Meet Yoán Moreno | Musician-Scholar

We had the good fortune of connecting with Yoán Moreno and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yoán, career-wise, where do you want to be in the end?
My end goal is to unify all the practices of my life in one physical space. A space that would be, simultaneously, a music studio, a classroom, a performance space, and a writing space.

As it stands, I have become known to different people over the past 15-or-so years for the several things I do in my life: music, drumming, teaching, researching, translating, and writing. But there has often been no overlap in the people who know me for each thing, so, for instance, a student of mine will have no idea when I release a record with my group, Copán. Similarly, an audience member at a record-release show will see me playing drums but will likely have never read one of my translations, say, for a work by [NAME] Publications or for an ICA Miami catalog.

The issue is not so much that I want to be “seen” as a complex figure, but rather that I want all these people who value one form of my production to see the connections with the others. The last Copán record, Tiempo, comida de los inmortales (2021), for example, came with a 150-page digital book that involved a great deal of research and writing in multiple languages. But even in the best case (of dual engagement), the same person may have missed an article about Miami I published in LAist the year before, “Who Invited Miami” (2020), which itself became the name of an archival project on my fellow Miamians, now in the form of a YouTube channel.

The connections between all my forms of output run deep. I think unifying all of this in one physical space will make these connections clearer between the people that know me as X, Y, or Z, and thus work to build a thicker community around these ideas and works. I know spaces like these exist because I have been in at least four: [NAME] Publications in Miami, Paws Music Academy in Los Angeles, Neverlands in Brooklyn, and Casa Ameyal in Miami. These are the kinds of spaces where a sense of fluidity and D.I.Y. ethos allow people to learn and express many different (often complementary) things at once. I think it elevates us to experience things in concert, especially in a world where we are being pushed further and further into isolation and compartmentalization.

Truth be told, if my fiancée, who would in that future be my wife, incorporated her own art practice of craft, mixed-media, ceramics, and music into that space as well, it would be even more ideal. I envision it as the place my children would grow up in. Something like the “family shop,” where they could come and go as they please.

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
Though the sonic projects and music I make take many different forms (as a random selection of any five Navaja Lenta records will show) I can explain the core of my music by talking about my group Copán, which is where I have always put my best work.

As an introductory note, Copán (est. 2011) is the instrumental collaboration between myself and Jordan Chymczuk-Sol, who is like a brother to me. It would be fair to categorize us as a kind of post-punk group, but our rhythms reach back into the Caribbean where our families originate, so there is less an element of odd-time than there is one of danceability. A friend of ours refers to it as afro-punk. The music itself is based (in hindsight) on a conscious and subconscious process of creolization, which, to simplify, is a kind of mixing. In the history of Miami and the Caribbean, this process is so deep that I am often shocked by the parts of it that I have been blind to, things that have worked their way into the mix without me actively trying. For example, about five years ago, I learned the main bell pattern for an Afro-Cuban rhythm called “Makuta,” after being taught the tumba (lowest conga drum) part at a rumba, only to realize that the same bell rhythm constituted the entire bridge section of a Copán song called “Hindi Tapos Na Sirkulo” (which roughly means “unfinished circle” in Tagalog) written way back in 2011, many years prior. That rhythm, associated with the Palo rhythms in Cuba, which I now also know is commonly referred to as the “cinquillo” pattern, and which also drives a lot of Haitian music, had come out in a song of ours nearly a decade before I became conscious of it as a rhythmic structure in many Caribbean musics. That’s the thing about Copán at the level of definition, and the process of creolization moreover, you don’t know what’s in it, even when you think you do. But none of this matters as much, as the simple feeling of groove and the intensity of energy we pour into rooms when we play live. It’s instrumental music for your body, plain and simple.

Ironically at the moment, in 2024, Copán finds itself in the position of being simultaneously at its artistic peak and professional nadir. We had begun working on Copán as a trio beginning in 2011, in Miami, but later as a duo moved the group to New York, and then Los Angeles. In all that time, our skill only improved. And for a time during those years I had pragmatically let go of certain DIY ideals which I had learned at home and in the punk scene, and started to take Instagram content creation seriously, sell t-shirts, and record professionally in studios, all of which led, in one way or another, to better shows, more connections and playing the III Points festival in Miami and playing a few solo showcases.

But the pandemic changed a lot. During 2021, I moved back to Miami to pursue a PhD as a reaction to a disastrous economic situation for me, in which my Master’s Degree was not even enough to protect me from a university layoff, and Copán became a bi-costal project, which has slowed down productivity, but not performance power. Around this time, a lot of other bands began leaning harder into the digital services, posting more visual content, live streaming shows, releasing singles, opening patreon accounts, and so on. Ironically for us, due to my radical ideals on artistic expression, two weeks before the pandemic broke out in the US, I had forsworn social media because I was going to dedicate 2020 to cultivating a real-life-only audience for us in Los Angeles, based on the success we had begun to have in 2019 with being invited and integrated into particular scenes in East and South East Los Angeles. We had found our audience there.

