Tell Me Más: Bodine Talks New Album “Quemo Lento” and Growing From Hardships

In the new music online video for her piano-pushed interlude “Bambi,” Bodine poses in the middle of a dense forest, artistically garbed in assorted animal bones as she croons above the black and white footage with an ear-catching voice that straddles mezzo and alto ranges. The visual doubled as an announcement movie for her sophomore EP, “Quemo Lento,” which dropped past month. Still, if any person bought the effect the challenge would hinge on somber instrumentals, her other tracks promptly proved them incorrect. The abide by-up singles “No Me Quiere Más Na'” and “Nalgaje” current a saucier and far more liberated edition of Bodine. But who is the serious Bodine? Is it the contemplative, artsy soul hinted at in the initial monitor, or the just one who can take pleasure in homaging vedette Iris Chacón and singing catchy odes to booties? The solution is unsurprising to people who know her — she’s equally.

Born in Amsterdam, Bodine Koehler Peña and her spouse and children relocated to Puerto Rico when she was 8, and that is in which she expended her formative several years. Soon after a transient stint in a Catholic elementary college in Old San Juan, she enrolled in the Escuela Especializada en Ballet Julián E. Blanco. The institution offered an option to discover both conventional courses and dance.

“We qualified from 7:30 in the morning till 11:30, and then took a shower, [ate] lunch, and experienced teachers until 5,” she suggests. Bodine won’t wait to refer to herself as having been a “wild baby” in the course of her early teenage years, spurring her mom into acquiring another outlet for all that electricity.

“I in no way followed principles,” she suggests, slyly grinning. “And my mom was like, ‘Wow, I have to obtain points for her to do, to actually continue to keep her off the road.’ I was creating much too numerous buddies far too speedy.”

Her answer was not much absent: an outdated piano they had in the home normally grabbed Bodine’s awareness. “I would always sit down and enjoy some disparates,” she laughs. Noting her fascination in music, her mother got her official piano courses at San Juan’s Division of Art and Culture. Shortly right after, her grandfather assisted include the expenditures of enrolling her at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of New music, wherever she inevitably took programs in piano, songwriting, and opera singing.

For the duration of this time, Bodine acquired what she these days phone calls a “survival instinct” that she’s harbored at any time considering the fact that. Her household relied principally on general public transportation, but the surplus of lessons she was using meant her days finished late. She and her mother would wander dimly lit streets and bridge underpasses to bus stops, usually spending with coins they experienced scrounged up. Far from the façade of the carefree, impossibly attractive design that came afterwards, Bodine looks back again at these times as tinged with uncertainty and be concerned. To hear her convey to it, her ambitions ended up born from a wish to secure her loved ones, whom she noticed was sacrificing so much for her.

“It was a necessity. The way it came to me, it was not even me genuinely wanting for it,” Bodine claims. “I was just like, ‘I have to choose care of my mom.'”

Her most sizeable break came at the youthful age of 13 and resulted from a spur-of-the-second choice. As she tells it, on an inspired whim, she walked into the Calle Loíza workplaces of noteworthy Puerto Rican fashion designer Harry Robles and declared herself his subsequent design. Her spunkiness and self-confidence impressed Robles, and the quite up coming working day, she experienced the gig. This was the very first action on the path that led to her starting to be Miss Puerto Rico and collaborating in Miss out on Universe 2012 in entrance of tens of millions.

Whilst she tries not to dwell on her decades as the reigning Pass up Puerto Rico and her ordeals afterward as a budding product in New York City, primarily in light-weight of the much more upbeat and optimistic flavor of “Quemo Lento,” she shares that that section of her job established an arc that has molded her into who she is nowadays. She’s proud of the get the job done, but readily admits she took the option for the reason that of its benefits.

“The motive I bought in there was they informed me, ‘Hey, you will get some money. You will get a motor vehicle.’ And I necessary [to pay for] school, I desired a motor vehicle, I essential to purchase textbooks, I wanted to assistance my family,” she states. What arrived after her participation in Miss Universe was yet another deck of cards, a single that didn’t change out in her favor. According to Bodine, these days, girls who are productive in pageants go on to show up in Tv set demonstrates or acquire larger possibilities for their occupations. But in her time, she says, “it was not like that.”

“I experienced to supply for my family, for myself, and so I had to leave and hustle.”

She carries on: “You complete, and then you’re like, ‘I will need perform, I need to have an cash flow.’ So I experienced to go get that. I experienced to present for my spouse and children, for myself, and so I experienced to go away and hustle.”

