La Bruja Weaves her Spell

Written by Mary montoro Wednesday, 21 September 2005 08:00

La Bruja doesn’t shake her ass in the latest Daddy Yankee video. You won’t catch her swinging her dark locks with a tiny rapper wearing enough ice to give her freezer burn. No way. She gets your attention by spitting out thought provoking rhymes that will make you say, “this chica rocks.” Based in New York, La Bruja acá Caridad de la Luz, made her presence known when she was briefly part of Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam tour. Before that she hosted spoken word nights around her neighborhood in the Bronx. While speaking her mind, she co-starred in the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Award winner “Down the Bone.”

Ironically, the piece that grabbed the DPJ was the same one that got her booted off of the tour. La Bruja opted to couple the controversial piece “WTC” with the harmless “Lola.” Apparently, Simmons’ camp warned her against the politically charged. “WTC” includes one line that charges “W” targets countries. She does not shine a flattering light on the American President. When you’re super political, you gotta pay a price.

La Bruja brushed that dirt off her shoulders and has continued to inspire and aspire to bigger things. icame across the poetess in producer Boy Wonder’s CD/DVD “Chosen Few” which chronicles the inception of reggaeton. A hybrid of Caribbean music mixed with reggae and hip-hop, the genre has blown up in Los Angeles while already establishing a successful run in New York, Miamiand Puerto Rico, where it started. Not a reggaeton artist per se, La Bruja can definitely move the people with her emotive words set to music.

“It’s not just reggaeton. That piece really signifies the union between Latin hip-hop and reggaeton. We’re really the children of the same roots, just born in different places,” she said. “Our hearts are still rooted in the same vision and mission. What ilove about Boy Wonder’s piece is that he was able to bridge it all together. There really is no separation nor should there be.”

Born and raised in the Bronx, where she still resides, the first generation Nuyroican is a poet whose mission is about making social change. When asked how she describes herself, she says simply, “I’m a bruja.” Did she pick that name because her parents married on Halloween? Or because the night she voiced her work for the first time at the Nuyroican Café in April 1996, there was a lunar eclipse? None of the above, when her time came up, she was dubbed La Bruja and it stuck. She considers herself a spiritual person who takes interest in different religions. Love is high on her list. The only thing that’s pissing her off these days is how women are being portrayed in reggaeton music videos. These video chicks are half-naked, in too tall heels that only allow them to move their derrieres slightly to the repetitive beats of an MC who looks like he was severely rejected in high school.

“We gotta have some more representation and a different voice. This cannot be the dominating voice. I have a daughter myself. It would bother me to think that I’m in this industry and have allowed this to happen. I want to be a voice that can teach women that love need not be associated with abuse. It’s not representing women well. It’s just as guilty as hip-hop for the same reason. It’s just as guilty as religion also. In Catholicism they say ‘in the name of the father and of the son’ and there’s no mother and no daughter. So it’s very hard for me to be wholeheartedly faithful to a religion that doesn’t represent the women that give birth to all of us. It makes no sense to me. That’s another reason why I call myself Bruja.

In the meantime, her plate is overflowing with goodness. She’s the new face for Levi’s Jeans’ ad campaign. Her CD Brujalicious, a mixture of hiphop and Caribbean music done in Spanglish, is available on her site and www.urbanlatino.com. She will appear in “El Vacillon, The Movie.” And she’s a regular on the Hot 97 radio show, Street Soldiers. Most recently she nabbed a book deal with Simon & Schuster. La Bruja is all brains and beauty. She is an eloquent voice for women everywhere that empowers and delivers with her hypnotic beats and emotive words. Her magic will not only capture your spirit but also fill it with honesty and sincerity. This is one spell you don’t want to snap out of.

“I want to represent the voice that speaks of things that no one else dares to say, about the system, our gender, the voice that we are allowed to represent in all genres. I want to be that pioneering voice that women have been dying to hear but haven’t been a platform to speak. I want to fight for that and I hope to inspire.”

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