Cordero’s frontwoman finally answers the question: de dónde eres?

By Jessica Galliart
Published: August 25th, 2008 | 2:50pm

For Ani Cordero, the question “Where are you from?” is an unusually complicated one that frequently yields varying, simplified answers: Atlanta, New York, and Arizona. But when fans or reporters ask the Puerto Rican–born vocalist-guitarist of Cordero this question, she knows they aren’t asking from what city she hails.

“Mostly when people ask me the question, they’re usually asking why I am singing in Spanish,” Cordero says. Cordero plays around with a few different answers that depend on the person asking the question. “Sometimes I don’t answer the question correctly,” she says. “I don’t answer the question they’re asking — I answer the question they want to ask me.”

“Sometimes I tell them Atlanta,” Cordero adds in reference to the band’s hometown. “They just look at me really frustrated. They look at me and ask me, ‘But, where are you from?’” This complex identity debate, combined with a series of personal tragedies, developed into the inspiration for the group’s fifth album, De donde eres (Bloodshot Records), or “Where are you from.”

Although Cordero defied genre boundaries between Latin rock and indie rock with their previous releases, De donde eres is the band’s first release sung entirely in Spanish, instead of the bilingual lyrics fans may be used to hearing from the group’s four previous albums. It’s also the first release that finds Cordero pulling back on their signature heavy-guitar and unapologetic indie-rock sound to focus on a softer, Latin-influenced sound that complements the album’s raw and intimate lyrics.

Change is nothing new to the band. Since forming in 1999, Cordero’s members have filed in and out of the group, until Cordero and drummer Chris Verene — always the core of the band — slimmed the revolving cast down to a lean foursome by permanently adding keyboardist Omar Akil and bassist Eric Eble when recording 2006’s En este momento, their first album with Chicago label Bloodshot Records.

Cordero says Eres tracks like “La Musica es la Medicina” (“the music is the medicine”) exemplify how different her work on this album is from Cordero’s past releases, because the circumstances the song was written under changed, as well.

The compositions Cordero created for Eres detail the trauma she and her family endured after her 6-month-old son contracted an illness. Cordero spent months quarantined in her New York City apartment with her son, unable to receive visitors but able to pick up her mother’s nylon-string guitar and begin writing. “For me being in the house, not being able to leave or receive visitors, you’re going to come out with a very different sound,” Cordero says.

The result is an album heavily laden with both sorrowful and therapeutic melodies. “This album is a reflection of where I was and what was most comforting to me at that time,” Cordero says, seemingly comfortable with the idea that although she is "from" many places, the new album ponders the periods of happiness, sadness, and reflections of the most important place.

“One of the things that I like when I write is recognizing that another human being is experiencing [the same thing] as me, and then I don’t feel so alone, and we’re all connected.”