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Speaker 1: What does a bluebird mean for me?

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Speaker 2: I think, to me in a simple way, it means

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Speaker 2: my own expression and creativity and ability to be myself

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Speaker 2: in the world through through my own voice. When the

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Speaker 2: bluebird is singing is when I'm creating, when I am

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Speaker 2: expressing myself, and when that isn't happening, it's almost like

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Speaker 2: the bluebird is trapped in my own head and cannot

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Speaker 2: really sing.

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Speaker 3: From futuro Media and pr X, It's Latino Usa. I'm

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Speaker 3: Maria no Josa Today guitarist and composer has seen that

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Speaker 3: clue say yes on the making of our first bilingual musical, Assuit.

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Speaker 3: In a theater industry dominated by white men, finding a

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Speaker 3: musical with an all female creative team behind it is

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Speaker 3: pretty rare. But find me in a bilingual musical where

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Speaker 3: the characters speak Spanglish is even more unusual. Assul the

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Speaker 3: musical is both of those things.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for the andro oxion.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry about nikon Fuki.

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Speaker 3: Asul follows the journey of a woman named Bluebird. She

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Speaker 3: leaves her home to travel to a new world, and

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Speaker 3: there she has a daughter, Rita. Rita becomes a composer

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Speaker 3: and through her music, she tries to reimagine the motherland

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Speaker 3: that she never knew. The musical's inspiration comes from a

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Speaker 3: concept album by an Argentinian musician, Hassinda cluse Yes. The

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Speaker 3: album was called El Pajaro Assoul the Bluebird, and it

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Speaker 3: was one of Jacintha's major projects after she left Argentina

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Speaker 3: more than a decade ago to study at Berkeley School

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Speaker 3: of Music in Boston. When her friend and Argentinian theater

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Speaker 3: director that Tianna Pandiani first listened to the album, she

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Speaker 3: immediately envisioned it as a musical on stage, but musicals

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Speaker 3: weren't one of Hassintha's main interests. Still, once that Tiana

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Speaker 3: introduced her to the world of musical theater, it was

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Speaker 3: impossible for Hassinda not to feel attracted to it. In

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Speaker 3: musical theater, the music moves the story and it's as

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Speaker 3: important as any dialogue or action. It reveals character, motivations

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Speaker 3: and the real hidden intentions. It's as emotions that can't

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Speaker 3: be expressed with words. Jacintha and Tatiana then teamed up

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Speaker 3: with Turkish writer Melis Akir to bring Asoul the Musical

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Speaker 3: to life. The three artists embarked on a deeply collaborative project,

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Speaker 3: and after seven years of hard work, the creators of

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Speaker 3: ASU released an EP with songs from the musical. They

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Speaker 3: celebrated with two concerts at fifty four Below and at

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Speaker 3: Joe's Pub, which are a big deal in the New

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Speaker 3: York theater community. Every day is a hustling and wabo.

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Speaker 1: Let me show you around.

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Speaker 2: I was born in this time.

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Speaker 3: Latino Broadway stars like Mandy Gonzalez, Robin de Hissus, and

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Speaker 3: Anna Villafagne performed and that helped build a buzz around

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Speaker 3: the musical. Meanwhile, Jacinta is now embracing her passion for

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Speaker 3: musical theater and she's working on a new musical commission

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Speaker 3: at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Also, she's written music

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Speaker 3: for the animated musical series Hell of a Boss. Here's

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Speaker 3: Asul's composer and co creator, Jacinta Husey.

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Speaker 2: Yes, my name is Jacinta cluse Yes, I am a composer,

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Speaker 2: a songwriter, guitarist, and I am the composer and co

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Speaker 2: lyricist of the musical Asul. I would say he became

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Speaker 2: a musician when I was eleven years old. There was

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Speaker 2: a lot of music in my home growing up in

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Speaker 2: Buenos Aiele and Sargentina. No one in my family was

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Speaker 2: a musician, but there was always a lot of love

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Speaker 2: for music at home. Actually, my dad was the one

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Speaker 2: who asked me if I wanted to start learning guitar,

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Speaker 2: just because a friend of his was a guitarist who

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Speaker 2: was giving lessons, and so I just fell in love

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Speaker 2: with the guitar immediately. I remember the very guitar lesson

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Speaker 2: I had. I just played an emin or chorn and

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Speaker 2: that blew me away. I couldn't believe I could create sound,

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Speaker 2: and I hadn't had any previous experience with instruments.

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Speaker 1: It was so clear.

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Speaker 2: It was like I played a few chords and that

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Speaker 2: just really got me into it.

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Speaker 1: The guitar has been my main instrument.

