Dominican artist Rita Indiana has returned with an explosive new video, “Como un dragón” (“Like a Dragon”), that sees her in an extraterrestrial world. With this latest release, the singer-performer-songwriter also known as La Montra, is announcing her comeback, ready to take over with a fusion of rap lyrics over metal rock sounds and urbano flow. The single is the first song to be released from the upcoming album Mandinga Times —produced by Eduardo “Visitante” Cabra” known for being part of the duo Calle 13— her first album in ten years since the critically acclaimed El Juidero.
“This first single is a good introduction to the album. It has a lot of metal but the framework is a dembow. There is a darkness cloaked in comedy. It has layers of Caribbean folklore and electronica,” Indiana said in a press release. “The result reflects my admiration for the theatricality of bands such as Os Mutantes, Aramis Camilo and Iron Maiden.”
Indiana is a genre- and gender-bending artist, whose previous single “El Castigador” released in 2017, became a sort of anthem during the protests that shook the Dominican Republic in February following canceled elections and corruption allegations. Indiana’s previous songs and album re-imagined Dominican folkloric fusion sounds, turning the artist into a pioneer who created her own lane.
The visual for this latest work was directed by Puerto Rican filmmaker Noelia Quintero, who says the video was also inspired by Puerto Rico after Hurricane María.
“In ‘Como un dragón,’ I mixed the trauma of post-Hurricane María, German expressionist cinema and an avalanche of content gathered over the past 10 years to create a universe of paper and 3D animation,” Quintero said. “In this universe, living beings coexist with lethal technology which La Montra develops in her musical lab in this new album.”
Indiana begins the song with the line “Suena la sirena, regresó La Montra pa’ comérselos de cena” (“Sound the alarm, ‘La Montra’ is back to eat them for dinner”), and later she adds, “Por letra no te preocupe/Que yo soy mi propia escuela/En lo que tú sacate un coro/Yo escribí 5 novelas” (“Don’t worry about words, I’m in my own lane, while you put out a chorus, I wrote 5 novels”). She’s flexing her lyrical muscle —something that has always marked the award-winning novelist’s artistic endeavors— and announcing that while this may seem like a return, she’s never truly stopped creating cutting-edge work.
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Amanda Alcántara is the Digital Media Editor at Futuro Media. She tweets from @YoSoy_Amanda.
