Conclave Sound Wave

“There is a Light at the End of the Tunnel” is New York’s motto for Spring 2021, and Cesar Toribio has the soundtrack for what’s next. The Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, music producer, DJ and nightlife agitator is about to release his debut album as Conclave and it’s “a gathering, a coming together”. A Dominican block party. A Bushwick punk performance. A rooftop house party. A drum session at La Iglesia… Conclave sounds like the city’s Renaissance. It’s coming soon.

by Jérôme Viger-Kohler

NOUVEAU YORK: Could you describe your state of mind through the tough times of 2020? What kept you sane? 

CESAR TORIBIO: It’s been tough indeed. Most people got a little dose of that existential crisis at one point in this long year. I feel like some people were going to get that feeling regardless of covid this year, and some were probably not due to have it for a few years, but this definitely leveled the playing field where most of us have felt sadness, depression, loneliness and existential doubt in 2020. I have been going through all of it. I realized how much I need people and am a complete extrovert. So being in communication with my friends and seeing them has kept me sane. Also, I’ve been in the studio Monday to Friday all day and have had to work through these feelings. Sometimes it’s not about making music only when you are inspired, but keeping the muscle and routine of creating fresh, so that when the inspiration comes – and it does – you will be ready to capture it. Finally, I went to the beach in the summer a lot. I’m a beach hoe.

NY: Hopefully the release of Conclave’s first album in May will be right on time for a big citywide celebration. What does the perfect Conclave release party look like?

CT: Sunlight, outdoors, street party and performance, a bunch of homies laughing and smiling, album artwork hanging somewhere and all the people that helped put this album together all in the same place.

NY: Before moving to New York, 3 cities played a role in your life. Tampa, where you were raised. Boston, where you studied music at Berklee. And Ibiza, where you worked (and partied) on a decisive summer. In what ways did those 3 cities shape the artist you are today? Let’s begin with Tampa.

CT: Tampa is a different city, sometimes it’s overlooked, most people don’t give it the props it deserves, but it is the place that started my foundation in music, and I’m grateful for that. My family immigrated from the Dominican Republic, and I grew up going there every year multiple times a year, so that helped with me being close to my Dominican culture. Back in Tampa, there are a lot of people from Dominican Republic and the Latin diaspora, there was that community that was very much a part of me. I grew up playing drums and singing in a Latin church, which helped me learn about these Afro Latin rhythms and basically how to use dynamics to move people. I went to a Black high school that was a performing arts school. That’s where I came into jazz and also HBCU (historically Black college and university) culture. I was in the Drumline where we did dance routines and played black music and tore it up. I came into jazz, started a jazz combo, fell in love with the music and practiced and studied hard enough to get me into Berklee College of Music in Boston.  

“NYC was a heavily romanticized place in my heart as a kid. It was a fantastical place. Hip hop and merengue were blasting on every corner.”

NY: A new chapter.

CT: Boston is where I first started to buy records and where I learned to DJ. I also came into contact with so many amazing musicians, a lot of whom are achieving success in so many different parts of the music world right now. It was hard for me to find my place there at first, because I was a big fish in a small pond in Tampa, but then all of a sudden I’m in a big sea with much bigger fishes in Boston. I started to explore other parts of my musical interests and reminded myself music was way bigger than just jazz or one style. So I got into producing and songwriting and trying different things. Played and arranged in the J Dilla Ensemble, played in a spoken word ensemble, bought a loop station, and studied abroad in Spain one semester. In Spain I got to study Flamenco music and rhythms with really important Flamenco artists. It was a dream. I finished the semester with an internship in Ibiza for Live Nation. I had no idea what to expect. I had just heard the name before and heard it was beautiful and “lots of party” as the people would tell me.

NY: What were you doing in Ibiza?

CT: I was helping organize this festival called Ibiza 123. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was rubbing elbows and playing basketball every Tuesday with the big DJs on the island at the time. I didn’t think anything of it other than a fun place to talk shit to Europeans that were shorter than me [laughs]. I was cool with some house music, but didn’t get it yet. I got to know some beautiful people there. Me speaking Spanish allowed me to chill with the actual Ibizans and play music with them. At one point I ended up playing drums with Miko Weaver, who was the bassist for Prince! In one of the rides from Eivissa town to the festival site, I heard some dance music that had everything I loved: jazz harmony, interesting involved rhythms, and danceability. I found out later that it was [Detroit DJ] Theo Parrish and that cracked my head open to the culture and what this music really is and could be. I started my love affair with it, but I had to come back to the US soon because my visa was up. I finished school and moved straight to NYC and have been here ever since.

