Laguna Pai returns with more reggae and shares his horror story: how they lost their phonographic rights

If we want to talk about contemporary Peruvian reggae, Pai Lagoon It is one of the first bands that crosses our mind. Since its founding in 2008, they have positioned themselves as one of the groups that set the standard for the genre. They were just young people who wanted to make music and they got carried away by the melody of roots reggae bands like Culture or Tierra Sur while they played together for hours.

“It was unintentional –wanting–, the truth. We were friends from the neighborhood who got together to play, we just relaxed ‘throwing pai’ in La Laguna de La Molina. At the same time, around those years, the reggae bands that we had been listening to since we were fourteen started to arrive, and we were delighted with that. We did some covers of these groups and we even already composed our own songs of the genre”, say Mariano Palacios, Salo Langberg and Gabriela Bonifaz. And it is that, at the beginning of the ’10s, there was a kind of musical boom, which, in the words of the press, “seemed like a reggae band was emerging every weekend”. Unfortunately, most of these bands were short-lived, as over the years this type of music lost ground among young audiences.

However, Pai Lagoon he knew how to stay on his feet, and today, they celebrate the twelfth anniversary of their first album: “Babylon Kulture”, a set of songs with nods to rock that meant a before and after in their career as a reggae band, including hymns like Politikanto or Libertad, whose lyrical content was always linked to social issues. “Historically, the reggae It has always been political, and in our case, being Peruvian musicians, it is curious that our lyrics have inadvertently been able to adapt to the context despite the fact that they were not written with that intention.Mariano adds.

The price of the fame?

This acid musical style on the Peruvian scene turned “Babylon Kulture” in one of the best albums of that year; because their innovative sound led them to tour both national and international stages. However, the unexpected level of fame at such a young age also became his biggest disadvantage, since the contract with his record label did not grant them the phonographic rights to his songs.

“We make very hasty decisions within our innocence. We were young, we didn’t have much experience or ambition. We thought that opportunity would present itself in a certain way and it didn’t; so it was very difficult for us to walk away from that record when we decided to get out of that contract. We had to wait ten years to reconnect with Kultura Babylon, all because they didn’t advise us from the beginning”, they explain. A situation that has similarities with what happened with Taylor Swift and the rights to her recordings.

Despite everything, their songs transcended into the minds of many young people, who, like them, wanted the world to be a better place. For this reason, as part of the celebration for its twelfth year of musical debut, the band relaunched one of its most representative songs: “Libertad”, together with the great Pochi Marambio, singer of the emblematic Peruvian reggae band Tierra Sur; and the rapper ACO, recognized in Latin America for his lyrics and for his growth in recent years.

“We are very happy with the result, because we have used the original tracks of the song, joining them with the voices of our guests.”, they indicate. This new version brings together three generations of artists in order to spread the main message of Laguna Pai: “The song pays tribute to perseverance and resilience. Using physical metaphors, he promotes freedom of mind that burns through lies and propaganda. Thus also freeing the soul. The idea is to make it clear that in the face of difficulty or failure, we learn and continue working for our dreams, dreams of love and freedom.”, Mariano concludes.