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Speaker 2: I play cher ango also, which is an instrument from

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Speaker 2: the Andes. I also sing play a little bit of piano,

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Speaker 2: but still the guitar has always been like my rock.

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Speaker 2: I went to music school in Bunosides and I was

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Speaker 2: just in love with the guitar. All I wanted to

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Speaker 2: do was play guitar, and then I applied to Berkeley

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Speaker 2: College of Music in Boston, thinking it would be impossible

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Speaker 2: for me to go from Monosidas. I got a scholarship

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Speaker 2: and I went to Berkeley mainly to study jazz guitar.

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Speaker 2: At the time, I was really into jazz and that

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Speaker 2: was something that I felt I needed to come to

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Speaker 2: the US to really study. I came here and being

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Speaker 2: far from home made me reconnect more with my music

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Speaker 2: from my country, and through that process I started learning

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Speaker 2: a lot more about Argentinian for chloric music, and that

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Speaker 2: got me into writing my own songs. I heard this

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Speaker 2: story from many musicians that only when they left their

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Speaker 2: country is that they really got into the music from

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Speaker 2: their own country.

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Speaker 1: So that happened to me.

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Speaker 2: When I was younger, a teenager, I was really into

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Speaker 2: rock and bands like Pink Floyd, led Zeppelin, the Beatles.

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Speaker 2: That was my music, that was my thing, and only

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Speaker 2: when I left Argentina. Is almost like the nostalgia for

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Speaker 2: my home made me connect with that music. On my

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Speaker 2: way here, I was listening to my first album at

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Speaker 2: Bararosul to remember and get myself in that world and

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Speaker 2: that experience and the story of that album is that

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Speaker 2: I was a student at Berkeley, I was about to

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Speaker 2: end my undergrad and I did this trip to Mexico

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Speaker 2: with my brother. This was like probably ten years ago.

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Speaker 2: We were traveling just my brother and I all throughout Mexico,

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Speaker 2: completely improvising and going to wherever the winds would take us.

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Speaker 2: And we arrived at this beach. I think it's Plaja

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Speaker 2: Condida hidden Beach, which is not really a beach. It's

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Speaker 2: like some random place that we arrived somehow, and this

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Speaker 2: melody came to my mind, which was save Lobardy, which

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Speaker 2: means the bluebird is about to fly away. And I

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Speaker 2: wrote this beginning of a song with that, and I

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Speaker 2: had no idea what it meant or where it came from.

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Speaker 2: And so when I got back to Boston, I did

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Speaker 2: some research around what this bluebird could mean, and I

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Speaker 2: found this story called the Parasul the Bluebird by rown Dario,

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Speaker 2: which is about this young poet who says that has

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Speaker 2: a bluebird trapped in his mind and that bluebird can

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Speaker 2: only sing when he's writing his verses, and a lot

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Speaker 2: of people make fun of him because no one really understands.

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Speaker 2: He's very misunderstood, and sometimes he feels like this bluebird

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Speaker 2: cannot fly unless he's creating his verse. And the story

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Speaker 2: is a very tragic one because it ends with suicide.

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Speaker 2: He leaves a note saying, now my bluebird can fly away.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so I'll go back as.

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Speaker 2: That was very moving to me, that metaphor of the

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Speaker 2: bluebird in one's mind and what that means for different people.

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Speaker 2: Now that I think about it with some distance, it

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Speaker 2: connects a lot to mental health and to what are

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Speaker 2: those things that we have in our minds that we

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Speaker 2: can only let out in specific ways, especially as artists.

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Speaker 2: That really inspired me. So my whole al became a

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Speaker 2: concept album based on that story.

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Speaker 1: What does a bluebird mean for me? And this is

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Speaker 1: something that we.

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Speaker 2: Talk a lot about with my collaborators in my music Lasul,

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Speaker 2: with Tadiana and my list and I think, to me,

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Speaker 2: in a simple way, it means my own expression and

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Speaker 2: creativity and ability to be myself in the world through

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Speaker 2: through my own voice. When the bluebird is singing is

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Speaker 2: when I'm creating, when I am expressing myself, and when

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Speaker 2: that isn't happening, it's almost like the bluebird is trapped

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Speaker 2: in my own head and cannot really sing.

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Speaker 1: I could have.

