It’s Throwback Thursday on Asteria Records, and this week we’re flying back to Bogotá in 2017 for “Agua pa Camello”, a six-minute Colombian Afrobeat jam by Surativa Parlante featuring Razteria, recorded live with a nine-piece band.
The song
Surativa Parlante’s name stands for Sud América Nativa, and their sound, which they call Etno-AfroBeat, mixes Colombian Indigenous and Afro-Colombian roots with the drive of Afrobeat, funk and reggae. “Agua pa Camello” is an upbeat song reminiscent of Fela Kuti that takes on a serious subject: water scarcity, and how vital it is to share. The band recorded it live at Árbol Naranja in Bogotá, Razteria added lead and harmony vocals, and she mixed it at her Truffula Oak Studio before Justin Weis mastered it at Trakworx. It rolls along at 115 BPM in C minor, with alto and tenor sax, keys, guitar and a full percussion section.
The track is the second song on Cruzando Corazones Vol. 1, Razteria’s multi-artist Latin EP released September 1, 2017. It came out of her 2016–2017 production tour, which connected artists, bands and engineers in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and the San Francisco Bay Area. The EP’s cover art is by Mexican artist Alfredo Varela. There’s also an instrumental version (on Bandcamp).
Listen on Bandcamp or Spotify, or watch the official music video below.
The music video
“Agua pa Camello” was the first video from Cruzando Corazones; it first premiered in December 2017. Video credits: video by Adriana Arizmendy and Agusto Vidal; recorded at Árbol Naranja; mixed at Truffula Oak Studio; mastered by Trakworx. You can also hear the instrumental version on YouTube.
The people behind it
Surativa Parlante grew out of the Bogotá Afrobeat group Nación Celeste, founded in 2007 by nine musicians; their first album, Fuerza de origen, came out in 2011. By the mid-2010s they were a regular presence on the city’s live circuit, including Festival Eco-yoga and the Festival de tambores in San Basilio de Palenque in 2015, Idartes’ Arte y Conexión series at Casa 9-69, A Seis Manos on August 27, 2015, and Latino Power in Chapinero on May 21, 2016. Here’s where the musicians on this recording have been.
Epiara Murillo: alto sax and voice
Epiara is a Bogotá saxophonist, singer, composer and music educator. She was already helping hold the group together in its Nación Celeste days. She studied saxophone at the ASAB Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Distrital, where her thesis, graded meritorious, researched the Indigenous music of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; her degree work includes the videoclip Pensamiento musical de los indígenas Wiwa. Today she co-leads Dorado Kandua with bassist Edgar Marun, an Afrobeat band named after the Muisca word for “seed of food,” formed in 2017, the same year “Agua pa Camello” came out. Their self-titled debut EP came out on March 27, 2026 (Bandcamp, Spotify), and fittingly it includes a track called “Agua.” Their single “Truequeo” made the playlist of Radio Nacional de Colombia. In September 2026 Dorado Kandua was on the lineup of Jazz al Parque 2026, and they were selected for the Diverciudad Sonora 2026 program.
Daniel Giraldo Makovej: guitar
Daniel is a guitarist, composer and multi-instrumentalist with more than 20 years of experience across jazz, rock, pop, classical, world music and the Indigenous musical traditions of Colombia. He holds a master’s degree in classical guitar from the University of Pécs in Hungary, and a master’s in jazz electric guitar and Latin American music. Before joining Surativa he lived in Hungary, where he played cumbia; he came into the band around 2014, after returning to Colombia. In 2016 the group recorded “Guma,” a Wiwa canto de culebra, at Audiovisión in Bogotá, after asking permission from mamo Ramón Gil. He later completed a degree project at the ASAB Faculty of Arts on ancestral musics. He taught guitar for years in Bogotá, and he now teaches at the ÓWI Zeneiskola music school in Budapest. Besides guitar, he plays the Turkish ney, the Afghan rabab and traditional flutes from South America, China and Japan. He’s also one of the studio musicians on Asteria Records Services (Instagram).
Nabhí Murillo: keys
Nabhí Murillo Medina wrote his 2017 master’s thesis in interdisciplinary social research at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas about Surativa Parlante itself, sitting with the band in rehearsal and at shows. He has also composed original music for theater, including the dance and physical theater piece Narciso by Púrpura Creactivo (premiered February 7, 2021) and their later work Yo salvaje, which opened August 5, 2022 at the Teatro Estudio of the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo.
Carlos Gómez: tenor sax
On this recording Carlos plays tenor sax; in the band he also sang. Carlos Andrés Gómez Montoya is a composer, flutist, saxophonist and cultural manager from Bogotá. He studied at Universidad El Bosque, first in the free jazz courses in 1998 and then as a Maestro en música with an emphasis on flute (2004). His undergraduate thesis on the Wiwa watcu flute was named the Faculty of Arts’ best research work that year, and in 2016 he completed a master’s in music therapy at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, with meritorious mention. He was part of Surativa from its earlier years as Nación Celeste. That same year, 2016, he also formed Tamsaianka, a project that weaves Colombian Indigenous music with Asian sounds, improvisation and contemporary music, with Jenny León Ochoa and Gustavo Pérez Jiménez. They have released five albums, the latest of them Canto de Origen (2026), and have toured in Latin America, North America and Europe. You can find him on his site, and El Espectador interviewed him about the project in January 2025.
Camilo Bustos: bass
Camilo came to the bass through the guitar, and through Colombian music that ran in his family. He joined Surativa in the mid-2010s wanting to learn Afro bass lines and to learn from the rest of the band. We haven’t found recent public updates on his projects, but his pocket on this track is a big part of why it moves the way it does.
Juan Manzano: drums
Juan is the drummer on the live session at Árbol Naranja.
Sergio Gómez: percussion
Sergio shares the percussion chair with Diego, holding down the Afro-Colombian rhythmic base — tambor alegre and small percussion — that the band built its Etno-AfroBeat around.
Diego Randolf: percussion
Diego, the tamborero on the session, came to Surativa after studying gaita and the music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast with José Plata, and after playing bullerengue, bailes cantados and in the Bogotá fusion comparsa Jipy Jam y Raspa Canilla. He was drawn to Afrobeat as a more urban way to carry those traditional rhythms.
And thanks to Justin Weis, who mastered the whole EP at Trakworx in South San Francisco (follow Trakworx on Instagram).
Thanks for digging through the vault with us. Put on “Agua pa Camello,” pour a glass of water for someone you love, and we’ll see you next Thursday with another throwback.
