Cienfue

Camilo Navarro Quelquejeu records and performs under the name Cienfue. Beginning in 2005, the Panamanian musician, visual artist, and cultural polymath merged Caribbean-rooted styles—chiefly Panamanian folk forms—with rock, electronica, and Afro-Latin rhythms, coining the hybrid “Psicodelia Tropical.” His discography, which opened with the self-produced El Disco Es Cultura in 2006, draws on cumbia and pasillo, bolero, Latin funk, reggae, surf, psych, blues rock, and loops. Although the albums receive limited circulation in Anglo America, they register on charts in Latin America, France, Belgium, and Germany. Macho de Monte, issued in 2008, received an MTV nomination the following year.

Thereafter Cienfue traveled extensively, building an audience across Europe and Asia as well as South America, the Caribbean, and the North American cities Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami. Subsequent releases—the 2010 double-length La Calma y la Tormenta and 2015’s Mounstro—appeared on digital-download and streaming rankings while securing mainstream-radio airplay throughout Latin America.

Raised in 1980s Panama within a middle-class household during General Manuel Noriega’s military regime, which collapsed in 1989 when Cienfue was twelve, he displayed an early affinity for music, mastering numerous instruments and developing a strong attachment to MTV. While still in middle and high school he began writing songs on a Mac Plus, later enrolling at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. After graduation he toured as a sideman and backing vocalist with assorted American and English regional bands before returning to Panama in 2005 to launch a solo recording career. He tracked El Disco Es Cultura in his bedroom and produced videos for the singles “Medio Alcohólico Melancólico” and “Mi Colombian.” Latino MTV and Rolling Stone promoted the tracks, both of which ranked among the channel’s Top Ten most-requested videos in 2006 and 2007. His second album, Macho de Monte, arrived with additional inventive videos that likewise placed on the most-requested lists. Abandoning internships, he performed at festivals and clubs across the region. As a media favorite, he issued the conceptual double album La Calma y la Tormenta as a free download in 2010, placing it on the pop charts in Panama and Colombia.

Heavy touring in the ensuing years left scant time for recording. During one brief studio visit he cut two tracks with British producer Phil Vinall; both appeared on the 2012 compilation Décimas Terceras while he continued touring Latin America. After an extended hiatus he entered the studio with Panamanian reggae producer Rasta Lloyd. Cienfue characterized the album as “a journey full of smoke from eighties influences and tropical neon lazer rays.” Its three singles all charted at radio and on streaming platforms. Following further headlining appearances at festivals in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia, he began planning an English-language project. At Strange Weather Studios in Brooklyn he worked with Daniel Schlett; mixing took place at Vinall’s Toy Factory in Mexico with David Francis O’Gorman. Monthly singles and promotional videos preceded the full release. “Life in the Tropics” and “Easy on the Eyes,” together with an Ill Factor remix of the former, surfaced at the end of February 2019. The title track “Sunset Sesh” followed in March as a tribute to Cienfue’s surfing passion; both the song and album title refer to the period when the sun drops below the horizon, bathing the surroundings in gold and pink light.