Arts & Entertainment

Reggaeton star Yandel shows romantic side with “Meditar”

By Alicia Civita

Miami, Mar 11 (efe-epa) .- Puerto Rican recording artist Yandel has made a 180-degree turn with “Meditar,” a love song that steers clear of pop music and instead takes the slowest and most romantic elements of the urban sub-genres and combines them with sounds reminiscent of meditation chimes.

“I felt the need to make music that would represent the moment I’m at now in my life and that would put people in a state where they could enjoy love for all life, and that they could dedicate to their partner, to their family,” the 44-year-old Yandel said in an interview with Efe from his recording studio in Orlando, Florida, where he has lived for the past nine years.

“Meditar” is the first single from his upcoming album, which “will keep offering unexpected things,” the artist promised.

Yandel, who has spent the past year of the pandemic with his wife and children, said he is hesitant about sharing his experience because it has been “too positive, and I know that there are many people who have had, and are having, a really tough time.”

During the months of confinement in 2020, he and his long-time collaborator, Juan Moreira, the other half of the famed reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel duo, decided to put on hold an album that had been set to hit the market.

The album was to have been released “as part of a tour and that’s something we couldn’t do and still can’t do now,” he explained.

Yandel said that gave him an opportunity to release “Quien Contra Mi 2,” a sequel to his like-named debut album of 17 years ago, as well as to find the artistic space to “create another type of music and experiment a little.”

That was the genesis of “Meditar” (Meditate), a song inspired by the mind and body exercise that he has practiced for years and also fuses with prayer in his own personal style.

“It’s very important to me,” he said, adding that “something I learned from my father is that your mind can make you sick.”

The video accompanying the song was filmed in the mountains of the state of North Carolina, where the recording artist spent his most recent winter vacation. “Everything there was so peaceful, so beautiful, that I felt it was the perfect place to do the visual part of ‘Meditar,'” he said.

The simple footage of Yandel by himself and occasionally surrounded by snow, are a notable departure from the steamy images associated with reggaeton, the genre that he himself says made him a “legend.”

“Meditar” reveals the discipline of an artist who refused to go down the heavily traveled path of “reggae pop” and instead embrace his more romantic side.

“I included pop sounds at times, but I wanted to keep my voice clean and not clog up the song,” he said.

The rest of the album, which still has no release date, will be a musical journey, “just like life.” Yandel said, adding that he wants listeners to find in his music songs suitable to all different situations and states of mind.

“There’ll be reggaeton and twerking, but also music for other moments,” he said. EFE-EPA

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