Sound Study will follow unexpected resonances, feedback, and musical migration around the world. Tune in for situated listening, original field recordings, and occasional interviews with guest DJs, artists, and scholars.

GRUPO KUAL?!
Founded in 2002, Grupo Kual is a beloved band from Mexico City’s San Juan de Aragón whose “música de barrios” sound brings together folkloric and popular dance music styles like cumbia, rumba, and ranchera from Colombia, Cuba, Peru, and Mexico. They perform across Mexico, the United States and Latin America from the Los Angeles Sports Arena to the Plaza de Toros Mexico, to Mexico City’s Zócalo, Teatro Metropolitan, and for the immigrants rights protest on May 1st, 2006 in San Jose, CA. They have scored chart success with the singles “Rumba Kibumba,” “Las Mujeres No Se Akaban,” “Rumba Cha Cha Cha,” “Soy Maraquero,” “La Chicharrita del Kafé,” and “El Pájaro Zinzontle.” Their albums have sold in the millions. Grupo Kual? proudly continues the Dinastía Pedraza legacy established by the group leader, Angel Pedraza’s uncles and father with Super Grupo Colombia in the 1970s.

HELLOTONES
hellotones is a Bronx-born and bred DJ, championing the Latin American dance genre of Cumbia under his title “El Hijo de PueblaYork.” Honoring the legacy of his familial Poblano roots as well as his NYC upbringing, hellotones flys the PueblaYork flag and the bandera Kumbiambera proudly with his signature style of mixing Cumbia! Through his two party series’ “Por Las Sombras” and “Kumbiatazo,” hellotones broke his sound into the scene; now invited to bring his “Kumbias mezcladas como nunca antes” everywhere from electronic clubs to bailes sonideros! Beyond just Cumbia, hellotones’ taste-making is solidified in the New York City underground as a part of Like That Records; and as one of two minds, alongside Marvelito, behind Brooklyn’s most one-of-a-kind club space: Dominican restaurant-turned-club on weekends: Mi Sabor Cafe. In 2023 hellotones followed up his 2021 Boiler Room appearances with a proper Cumbia mix featured on Boiler Room’s SYSTEM Mix series, and brought Cumbia to the historic Webster Hall to open up for Chicano music icon Cuco in March.