Radio Huracán

We are delighted to collaborate on the radiowaves with Radio Huracán, a programme generating encounters, or “sonic hurricanes,” that function as spaces where sounds meet and collide continuously: (r)evolving languages, rhythms, sounds, landscapes, and space-time, from which the frequencies that articulate the reverberations and symbolic force of the hurricane are broadcast.

As part of the 2024 programming of Radio Nopal (a Community Radio based in CDMX, Mexico), Radio Huracán consists of six stages which emulate the creation and movement cycles of the hurricane. Each stage will be hosted by the project founders Tatiana Rais and Mario Lianos and will feature the participation of different guests made up of artists, researchers, and musicians residing in America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Each episode in the six-part series is followed by a curated playlist by the invited speaker. Radio Huracán recognizes playlists as spaces of enunciation and platforms for narrating different socio-cultural, historic, political, and economic struggles.

With the desire to create their own utopia of time and rhythm, to invoking the hurricane as a metaphor for representing the movement of non-physical frequencies across the Atlantic-between Africa and the Americas/Caribbean — Radio Huracán aims to (de)construct the relationship of the body with rhythms, times, dance, poetry, and the body itself. This radio program is grounded in the philosophical thinking of the Barbadian poet and writer Kamau Brathwaite, influenced by his assertion, “the hurricane does not roar in pentameter”. It is intended to understand how rhythms and times develop in and from Africa and the Caribbean, and how they construct a form of thought and struggle inherent to the spatiotemporal and geographical relationship within bodies: defying the orderly rhythms of pentameter, and holding a potency of untamable nature.

Tatiana Rais is a curator and cultural manager. She is the co-founder and director of Espacio Odeón, a platform in Bogotá for experimentation in contemporary art and community practice. She is an active member of coopia, a cooperative experiment committed to action through inhabiting and learning with the socio-environmental trans-formation of territories. She is also a musical selector and lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.

Mario Llanosis a curator and co-founder of the Research and Residence Program La Usurpadora (2011–2021). He is currently working on the construction of the Passage Research Center (PRC) project, which aims to create a multilingual, transatlantic digital archive with interests in Pan-Caribbean notions and ideas. He lives and works in Puerto Colombia, Colombia.

03.03.2024 Episode 1
The episode features Wairimũ Nduba: Kenyan researcher, teacher, and Kenyan musician whose inquiry works through musical history, and curation. Her work focuses on the nuanced intersectionality within Kenyan music and is based on the idea that research is playful, immersive, and a collective effort. Through her explorations, she seeks to unify film, photography, and ornamentation as central parts of African musical stories. She is also the creator of "Wer Jokenya", a digital archive platform that aims to celebrate the musical history of Kenya, built on collective and community memory.

21.04.2024  Episode 2
This second episode invites Princecoe, a Pan-African musical artist who intertwines a plurality of perspectives in his melodies: from history and science to archaeology, philosophy, faith, and divinity. Coming from a royal lineage of the ancient Kingdom of Bini (Benin) in the Edo State of Nigeria, his music draws inspiration from the influence of vernacular systems of sound and wide-ranging historical events. With a strong belief in the potential of a united world, Princecoe emphasizes the crucial role of African unity in achieving global harmony in his musical productions with the intention of critically educating future generations to leave lasting impacts on the mind, body, and spirit. The conversation ends with a playlist by Princecoe enunciating his stories, inspirations, and resonant struggles through song.

19.05.2024  Episode 3
In this third episode in Spanish language, the hosts Mario Llanos and Tatiana Rais will be in conversation with artist and filmmaker Beatriz Santiago Muñoz around their practice. The conversation will be followed by a playlist they entitled, “I do not believe, but it is real”, extending epistemological waves of transmission by means of music. 

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s work arises from extended periods of observation and documentation, where the camera serves as both a socially charged object and a tool mediating aesthetic thought. Their films often stem from research into specific social structures, individuals, or events, which they transform into moving images, sometimes supplemented by objects and texts. Muñoz’s recent work relates to the sensorial unconscious of anti-colonial movements, poetic thought in the everyday, and experimental feminist writings.


16.06.2024  Episode 4
In this third episode, we ride the waves to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, into another entirely Spanish feature with the writer, poet, and musician Frank Báez in conversation with the hosts Mario Llanos and Tatiana Rais. From coast to coast – Frank Báez has published six poetry books, a short story collection, and three nonfiction books. In 2017, he was selected by the Hay Festival as part of the list for the best Latin American writers under forty. He currently lives in Austin and is one of the recipients of the 2023 University of Texas Mellon Fellowship for High Impact Scholars. His latest poetry collection is: The End of the World Came to My Neighborhood.


01.09.2024  Episode 5
In this episode, we will lean about Lina Bailón's work Frutástica: an archive and continuous research on the movement of fruits during colonial times on the coast of Mexico, as well as its cultural hybridity resulting from proto-globalization in the history of the Manila Galleon.


06.10.2024  Episode 6

In its sixth episode, Radio Huracán makes it to the Atlantic, to New York City. The hosts and moderators, Tatiana Rais and Mario Llanos, talk with Colombian artist and professor, Luis Rincón Alba about his work on how Carnivales represent a technology of coming together that challenges modern understandings of selfhood and community through music, dance, contemporary literature, experimental film, video installation, performance art, and political organizing.


17.11.2024  Episode 7

This closing special of Radio Huracán’ first season is a selection from the archive of the first episodes, in which the team had the opportunity to speak with artists, writers, and cultural agents from various latitudes between Africa and the Caribbean. In their joint charting of voices, rhythms, and frequencies, a constellation connecting these distinct points was birthed. This sonic exercise underpinning Radio Huracán is guided by Barbadian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite's premise, that the "hurricane does not roar in pentameter." Después del huracán/After the Hurricane is a selection of the rhythms, voices, and frequencies that have been intertwined throughout the first season of Radio Hurricane.

“Near and Far”, featured in hour two, is a playlist made by Luis Rincón Alba for After the Hurricane.