2024-04-26 07:15:09
Gabriela Brito or Lela MC is 13 years old, has a meteoric career in the hip-hop scene and a movie life: she survived a fire, fled the crisis in Venezuela, sang on buses in exchange for money and today is a star of the rap in Colombia.
With waist-length hair, braces and loose clothing, Lela sheds her shyness every time she goes on stage or records a video clip. She transforms into a bold singer who raps about migration, her passion for music and teenage themes that seduce more than 300,000 fans on social networks.
“The important thing in some songs is the content more than anything (…) That the person feels, identifies with the lyrics,” he says in conversation with AFP at his home in Bogotá.
But the road to success was thorny. At the age of six and with his grandmother grieving on his back, he migrated with her family by bus from Caracas, like many of the three million Venezuelans who arrived in Colombia fleeing the economic collapse.
Today, her homemade freestyle videos and performances receive “likes” from Ana Tijoux, iconic Chilean rapper. She has also shared the stage with Venezuelan hip-hop legend Apache. Her last reward came in December 2023, when the young promise signed a contract with a renowned record label that she prefers to keep under wraps for now.
But his first songs are the memory of less fortunate times:
“You can’t imagine the adversities I’ve gone through/the obstacles I’ve encountered along the way (…) I decided to migrate with the purpose of a better future/but doors have been closed on my path/walls have been put up,” he sang a few years ago on the buses with his stepfather Jesús Sanz, 32, whom he considers his father.
– Fire –
The siblings Gabriel and Gabriela Brito share not only their name and a family bond. The scars on their arms recall the day an explosion in 2017 nearly killed them. His grandmother died from the flames of the fire that caused a gas leak.
“The superhero Gabriel,” then 8 years old, jumped on his 6-year-old sister to protect her from the flames, says mother Hayleén Volcán. The children were treated for severe burns. Gabriel was hospitalized for several months and spent six days in intensive care. “It’s a miracle of life,” says his mother.
With the death of their grandmother, the children were left alone in Venezuela. That forced them to reunite with their mother, who had migrated to Colombia a few months earlier.
Today Gabriel is 15 years old and accompanies Lela on stage. Although he is shy, he is learning how to use the turntable and is his sister’s DJ.
«Having this mark (his scars) gives me joy. With it we got to where we are now,” says the teenager.
“Lela” is a stage name inspired by the brother who saved her life. When he was little he had difficulty pronouncing Gabriela, she called him “Lela” as dozens of fans now cheer her on before a concert to ask for autographs and selfies.
– From the bus to the stage –
While Lela and Gabriel rehearse, their two brothers, ages 5 and 3, play and flit around the small apartment in the south of Bogotá where they live with their parents.
In the room, Hayleén Volcán makes small colorful bows that she sells to a business, in a country where labor informality affects 82% of Venezuelan migrants.
When she arrived in Colombia “there were months of selling coffee, selling at a traffic light, selling water, selling peanuts,” says the 35-year-old mother.
At first Lela asked herself: «What am I doing here? “I want to go home.” Then she remembered the fire and gave herself courage: “We have to be here (…), fight here.”
Until one day, together with his father Jesús Sanz, who was rapping on the buses of Bogotá to bring money home, he decided to “take away the microphone and that’s where it all started,” he remembers. She was eight years old, someone recorded her and she went viral with a song composed by her father about the drama of migration.
The performance reached the ears of producer Jairo Peñaranda, known as Mctematico in the world of hip-hop. He became Lela’s manager, professionalized his skills and directed his artistic career.
He set only one condition: that Gabriela and her older brother return to school and have psychological support. Lack of schooling affects 29.7% of Venezuelan children in Colombia, according to the statistical authority.
Little by little he learned vocal technique, modulation and performance on stage. In 2021 they released her first song.
Before going on stage, Lela does stretches and vocal exercises. She seems nervous, but on stage she is different.
“I’m a person who doesn’t talk,” but “after the first song it’s like they lost me, with my attitude I enjoyed the show,” he says and flashes a shy smile.
© Agence France-Presse