Our (hi)story

Paris, 2017. Alvaro Banderas, Pedro Hernandez and Lehna Sam meet for the first time in a bar. The two Chileans just arrived in the city of light after living in Germany, and want to embark on a new musical project. They want to integrate styles they played before while reconnecting with their Latin American roots. Lehna—of Breton origin— fell in love with Violeta Parra, Victor Jara and other Chilean musicians while living in magical Valparaiso. They decide to launch a project and interpret songs of Latin American folklore combining electric bass, classical guitar and the violin, the second voice of Lehna. Bajo Cielo is born.

The trio gives a couple of concerts in Paris. Latin Americans, French and others, are enchanted by the music, which they describe as beautiful and delicate, and at the same time powerful and with substance. The musicians are encouraged to record their first covers. The band expands its repertoire and explores Afro-Peruvian, Colombian and other rhythms from the southern cone; mixing them with jazz classics. New concerts, new audiences and the participation of percussionists such as the French Damien Stath, the German jazzman Sebastian Wolfgruber, and the Peruvian "Jaguar"—a well-known musician of the Parisian Latin circuit—secure the band’s consolidation

TANZANIE INDE

After a couple of years exploring and mixing styles, they find their own sound and compose their first songs. Pedro, used to compose jazz and rock, writes songs with the sound and rhythms of Bajo Cielo. In 2020, drummer and percussionist Nicolás Martinez joins the band, and they begin the arrangements of a new and rich repertoire that has already debuted in successful concerts. Now is the time to record and share this new art.

The original songs on this EP center on the universal and unifying nature of personal experience. The songs reflect first-person happenings such as the feelings arising when moving to a new home, or the view of a flying bird in today's threatened environment; the view of a lone walker in the post-pandemic empty streets, or the experience of being a child in different parts of the world. The latter is crystallized in the musicalization of a poem by Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral. This fusion encompasses diverse styles, from a French waltz to Southamerican rhythms, vocal arrangements and a variety of instruments. Professional guest musicians and an analog mix are the key ingredients that give this work its particular sound. The artwork of our first EP will be done by the Parisian illustrator Matthias Bourdelier, bringing our novel musical proposal to a true audiovisual concept.