Colombian singer-songwriter Gusi is making his U.S. touring debut this spring with a stop at Chicago’s intimate Martyrs’ music venue.
The performance on March 26 will mark the Grammy-nominated singer’s first time bringing his tropical pop sound to the city.
“It’s one of the cities that I most want to get to know,” said the singer, formally known as Andrés Acosta Jaramillo.
“Gusi” is a nickname given to him as a child by his mother. Everyone calls him that now, he said.
“I started making my first demos, and I realized that Andrés didn’t belong to me,” he said. “Nowadays people call me Andrés and I have no idea if they are talking to me.”
On tour, he’ll be playing some of his most popular tracks and selections from his upcoming studio album, “Vallenato Social Club,” set to release on April 23, produced by Cuban American musician/film producer Emilio Estefan. The new album features one quintessential genre of Colombia, vallenato, which translates literally to “born in the valley.”
Gusi lives in Santa Marta, Colombia, a town that sits on the Caribbean Sea just underneath the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range.
Each song on the album is a vallenato made in collaboration with different Colombian and Venezuelan artists across various genres. Gusi also wrote all 12 songs with each singer’s unique style in mind.
The second single from the album, “Yuquita,” features Alfredo Gutiérrez and his famous accordion. He was a founding member of Los Corraleros de Majagual, a Colombian group widely known for their cumbia, porro and vallenato music.
“He is an artist who has been with his accordion on his chest for more than 60 years,” Gusi said about Gutiérrez, whom he considers a “grandfather” of music. “That for me is something very exciting; to have the experience in my flight log of having been with him in a studio, composing a song, creating a friendship, being able to sing the song live.”
Also featured on the album are singers Iván Villazón, Elder Dayán Díaz and Rafa Pérez. It’s a cross-generational project that features industry legends alongside newcomers.
“Emilio is a very important link between Latin American culture and American culture,” Gusi said about Estefan’s contributions to his latest project. “He knows how to transform all these songs and turn them into something very big.
“And that’s how I was able to create this great club, the Vallenato Social Club, into a place where we all fit in,” he said, “where we can all share our music and where we can all unite, and I believe that united we are more.”
Music has been a part of the artist’s life from the minute he was born. He credits his mother for introducing him to music. She is the one who had a guitar in the house, Gusi said. When he gets together with his extended family for the holidays someone always takes out a guitar.
“My father has always been a music lover,” Gusi added. His father’s side of the family is Caribbean Colombian, he explained. “He has collected music from all over the world and he, too, has a good, well-honed ear. I am the inheritance of those two things.”
“We have a gift that we have to take advantage of,” his mother and music teachers would remind him, he said, and they encouraged him “to take advantage of that gift and use it to transform people.”
When Gusi was around 13 years old, he began learning how to compose music, immersing himself in music education by attending independent singing and classical guitar workshops. He studied music for four years at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.
“The musical language opened another perspective … that was what led me to record my first albums and to continue growing in this world of music,” he said. “I was able to say everything I was feeling through a song.”
Gusi said he’s most looking forward to spending time in Chicago because he’ll have a day off between shows here. He’s a “lifelong fan” of the Chicago Cubs, and wants to explore the local food and jazz scenes, too.
He’s also excited to connect with audiences across the U.S., especially those who’ve had to leave everything behind in Latin America for a chance at a better life.
“I think music is one of the only things that has the superpower to take us back in time,” he said. “That is special for us. … We Latinos, even though we live through very complicated times, we are always in good spirits, celebrating, laughing.”