But with the venues closed, no idea how long the pandemic would last, and committed to rejecting social media, I essentially committed a “professional” suicide. I put the word professional in quotes because I am able to make a living through all of my other channels without social media, so I still don’t buy the necessity of social media, though I am not blind to how well it works for my infinitely-more-visible peers. In any case, I was willing to take the gamble and bet that our real-life presence––not only as performers, but on myself as a community member, as a show-goer, as a merch purchaser, in addition to some unorthodox internet practices, such as my “LTRS” to our mailing list that later became part of a book––would build us a larger audience. And the gamble seemed to be paying off, but suddenly, we were quarantined and locked down.

An entire year and a half passed without (official, sanctioned) live shows in LA. So, as the leader of the group, I turned back to what I knew: DIY. Our most recent record, Tiempo, Comida de los inmortales (2021) was written and recorded entirely at my home at the time in South Central, LA. This record is the best place to start with Copán’s music as it has the most developed writing, with the unfortunate caveat of demo-quality production. That was just the reality of recording an album on GarageBand, with one mixer, and a few subpar microphones, at home during that time. But if you put that record on, and crank the volume, it will certainly serve as a record of the rhythmic adventures, some traditional references, some novel adaptations and thoughts, inside of an aggressive punk approach that Copán is known for. But there is simply no substitute for the live experience.

So today, and from the twin bases of Miami and Los Angeles, Copán stands performance-ready with a strong catalog, a story, an aura of explosive energy that most closely resembles a band like Zeta, with whom we have played. People are asking us when we will play again, but no one is offering to book us, likely because they don’t know we still exist due to our limited internet presence (our music is only on Bandcamp, and I only have a personal instagram @damnyoanchillout from where I occasionally post about Copán.)

Not to worry, though, I’m steadily working on Copán. I have a set list for our next performance. We are just waiting on Jordan to visit Miami to put everything back in motion.

Please tell us more about your art. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?

For around twenty years now––since about the age of twelve––I have been producing two kinds of art that I call “escritos de ojo” (eye-writing) and “escritos de oído” (ear-writing). I came up with these terms in my teens as a basic distinction between literary and musical production––between, let’s say, my poems and my songs––in order to title the folders on my desktop. And while I have entire novels sitting in my computer, and published articles on the internet, I’m only going to talk about my music here, as my music is quite literally the reason I do everything else in my life. Everything I do is to ensure that I can play drums, that I can write, record, and perform music, because that is the only time me and the people watching are seeing the same person. (It’s the only place Yoán and me are the same.)

The fact of the matter is I can tell you what I need to with a different set of terms––the two names I work under: Navaja and Copán.

Navaja (short for Navaja Lenta) lives in the ear-writing folder. In fact, Navaja is subdivided there into 25 other folders, one for each record I have self-released on Bandcamp since 2011. Navaja is my experimental zone that I call (on Bandcamp) “a display of sorts, assembling itself at the limits of repeat abeyance.” Each record in the Navaja catalog has a particular story as it was made at a particular juncture of location, equipment, idea, and mood. Some of these records are musical, others are archival, and others still are literary and noisy. The first category is the most complex as the music comes out as anything from the melancholy guitar of “4 Variations of my Dead Dog” (2014) to the washier electronic “Irnos” (2014), to the diabolically dark “unfolding” (2016), to the bipolar, guitar-and-bass driven “The Dumb Covered in Oaths” (2020).

And then there are the archival-style records like “Diario Insomne” (2019), which is a mix of field recordings from my life and travels through Miami, Mexico City, Los Angeles, New York, and Havana, or “Desenlace” (2021), where I memorialize my deceased grandfather, cutting up a backyard conversation I recorded in which he gives advice, tells jokes, and through which—for me at least—he lives.

And there are still what I call the “sonic novels”: “Francisco” (2015), “Severo Infeliz” (2016), and “Angels (Impaled of Concrete)” (2018) are three such records on which a long story, or multiple stories, are performed and manipulated sonically. On “Francisco” and “Angels” I focused as much on the oral delivery as the noisy atmosphere, while for “Severo” I worked out a three-way split narration that’s tied to the panning of voices in the mix.

Like I said, Navaja is my zone of experimentation, a project that has actually taught me that there is no smooth division between eye-writing and ear-writing. But it is a project that has lived online. Actually, when I’ve played live as Navaja, I haven’t played any of these 25 albums, but rather a whole unrecorded album from 2015 called “Una Nube Muy Baja” that simply only exists inside my body, but can’t come out without my drums, a midi-controller keyboard, my laptop, and a looper pedal. And this—this lack of performance as Navaja—is due to the fact that I have given nearly every ounce of my energy to the project I have in collaboration with Jordan Chymczuk-Sol––and this brings me to my second term––called Copán.

