Since: 2013
Core members: Nahuel Colazo, Ybán López Ratto, Moro, Braian, Desdel Barro, Retumb4, Aggromance, Brea, and art director Jusomor
Sounds like: “Mordida do Macaco” x HiedraH
Years ago, three film students wanted to dance. They went out from Monday to Sunday, looking to stay the deleterious effects of a harsh world on their queer bodies by moving until they felt like they had paralyzed the forces of bad. Eventually they refined their needs. They wanted a place where the politics of music could be placed front and center — without dropping the beat, of course. Melody Tayhana, Nahuel Colazo, and Ybán López Ratto started throwing parties in living rooms, then underground clubs, then spaces that actually passed the government’s stringent rules about where dancing can and cannot take place. (“HiedraH’s survival strategy was to leave the freedoms of clandestine spaces to enter more legal commercial spaces,” as López puts it. The decision is a source of ongoing conversation in the group.)
Throughout this process, they built what they call “el público bicha,” people who find like-minded emancipation on the dance floor. Eventually Tayhana landed a spot in the NAAFI collective and on international tours. HiedraH stayed in Buenos Aires, a party that refuses to shift focus away from its country’s struggles. Today, the event has a two-pronged reputation. On one hand, the members of HiedraH are recognized for their aggressive nocturnal soundtracks, spiked with political speeches, indigenous musical traditions, and robotized reggaeton. The HiedraH beat is about to get its own spotlight, a compilation of Latin American producers from Chile’s Alpha S to Brazil’s Pininga whose assembly and birth has taken years. Look for its international reputation to ratchet up a notch or two in the months to come.
But more importantly to the collective’s members, those who started off as dancers have picked up some of the responsibilities of community political leaders. HiedraH is part of a coalition of queer groups that crash the yearly Pride parade (read its manifesto here). They organize party caravans and protest dance parties in the street.
Ask HiedraH for a song that encapsulates the collective and they will give you “Mordida do Macaco,” a track that Tayhana, Aggromance, Lechuga Zafiro, and Braian composed during Buenos Aires’ turbulent summer, when the city erupted in protest against President Macri’s proposed labor reforms that would attack labor rights in a country that has traditionally been a union stronghold. Returning from the conflicts between law enforcement and citizenry, the crew put together this palpably furious, eminently danceable track that will sound great coming out of their speakers at 4 a.m. — real bicha hours. The single’s art commemorates one of their heroes, an unmasked Argentine launching a homemade mortar at riot cops. HiedraH is a party where one loses oneself, but never forgets.
HiedraH believes that, though all nightlife is political, not all of it is radical. Constructing a forward-thinking motion with HiedraH, however, is of the utmost importance. López Ratto says, “It’s a place to protect yourself and be able to listen to the music that we felt was ours.”
