This month marks the arrival of Til We Dissolve, the initial record from Aquiestoy, a new project by Seattle multi-instrumentalist Carlos Snaider.
Aquiestoy is the combination of the Spanish words aquí, or “here,” and estoy, “I am.” It's a fitting phrase to describe a deeply personal, genre-fluid and community-powered solo record that marks an arrival of sorts for the Harvard-trained musician, despite years spent performing in the Pacific Northwest.
“I just felt like it was time to start realizing certain sounds and not asking permission for them,” Snaider said.
Tracing connections
Snaider moved to Seattle in 2018 after a stint in New York City and soon joined Eléré, an eight-piece salsa band founded by vocalist Daniel Mendoza. He also formed EarthtoneSkytone, a quartet and jazz-informed electro-acoustic songwriting project with bassist Kelsey Mines.
Both musical projects were rewarding in their own ways, but Snaider eventually found himself looking for another mode of expression.
“Just doing me, effectively,” he said. “I just felt like it was time for that.”
Til We Dissolve offers listeners — and Snaider — a direct route to his diverse musical identity, which knits together a myriad of people, experiences and philosophies he’s connected with throughout his nomadic life.
Snaider comes from Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican roots, and lived in various cities around the U.S., including Washington, D.C. and Houston during his early life.
During 6th and 7th grade, Snaider also lived in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador where he studied at a bilingual Spanish and English school and first became enamored with guitar. Jazz came into the picture during his high school years in Boulder, Colorado.
“There was a great jazz scene locally there, and it started with the high school jazz band playing guitar there,” he said.
Dissolving boundaries
Snaider went on to attend Harvard University, where he studied jazz under the innovative composer and pianist Vijay Iyer.
“It was pretty far from a jazz conservatory-style education,” Snaider said. “I didn't get private lessons there, there was nothing guitar-centric. It was a lot more about figuring out how to make music with people, how to listen deeper, what kind of sounds and influences are real to you.”
Around the same time he was studying with Iyer, Snaider met and began working with Josefina Baez, the Dominican-born artist, writer and director who formed Ay Ombe Theatre, a performance and theatre collective. Her retreats taught Snaider how to live a life that nurtures his art.
“The moments of ‘performance’...that's like a window into everything that you cultivate within yourself, so that when you get to that moment, it's just like you're emanating all the good stuff that you've been cooking up,” he said.
Snaider’s mentors and rich background are expressed in Til I Dissolve’s eclectic sound, which exudes Latin groove, layered synth, rap and beatmaking, and jazz-informed guitar harmonies.
Lyrically, too, the record reflects Snaider’s perspective on life and self through the dissolution of boundaries. His song “Nos Disuelve,” which translates to “It dissolves us,” plays with the tension between the individual and collective and the parts and the whole, through the symbol of the Caribbean archipelago surrounded by water.
“I'm myself the archipelago, and everybody is their own archipelago, so that's kind of what I'm trying to celebrate,” he said.
Finding continuity
While it involved self-discovery, making Til I Dissolve was also a very community-driven process. The new record is shaped by his connections to other creatives in New York, Quito, Bogotá, Colombia, and Seattle, including his mentors Iyer and Baez.
The translocal and interconnected nature of this record is baked into how he plans to perform with it in the coming months.
The core Aquiestoy band — Snaider, bassist Julian Weisman, drummer Mario Layne Fabrizio, synth and guitar player Elias Hamton, and vocalist Danny Mendoza — is based in Seattle, but he also has a version of the group that he plays with when he’s in Quito.
Snaider continues to take regular trips to Latin America, including Ecuador, the Latin Caribbean, and Colombia, where he recently toured. He’s now back in Seattle, preparing to perform the record at the Earshot Jazz Festival on Wednesday, Oct. 7.
He’s glad to have the chance to perform this music in a key place that shaped it and has helped him find continuity.
“Water is just something that unifies everywhere I've been,” he said. “Seattle is a place that I've really been able to connect with that."