As an artist, Copán is what I am primarily known for. Beginning in 2011, and originally a trio––rest in peace, Anthony, I think about you often––Copán put out two records in Miami, “Performance” and “Aire” (2013) before moving to New York as a duo (2013-2016) where we released “The Outskirts” (2015), and then onto Los Angeles (2016-2021), where we released “Guaguantecno” (2018) and “Tiempo, comida de los inmortales” (2021).

These albums are the records of Copán’s at least ten years of slow touring, production, development, and refinement. My role in Copán is essentially that of the engine––if I don’t produce, it stops. If I don’t talk to people, we don’t play anywhere. I am the drummer and the main composer. But, even with that, I can’t step on stage alone and play a Copán set. My brother, Jordan, is the guitarist, who writes his own parts into this world of drums, bass, synths, and so on, that I present to him. At times we dialogue, at times we jam: something always emerges, something I take back home to work on, to place, or make room for, in the sound stream in the laptop that we perform with/against.

Some people think of Copán as post-punk, as prog-punk, as latin-punk, and still others (most accurately, historically and rhythmically, in a diasporic sense) as afro-punk. Copán is instrumental music, music for your body. (Music that you can later delight or frustrate your brain with when you attempt to play it yourself.) Copán is the noise-drenched, punk-oriented music of two Miamians who are consciously and unconsciously rhythmically grounded equally in the binary thrashing of America and the polyrhythmic dancing of the Caribbean. If you listen (loud, always loud) to “Tiempo, comida de los inmortales” (2021), you will understand what I mean: punk, songo, dub, Miami Bass, bembé, drum-n-bass, rock, hip-hop––the sonic world of our Miami. It will all be there.

But to see us play live is another story altogether.

Copán is its performance: Jordan and I aligned, on stage, with a stack of amplifiers between us, my drums in front of me, his pedals in front of him, and the useless microphones. Sometimes, when we’re all set up I’ll ask him if he’s ready, but sometimes I’ll just glance at him, and with a nod, something so electric will begin to take place that you might end up saying the best thing I ever heard anyone say just after the last note of our set, before the applause: “What the fuck just happened?”

All of this to say that to experience my art, there are two channels: the solitude of headphones in a dark bedroom for Navaja, the heat of the sweating bodies in a club for Copán, the two cries of my work.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My best friend is also the guitar player in my band Copán. So if Jordan were in town, we would be playing a show. The day of would look something like this.

First things first, Jordan, who is from Miami––from the same neighborhood as me actually––would already be familiar with lots of things and would want a good Cuban breakfast. It would be his call as the visitor, so we would likely end up somewhere nostalgic for him like La Carreta or Palacio de los Jugos. But I wouldn’t stop myself from suggesting a couple of hole-in-the-wall alternatives.

He would then likely either want to go hang out at the beach and chill out, or drive around the city to see what has changed. He’s a foodie, so he would likely have some place in mind to eat a big, late lunch.

After the late lunch and a coffee, we would get to work: head to the studio to pick up all the gear and then move out to whatever venue was hosting us for our sound check. In the actual past this venue has been Churchill’s, Bardot, Mana (for III Points), and Floyd, but in an alternative world could also have been Las Rosas, or Gramp’s. Regardless, as we waited for our set, we might walk around the neighborhood before our friends and fans began showing up, and we would have a couple of drinks as the place filled up. Then we would warm-up, head on stage, and play our asses off, doing what both of us know is the culmination of our friendship which is why all the details about what place we have lunch on this day don’t matter so much.

After the set we would stay at the venue, drinking, celebrating, and hanging out with friends, and, should the party continue, as it often does here in Miami, we would undoubtedly end up—after a pitstop to drop equipment off at the studio––at a bar like Seven Seas. And if we were lucky, it would be karaoke night and we and our partners would get a drunken turn singing hard songs and we wouldn’t all part ways until about 5 or 6 in the morning, a job well done in the company of loved ones.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I could talk about my musical development which has proceeded primarily through drums, performance, feeling, and community building, and, in parallel, my intellectual development, which has proceeded via books, institutions, solitude, awards, visions, and writings. But all of that can be seen in the bibliographies or heard in the records and videos.

And besides, all of that––things that began around the age of 12––would have been impossible without the foundation of my character that I can most clearly attribute to my abuelo Luis, my dad, Gean, and my mom, Lena.