NY:  I should have added New York to the list, of course, as you used to visit your aunts who lived in the city when you were a child. Tell us some early memories of the city that stick to today.

CT: NYC was a heavily romanticized place in my heart as a kid. I thought my aunts were so cool and my cousins were dressed so tite. My aunt worked at Macy’s on 34th and my other Tia cleaned houses and offices of big Broadway producers. It was a trip to be in these big midtown office buildings and seeing Tony awards for Grease and then pictures of my younger cousin Randy with John Lithgow. It was a fantastical place. Being in the trains, drinking Snapples from any street corner I was like, this is amazing! You can get hot dogs anywhere! Then going through the Lincoln Tunnel to Jersey to where you can actually see the city better than in NYC itself. Hip hop and merengue were blasting on every corner. I would go to my tio’s bodega and feel like a king.

NY: What was your fantasy of NYC before moving here?

CT: I had been visiting NYC regularly from Boston because it was just a $15 bus ride. My heart rate would start to jump as soon as we reached the outer boroughs as I would think about all of the possibilities the weekend held that would start in a few minutes when we got off the bus. I would make friends with a bunch of my homie Scott’s friends from Beacon High School and La Guardia. We would come for weekends and have a blast. I would go to shady rooftop parties in Williamsburg or house parties uptown. If we went to a bar or venue we wouldn’t get ID’d so it felt like a real vibe compared to Boston. I was welcomed into a group of friends of truly amazing artists, activists, and just great people. The thought of NYC always had only good feelings connected to it in my mind because of this. One of those summers, I ended up doing an internship with Revive Da Live (they do their winter jazz festival and have a big band now) and lived in Washington Heights and I felt more at home than anywhere else. It was a no brainer early for me when I started to think of where I was going to move after college. 

“I never went to punk shows or house parties before, but I couldn’t escape it this time because they were happening in my living room.”

NY: Are you still fantasizing about NYC?

CT: I’m fantasizing about affordable rent [Laughs]. I’m hoping there will be a short resurgence of these warehouse parties and more block parties in the coming years.

NY: [NY DJ and superproducer] Louie Vega just remixed your song “Perdon” and your first NY music selection is a record by Kenny Dope. Together, they are the duo Masters at Work, but also behind the project Nuyorican Soul. Your manager Aaron pitched Conclave as “a 2021 Bushwick vision of Masters at Work’s Nuyorican Soul album”. What does that pitch inspire you?

CT: I honestly love anytime people see a connection between arguably one of my biggest musical heroes Masters At Work and Conclave. They definitely influence Conclave, but also there is a natural crossover of the influences that affect both of us that was not forced. It means so much to me to be connected to them via Louie’s remix and he is truly a humble and inspiring guy. I met Kenny Dope when he played at [Brooklyn club] Black Flamingo once too, and is also a super down-to-earth real ass dude. I hope they can appreciate what we do, and see how much they have impacted us and the rest of the world.

NY: Do you remember something about the year 1996, when the Nuyorican Soul album was released?

CT: I was a little kid. I remember my sister and cousins singing the long part of “Killin Me Softly” by the Fugees in the kitchen all the time. Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls winning the finals. Also My Uncle, Jose Mesa, was a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians and the Indians had a good year that year. I had the cassette to Freak Nasty’s “Da’ Dip” and would play that on repeat. Also, “Lovefool” by the Cardigans was on the radio.

NY: Tell us about your time living in Bushwick, discovering the Brooklyn punk scene. What kind of impact had that punk scene on your NY trajectory?

CT: That was another thing that cracked my head open. I never went to punk shows or house parties before, but I couldn’t escape it this time because they were happening in my living room. I saw the similarity with any music and its people: transfer of energy. This high strung I-don’t-give-a-fuck-balls-to the-wall energy at these shows was contagious. It didn’t matter what you looked like or size or gender; anyone could get it in the mosh pit. And there was always someone there to pick you up if you fell and throw your ass back in. Also the catharsis of loud noise inspires me.

“It’s the same oxytocin that is transmitted in the mosh pit, The Loft, or La Iglesia.”

NY: What does your happiest day in NYC look like?

CT: Dominicans and Puerto Ricans playing dominoes on a given sidewalk with the fire hydrant open a few feet away. Parks filled with people and it’s someone’s birthday, so there are balloons on benches and food on the grill. Someone selling “frio frio” ices from a rolling cart. Turning a random corner in Brooklyn and there’s a block party. Myrtle Broadway is a mess of noise, but the dude with the loudest boombox is playing this song and it still cuts through teenagers yelling “YOU PLAY TOO MUCH” at one another.

