Art accompanied the April Rebellion of 2018. Graffiti, poetry, paintings, and especially music. Lots of music. The civic protests were accompanied by citizen fervor and much singing.
An art that awakened hope, that rejected injustice, and that cried out for its dead. A music that generated identity, and that was consolidated as part of the unity of the protesters.
Jandir Rodríguez narrates the origin of “Héroes de Abril”, the song born of mourning that became an anthem of pain and resistance
“Héroes de Abril” was one of those pieces. Composed by Jandir Rodríguez in the department of León in just the first days at the beginning of the massacre, the piece captivated a country that was in the streets demanding its rights. The singer-songwriter explained to CONFIDENTIAL That song captured many of the things that most outraged him as a citizen.
It refers to what he saw that the Government was doing wrong. From that perspective, the song becomes a chronicle of the things that he felt most outraged people at that time: the murdered, religious persecution, exile, injustice. In particular, the murder of Álvaro Conrado, and “the fact that he was murdered twice.” The first, when a sniper put him in his sights. The second, when they did not want to treat him in a public hospital.
That was his first piece in the context of the April protests, but it was not the only one. Others followed like “The Liberator” either “Alfonsina of April“, in which he continued singing – and telling – the tragedy. And if they are all full of verses loaded with emotion, the phrase that moves his heart the most is that of “Héroes de Abril” that cries: “Alvarito arrives soon to tell this to God.”
Jandir remembers that he was in his room writing “Heroes of April,” and he stopped. He started pacing around the room. His hands were shaking. He had the habit of putting earplugs in his ears to concentrate better. He got up, took off the earplugs, and realized that he was shaking after writing the phrase, almost a prayer: “Alvarito will arrive soon to tell this to God.”
A police visit, exile… a concert
One afternoon, while a march passed in front of his house in La Paz Centro, (León), the protesters played ‘Héroes de Abril’. For Jandir, listening to his song was a source of pride, but it also gave him a feeling of alert. He lived half a block from the local police station, and at that moment he realized that so much visibility could be problematic. A few months later, indeed, the police came looking for him. “I had to hide, and months later I had to leave the country because I couldn’t be there anymore,” he says from Guatemala, where he is exiled.
In that nation he began an artistic life with local musicians. He has given concerts in several countries, including England, a country that he remembers because it was the scene of one of the occasions in which he was able to sing in front of the April Mothers, the association that brings together relatives of the victims of the massacre against the social outbreak. One of the mothers he sang for on that occasion was precisely Lizeth Dávila, the mother of Alvarito Conrado, the child of that emblematic phrase for which he stood up with trembling hands during his musical composition.
Eight years after those days, Jandir does not deny that music, both for its social value and for the recognition it gave him. However, he confesses that he has stopped singing it. At least in public. His creativity has been poured into other projects.
Knowing that his music is still valid inside and outside of Nicaragua is a phenomenon that he uses to feel that he is still within the country. That never came out of there. “It’s like a part of me that lives in Nicaragua, in every person who listens to it in the country or anywhere in the world, and feels represented by that song. It’s a way of being in many homes, and being in many consciences,” he shared.
His denunciation was not only inspired by protests, reprisals and killings. He had previously denounced events such as the destruction of Bosawás, or the massacre of Las Jagüitas.
Erick Nicoya uses a different musical genre – rap – to sing the same reality. Although to many it seems that he began making music in the context of the April Rebellion, in reality he had started much earlier. The song “Sell Homeland”which includes a protest against deforestation in the Bosawás Reserve, and the song Masacre en Las Jagüitas, to denounce that “police error”, that cost the lives of several members of the same family.
But the effervescence of April 2018 led him to leave behind the type of rap that only talks about everyday problems, to start pointing more directly against what the Government was doing. “In 2018, the rise of letters arises from the events that begin in April, the entire journey from April 1 to April 18,” he recalls. There he gathered the information that allowed him to structure the theme “Lead, Lead,” which made him known inside and outside of Nicaragua.
Increased visibility brought with it increased threats. An increase, not a beginning, because the digital siege began in 2016 or so. If at the beginning the messages he received from unknown numbers were limited to calling him a “coup plotter” and threatening to scratch the walls of his house, the level of risk escalated. By 2018, what he was receiving were photos that were taken anywhere, and they were sent to him with the message: “We have located you. We are close.”
A failed attack
Leaving the country seemed like the most logical solution, and that’s what he did. In November 2018 he went into exile in Costa Rica, but in that country the threats went from words to actions. In April 2019, when he was returning home after participating in a march, he was intercepted by two hitmen aboard a motorcycle. One of them hammered a weapon in his direction, but the mechanism jammed, “and he could not carry out his task,” he tells CONFIDENTIAL.
His reaction, when he was finally able to react, was to seek protection inside a store that was open. He waited there until Costa Rican police officers arrived and took his complaint. After that the siege grew, the messages were more insistent, so he decided to migrate again. This time towards the United States, stealthily crossing the national territory.
Now he lives in that country, away from microphones and stages. His daily life is the industrial machines he works with, and the family he has to care for and provide for. But a part of his audience does not forget it. Neither to him, nor to his music. They continue sending him messages on their social media profiles, commenting on how when they listen to his music again they reconnect with the excitement and emotions of those days in 2018.
Not only that. For some, the lyrics of those songs aroused their curiosity to investigate the facts reported there. “And that is what I like most about the music I have made: that it awakens the minds and motivates them to have their own identity and not just be followers of something, but to have a personality in which they can investigate, be self-taught and find a way to not follow ideologies just for the sake of it,” he concludes.
Ludwing Gómez remembers that the music they composed in April seemed to be taking on a life of its own.
When the April Rebellion broke out in 2018, Ludwing Gómez, along with a group of musician friends, was tweaking the new material they planned to release in those days. But the heat of the protest, and the violence with which it was repressed, led them to modify the lyrics they were still refining. When the album was ready, they called it “Suena la Calle” because it included a compilation of the stories that were being lived in Nicaragua, even before the social outbreak.
In that environment, the compositions took shape naturally. They composed, recorded and modified, inspired by the heat of the moment. What they had not thought about was the retaliation that the regime would take. Especially because the four minutes that the song lasts became an act of protest every time they performed it live. The first result was that spaces were becoming more and more closed to them, until they realized that no one wanted to take the risk of hiring them to avoid being targeted.
Gómez took longer to leave Nicaragua (2022), but when he did, he also went to Costa Rica. There he had the opportunity to continue making music with Costa Rican, Colombian and Guatemalan artists. He then took his art to Europe, where he now resides, giving concerts in Valencia, Madrid, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Berlin and Nuremberg.
Meanwhile, he continues preparing an album that he will call Solentiname. He will use the name of the well-known archipelago of Lake Cocibolca, because he feels that “each song is like an island.”
But in everyday life, while composing, resting, or traveling through the streets of the European city where he now resides, sometimes, from time to time, a verse comes to mind. A chorus that is in itself like a little anthem: “If we all hug the flag and fly like seagulls in freedom, there would be no reason to cross the borders and break the silence.”