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Speaker 2: Never imagined that my album and Back as We would

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Speaker 2: be an inspiration for a musical. I was not a

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Speaker 2: musical theater person at all. That was not a thing

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Speaker 2: in Argentina. Obviously, it is a thing that in my

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Speaker 2: own home. It was never a thing. I had no influences,

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Speaker 2: no background, anything, And even during Berkeley that thought didn't

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Speaker 2: even cross my mind. When I was still in Boston,

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Speaker 2: my good friend Tatiana Pandiani, who's the director of a

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Speaker 2: soul Kobokri with my list aker and co lyricist, I

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Speaker 2: started working with her in her thesis production at Columbia University.

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Speaker 1: She was a graduate student there. I got into.

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Speaker 2: That play then became a musical, and I was traveling

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Speaker 2: from Boston to New York to play guitar in that production,

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Speaker 2: and that whole experience made me fall in love with

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Speaker 2: the musical theater.

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Speaker 1: I was like, what is this?

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Speaker 2: How cool is it that music is serving a purpose

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Speaker 2: to tell a story and the collaboration aspect of it.

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Speaker 2: So I then moved to New York about a year

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Speaker 2: after that, and I released my album at Parosula and

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Speaker 2: Tatiana came to see the release concert and she had

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Speaker 2: the vision of this album being an inspiration for a musical.

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Speaker 2: So I shared the story with her and together we

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Speaker 2: started creating the first steps of what us would become.

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Speaker 2: That Tiana is an incredible director who also has the

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Speaker 2: vision of story and crafting a story, and she's a

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Speaker 2: writer in her own rights as well. So the first

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Speaker 2: step in creating as well was right after Taiana brought

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Speaker 2: this idea to me. We started by doing a lot

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Speaker 2: of research, finding a lot of other stories and poems

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Speaker 2: that would connect to El Pajarosoul and we started creating

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Speaker 2: our own arc of the story. This was for the

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Speaker 2: first act, and her first step was getting actors together

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Speaker 2: in a room and starting to explore with some ideas

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Speaker 2: and started to create some music and develop some characters.

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Speaker 1: We hate to please and wear a smile gosa. I love, yes, love,

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Speaker 1: and I always remember those days.

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Speaker 2: That's very playful days of getting together in the room,

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Speaker 2: read stories, I would teach some music, we would try

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Speaker 2: things out, we would play around with different scenes, and

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Speaker 2: we had a presentation at the end where we felt

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Speaker 2: we had something. We had a very strong core which

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Speaker 2: still remains the same, which is the Bluebird. But still

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Speaker 2: at that time, the main character Bluebird was a man,

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Speaker 2: and in the new version of the show, blue Bird

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Speaker 2: is a woman. So at the time It was very

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Speaker 2: much a place of discovery and getting to share with

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Speaker 2: a few people and getting to see if the.

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Speaker 1: Arc of the stories that we had chosen would work together.

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Speaker 2: There was a moment when we felt like we really

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Speaker 2: need a playwright to join the team and to start

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Speaker 2: crafting the scenes and the characters in a more detailed way.

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Speaker 2: Melie Acker was already a very good friend of us

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Speaker 2: and one of my favorite playwrights, so it was a

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Speaker 2: no brainer to bring her in and the three of

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Speaker 2: us continue crafting the story together. You always thought I

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Speaker 2: could do this, So this story for us is very personal.

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Speaker 2: All three of us are artists and writers, and the

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Speaker 2: story of leaving our homeland to come to the new

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Speaker 2: world is a story that all three of us experience,

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Speaker 2: which is a story of Bluebird, and then the story

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Speaker 2: of Rita in Act too, whose Bluebird's Daughter, is a

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Speaker 2: story that we have also experienced in our own way,

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Speaker 2: which is finding our own voice and our own story

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Speaker 2: in the place where we're at. Spanish for me is

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Speaker 2: my language. I always wrote songs in Spanish. My album

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Speaker 2: was written in Spanish. I'm an the story starts in

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Speaker 2: the homeland, said in a world of magic realism, but

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Speaker 2: it's a place where people speak Spanish. So we always

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Speaker 2: felt very strongly about this being the language of these characters,

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Speaker 2: and this also this being the language of so many

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Speaker 2: people in the US, and this story of generations of

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Speaker 2: travelers and immigrants that come to this country and how

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Speaker 2: language survives through generations or gets lost through generations. In

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Speaker 2: all the development steps of US so far and working

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Speaker 2: with actors, we always found that everyone's relationship to Spanish

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Speaker 2: is so different and so complicated. In cases where someone

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Speaker 2: is born in the US but their parents were from

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Speaker 2: from a South American, Latin America and country and they

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Speaker 2: have this very personal and sometimes complicated relationship with what

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Speaker 2: language is, where the music comes from, the music styles

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Speaker 2: they are supposed to be sung in Spanish, so we

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Speaker 2: always felt like we have to protect that for the show.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, God moment versus.