NY: As a teenager, you used to sing and play drums at church. To compare nightclubs with churches is a bit of a NY cliché. You are familiar with both, what is your insight on that comparison?

CT: One time when I was playing drums in church, we were playing this worship song for like 20-40 minutes. Everyone in the congregation had their eyes closed and was in “the spirit” – I put in quotes not to diminish but to abstract the term a bit. The musical director had the sensitivity to this spirit and in a crescendo felt it the right time to take out all of the instruments and leave only drums and the voices of everyone in the room. The feeling of suspension then turned to straight motion. I played harder and felt such a feeling that is hard to describe with words. I played so hard at one point I was overcome with energy and started bleeding from my hands, because I cut them open on one of the drums. I looked into the congregation and saw that the spirit that was translating through me, was equally going through them: people jumping up and down, crying in jubilation, proclaiming freedom, dancing, seeking, receiving, releasing. This is essentially a live drum break! The same concept and vibration that makes all the B-Boys and B-Girls back flip to a rhythm. In abstraction, this is the same feeling or spirit at peak hours of certain parties that fundamentally cause change within the room and if luck has it, within oneself. The people have to be open to receive. They have to leave their worries about how they look somewhere else, and the people ministering music must be sensitive and susceptible to the spirit for it to visit. It’s the same oxytocin that is transmitted in the mosh pit [the concert], The Loft [the club], or La Iglesia [the church].

NY: What about the sense of community?

CT: Everyone enjoys the feeling of familiarity when you walk into a space. You see the familiar faces and end up feeling something within yourself at one point and look around and see that you are not the only one that has these feelings. Even if you don’t talk to everyone in the club or congregation at the end of the night/service you feel a closer bond with the people that were within these walls; and the bond grows stronger each time, each week you have gone through a service together. A family forms. There are so many more parallels, but then this interview will turn into a book [laughs].

NY: Are you more into NYC sunset or sunrise?

CT: Sunset! I love the colors and energy of a beautiful close of a day and especially the energy I receive from it at that hour. It’s almost like the day reveals the rarest colors in the sky at this time, but only as a peek, almost as if to tie you in for the next one; then it’s like “I’ll see you tomorrow same time”. Plus, you couple that with the promise of an exciting night that is up ahead Oooooh weeeeeee!

NY: What does the music of Conclave tell us about the city?

CT: There’s something going on here. Something that is deeper than what you might see at first glance. Something new, yet ancient or from the familiar.

Conclave “Perdón” (The Louie Vega Remixes) is out.
Conclave album to be released in May 2021.
LOVE INJECTION RECORDS

Cesar Picks Five New York Classics

Kenny Dope Presents The Mad Racket, “Supa” (1991)
“Hip hop! Kenny Dope and Louie Vega are both musical heroes of mine. This is laced so well with so many samples and breaks and brings a vibe no matter where you play it. The Bridge is Ova, Can I kick it, Slick Rick, Supa Kat… It’s all in there.”

Show Me The Body “Trash” (2017)
“Show Me The Body is a band made up by native New Yorkers. These dudes are super humble and nice and bring such a crazy energy on stage. I met them when I lived in a punk loft in Bushwick and we had a couple of shows with them and multiple other punk shows. It will remind me these parties and shows that happened here that I didn’t really have exposure to back home. It’s an example of the punk stuff that is very much still happening and still very NYC and not nostalgia from the 70’s and 80’s.”

Proyecto Uno, “El Tiburon” (1995)
“This reminds me of my childhood and is such a good example of something that would happen only in New York. Proyecto Uno is a merengue house group that started here. This is their biggest hit. They would fuse house and merengue with hip hop and rap. It was something fresh where kids and parents all had something to latch on to. I was a kid when this came out, but it reminds me of when I’d come to visit family in NY and Jersey. My uncle had a Bodega in Newark and this would be playing and he would give me all the candy I’d ask for. I think the sugar rush and the music made for permanent serotonin rush anytime this comes on.”

Central Line, “Walking into Sunshine” (1981)
“I’ve heard this in so many parties in NYC. The opening synths remind me of one of the happiest days in NYC, one that has happened and at the same time is yet to happen. Even when I don’t want to hear this because it’s been played so many times by the second chorus I’m singing and dancing to it. Larry Levan did the mix. I remember when I found my own copy and played it in every set for like the next two years.”

“Los Sures” Documentary (1984)
“This is an amazing documentary of the southside of Williamsburg in the 80’s. I’ve been working in this area and playing a lot here for the past eight years and it helped to put these blocks in perspective of the people and community I’ve been able to be in. Being Dominican and seeing my people play dominoes on the corner as I roll up the gates of Black Flamingo and having beers at Tonitas keep me grounded and happy.”