spanish, her native language, the one in which she learned to sing rancheras with her family as a child. It’s clear now Angélica has discovered and tapped into a fresh pop perspective, creating music that is searing and borderless, free of cultural confinement and challenging the notion that singing in English is a prerequisite for creating American music.