Many, many other people—most especially my fiancée Sonya, who you must understand I see as my complement in this lifetime––both alive and dead, blood and stranger, inspire me as well, but, chronologically speaking, these are the three strongest of my “founders.” In a nutshell, they taught me my humanity. And the biggest debts must be acknowledged first.

From my abuelo Luis, I inherited a baseline warmth, optimism, and, in conversation, the skill of peaceful listening. I am referring to the feeling that anyone I am talking to is worth a follow-up question that focuses more on them, and that they are never my enemy by default. And that family, especially, because it is the unit of struggle (and therefore stress) in this lifetime should never be treated as “enemy.” Imperfect as I am, I can be pushed to yell, too. But on my best days, my abuelo’s wisdom stills me and I am able to take the screaming for what it is: stress, anger at this cruel world that is so full of shit, not at me. We are not enemies. He taught me that it was possible to feel a sting, but be unwounded by the words of someone in trouble. And for that there is no replacement. And without that interest in the word of the other, I can assure you I would have no reason for reading 1,000 page-long books, or asking my Spanish students to practice with me by telling me about their lives (in Spanish). Así que gracias, abuelo.

From my dad, I inherited a lot: art-making as a way of life, ambition, a spirit of collectivism and productive friendship, an utter disdain for superficiality, and an intelligence that allows me to conceptually build or destroy things very rapidly. But the most important of these is art-making and ambition. I knew a life in art was possible because I saw it every day, and I knew that it was anything but the “same shit different day” that everyone else in my family seemed to be experiencing, work-wise––that is, working for someone else, doing tasks that are meaningless to the development of your own life, important as the income they generate may be. Everything my dad does—his work, his friendships, his writings––all turn around the question of art. In my own life I have lived in three major cities, earned two degrees to date, because I have been orbiting furiously around two points––literature and music––which has created an immense amount of strain and joy, but I think I am getting close now to unifying them, to bringing literature and music into conversation through my PhD work. And that is where the bit on ambition comes in. See, my abuelo, like most other people in my family, would have been happy with me to be a good person, no matter if I had become a mechanic or a lifeguard. But that is simply not true for my father, who would see anything less than challenging myself at the highest levels (of which the PhD is the highest level, in academia), as a waste of my talent. And, despite the stress it produces, I am inclined to agree. I can do it, period. And without that attitude, I would never have been a part of over 50 records to date between my solo-projects, collaborations, and features (Copán, Navaja Lenta, Mute Issue, Síntoma, Remanso Negro, Jordan Chymczuk-Sol, Seizure Machine). So, thanks, dad.

Last but not least, from my mom I inherited both my sense of (matriarchal) providership, a strong sense of romantic love, and the passion––the tone and delivery––of my artistic and intellectual expression. My mom was already taking care of people and working before she had me at 19. She has always been matriarchal, in the sense that her providership and care extends beyond simply her own children and that she is respected as a leader and knower: people ask her for advice on how or where to do things, and she herself bakes cakes for my cousins’ birthdays, pays her mother-in-law’s cellphone, and might even bail her brother out of jail from time to time (if she isn’t mad at him for going to jail, which is also her matriarchal right). From her, I inherited this same sense of responsibility for people well beyond my “lot,” and I work hard for them on the faith that that providership is its own reward. My bandmates can attest to this, having delivered them safely to their doors personally in the middle of the night on most occasions even when it meant driving miles and miles beyond my own home. And my classmates might think the same, having elected me to represent them to the faculty meetings in our PhD program. Not even a recent trip to the ER in the middle of the night could stop the feeling in me that I had to go see the Chair to get the information and argue the student views to make up for the meeting I had missed in the hospital. The feeling of duty would never have subsided. Nor did I forget to bring flowers home to my fiancée, as this all happened on Valentine’s Day, and romantic love is something else I inherited from my mother. My mom, by her actions and her words regarding my father, instilled in me that same sense of strong commitment but through romantic love: I love my partner, period. As a duty. Through thick and thin. And the strength of this expression of love for that one special person, when I take a step back, is really no different than the force of my sentences when I write an article or the sound of my drums when I’m throwing down live. So, thanks, mom.

You could say I learned about love from three different perspectives from these three people. From my abuelo, how to receive in love; from my dad, how to distinguish what is real and worthy of love; from my mom, how to love by any means necessary.

Everyone else in my life has influenced me in some way—an invitation, a kind message, a music suggestion, etc. There is no end to the amount of things people have done for me and allowed me to do for them, or help them do for themselves. It’s all love for everyone.

Website: https://copan.bandcamp.com/album/tiempo-comida-de-los-inmortales

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/damnyoanchillout/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yo%C3%A1n-moreno-779105161/

Other: https://navajalenta.bandcamp.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkjnY6nJoHH1UyTj0mi3cJw

Image Credits
Angelo Antonio (orange wall photo)