Bodine would not drinking water down the disillusion she felt. “It was a large amount. I had a good deal of folks around me [those days]. I experienced a ton of ‘friends’ all around me. And the truth is I was 17, 18, 19 when all this occurred,” she claims. When she returned to fending for herself, fact became a chilly splash in her confront. “That’s when you know who your friends definitely are. I had no aid. All my ‘friends’ have been not my close friends. And that receives truly lonely. That was lonely, and incredibly disappointing, and really heartbreaking.”

The in some cases harmful negativity from the press and general public that threatened to overshadow her reign was also disheartening. These days, she tackles it in a additional holistic way despite agreeing that the media’s hyper-concentrate on “messy” famous people tends to be cruel.

“It is cruel. And I think I just knew that it was section of the method. When you’re in the community eye, you require to have an understanding of that you just need to have to definitely be passionate about what you want in your lifestyle and discuss to that, mainly because no matter what, there is certainly always heading to be negativity,” she suggests. “You will find usually going to be persons who attempt to thrust you down.”

Even back then, Bodine was conscious of the distinct vitriol reserved for girls, especially younger females, who had been scrutinized far more than the average particular person and were being specified less leeway and grace to make problems. She’s grateful she bought by means of it, and extra so that there is accountability now that did not exist back then.

“I consider all females have been in a circumstance where by they were being totally vulnerable. And hey, negative timing, I guess. I feel right now not everybody can say whichever they want about certain females,” she suggests. “Back then — this is before the #MeToo movement — you could say anything at all and anything. And I am certain a ton of girls knowledgeable that, not only in my environment but in [other industries].”

Her put up-Miss out on stint as a design was also rocky and uphill at the start off, owing to that same deficiency of help. “I didn’t know anyone. I experienced no agency. I utilized [and] anyone claimed no to me. I used to more than 20 agencies, from the most deep dungeon kinds to the leading. And they all mentioned no,” she says.

The condition grew to become so dire it began to resemble an absurdist comedy at one level. “I don’t forget I was so stressed that I had so substantially acne breakouts all above. I was so stressed I basically grew a beard,” she laughs. “I was so desperate for work that I went to the booker, and I’m like, ‘Listen to me. I have to have a job. I want to get booked. I’ll do nearly anything. I could do [a] Proactiv marketing campaign. I can do everything, I can do even Gillette.'”

As destiny would have it, she did finally get signed, and continuous get the job done commenced to arrive. Nonetheless, the phantoms of her earlier and her survival intuition hardly ever went away. Twelve yrs and two albums later, Bodine seems to be again on what has led her to today with a mix of gratitude and melancholy. “Celos,” her underrated first EP, was imbued with a darker audio, even when it was hoping to be a joint that could even now move as sensual and club-deserving. The purpose for that is distinct in hindsight.

“It was a time I was really frustrated,” she shares. “I was about to . . . cease getting in the industry.” She ran into the same roadblocks that had pestered her for around a 10 years due to the fact her pageant days. Specifically, folks trying to box her into a persona that was nowhere close to who she felt she was. It truly is a huge explanation she’s maintained staying an independent artist so far.

“I didn’t post [to industry pressure],” she states. “So that challenge was born from a put of restarting all in excess of.”

She’s continue to striving to expand as an artist, and just as oysters build pearls from irritants that invade their procedure, Bodine sees everything she went as a result of as a system that has designed her more formidable than at any time as a lady and a creative. She credits meditation as one of the most significant equipment that served her harness her activities positively, indicating she took it up early in her career since “there was a whole lot of waiting around time” to indulge in it. But she also claims she feels thankful for her art when it arrives to capturing down any criticism or negativity.

“I come to feel shielded by music. I think that songs, my perform, will generally talk for me,” she states. “Quemo Lento,” with its various offering of genres and eclectic visitor artists, tells the planet that she’s emotion substantially far more optimistic.

“I am in a very good spot — delighted and seriously happy, and at last carrying out what I’ve basically preferred to do my complete lifestyle. I wish I were in this article in advance of, but I just know it was not my time nevertheless,” she suggests. “I experienced to go through this entire thing to aid my household and alter my situations. And it was rough, but we’re listed here now.”

It might’ve been a slow burn, but she’s designed it and is ready for what is next.

Juan J. Arroyo is a Puerto Rican freelance music journalist. Given that 2018, he is penned for PS, Remezcla, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork. His emphasis is on growing the canvas of Latin tales and producing Latin culture — specifically Caribbean Latin lifestyle — a lot more obvious in the mainstream.