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Speaker 2: In terms of the songs, I would say it's like

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Speaker 2: a medley of different pieces of different songs from the

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Speaker 2: album that have made it into the musical. I think

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Speaker 2: right now my favorite song is the opening number. So

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Speaker 2: Le Domingo is a song that I just wrote with

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Speaker 2: my guitar and it sounded like a very small song

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Speaker 2: that it was just like a guitar and a voice,

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Speaker 2: and through the development became this like epic musical number.

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Speaker 2: So last year we recorded an EP which is a

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Speaker 2: four song cast album or cast EP that you can

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Speaker 2: listen to and Spotify, titled a Soul, which we chose

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Speaker 2: four songs that felt very important to the show. And

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Speaker 2: we had an incredible honor and joy of working with

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Speaker 2: Alex Lacamore and with Kurt Crowley on this music. We

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Speaker 2: really developed the arrangements together and work with an incredible

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Speaker 2: team of musicians and actors and sounds team. And once

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Speaker 2: we had that it be ready and we were going

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Speaker 2: to bring it out to the world, we really wanted

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Speaker 2: to celebrate that and to be able to share more

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Speaker 2: of the music with an audience. So we had the

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Speaker 2: opportunity to do it two times at fifture Widow and

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Speaker 2: that jose pab both were sold out.

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Speaker 1: Give it up for Anna and has seen that clusage

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Speaker 1: as co creator and composer of music Joe's Pop concert

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Speaker 1: was very special.

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Speaker 2: I said, I'll just hop on stage and add some

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Speaker 2: extra layers of guitar and it was so fun and beautiful.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I admire everyone that.

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Speaker 2: Is on that stage so much and being able to

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Speaker 2: play with them just felt very moving and to sense

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Speaker 2: the audience reaction, Yeah, it was super dreamy, and both

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Speaker 2: shows leftness with a very exciting feeling of this music

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Speaker 2: really reaching a lot of people and in a very

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Speaker 2: moving way, with a lot.

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Speaker 1: Of folks coming.

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Speaker 2: To us asking us when will you do the full

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Speaker 2: show we want to see. Writing and musical is a

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Speaker 2: very very long process, especially when you're writing an original

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Speaker 2: musical that is not based on existing IP or on

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Speaker 2: existing story or book or film. I never thought it

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Speaker 2: would be this complex when it started, and is this

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Speaker 2: process that requires a lot of milestones and different steps

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Speaker 2: in order to get to the end, which I.

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Speaker 1: Think is never finished.

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Speaker 2: I think we could rewrite it forever and ever, but

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Speaker 2: we feel that we're getting very.

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Speaker 1: Very close to our first production with the show.

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Speaker 2: I think it's so important for bilingual musicals to exist

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Speaker 2: and Broadway, just if you think of.

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Speaker 1: What the population in the US looks like, what New

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Speaker 1: York looks like.

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Speaker 2: And I have always experience from our audiences and from

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Speaker 2: people that came to see different concerts and steps of

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Speaker 2: the show, how many people have come to us to

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Speaker 2: tell us I really feel seen in this and I

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Speaker 2: didn't know this was possible. And if you think about it,

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Speaker 2: if you think about film and opera, bilingualism is not

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Speaker 2: such a controversial thing.

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Speaker 1: So I often.

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Speaker 2: Wonder when will the musical theater see in the US

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Speaker 2: catch up understand that it's just part of our culture

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Speaker 2: in this country.

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Speaker 3: That was composer Hassindak Russelles, co creator of Assoul the Musical.

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Speaker 3: For more information, check them out at Asul the Musical

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Speaker 3: on Instagram. This episode was produced by Max Martinez and

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Speaker 3: edited by Marta Martinez. No relation by the way. It

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Speaker 3: was mixed by j. J. Carubin. The Latino USA team

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Speaker 3: also includes Julia Carusso, Jessica Alis, Victoria Estrada, Rinaldo, Leanoz Junior,

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Speaker 3: Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Cruz, Luis Luna, Glorimad Marquez, Nor Saudi,

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Speaker 3: and Nancy Trucchillo. Benny Leiramidez is our co executive producer.

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Speaker 3: I'm your host and co executive producer Mariao Hosta join

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Speaker 3: us again on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll

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Speaker 3: check you out on Instagram and see you on YouTube,

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Speaker 3: on digs on, tweeted on all of them. A start approxima.

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Speaker 2: Baye Latino, USA is made possible in part by Druckenmiller Foundation,

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Speaker 2: Agnes Gund and the Heising Simons Foundation.

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Speaker 1: Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More at hsfoundation dot org