Paul Moposita wore a bright blue Adidas tracksuit, a white hat and shades as he led Mugre Sur’s rehearsal at El Pan Óptico, an alternative art and music space in Quito, Ecuador.
Moposita, 47, the leader of the group and its only original member, started with “Cleptocratas.” It’s a song about corrupt politicians that very much reflects the situation in Ecuador today. Earlier this year, Congress wanted to impeach President Guillermo Lasso over accusations of embezzlement. So he dissolved the National Assembly.
Moposita says that’s nothing new.
“We haven’t had stability since forever. My parents suffered with financial reforms that led to inflation, my grandparents suffered with strikes all the time, I am suffering the same,” he said. “And that’s why we have to change, we have to raise our voice, right?”
In the ephemeral world of pop music, Mugre Sur has been going strong for more than 20 years. The group is known for its deeply political songs but also for its sense of humor. They perform wearing costumes of clowns and bunnies. They are tackling Ecuador’s political turmoil in their upcoming album “Sudamericamente.”
“South American mind or nicely sweating,” Moposita said, explaining the double meaning of the word.
The sweat is a reference to migrants all over the world.
“Our cousins, our aunts, our families have migrated to be a little better off. And now we receive our Venezuelan brothers who also migrate to be better off in another country,” he said. “I believe that migration is part of humanity.”
Moposita was first exposed to hip-hop thanks to his family’s migration to the US. He was about 10 years old when his cousins came to Ecuador on vacation and brought rap albums and baggy clothes. He started wearing those low pants, and he got his artistic nickname.
“My mom asked me one day, what is your costume about?” he said. The nickname “Disfraz,” or costume, stuck.
Moposita’s mom is a housewife and his dad is a cobbler. He dropped out of school at 14. In his 20s, he began writing songs. In the early 2000s, when the hip-hop movement in Ecuador got organized, he started to pay attention to the world around him.
“What is happening in my neighborhood, what are the needs of my place, of my society? So there I began to write more political, more social things,” he said.
Mugre Sur’s political songs make them particularly relevant in the country right now according to Juan José Avilés, or Juanjo, a music critic for the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo.
“This is their moment. We need people who talk about these problems, these daily problems,” he said.
Avilés explained that the band has credibility because they come from humble beginnings. “They are people who came from the streets, from the Ghetto,” he said. “Mugre Sur is a hip-hop band that you should understand when you know that things are not OK in politics …here in Ecuador.”
Mugre Sur doesn’t get a lot of radio play, and they use social media to get their songs out, according to Avilés. Considering that, he said it’s particularly impressive that they performed at the Estéreo Picnic festival in Colombia earlier this year.
“Music here in Ecuador is not, like, a way of living,” he said. “People who really live from music here in Ecuador, tienen que sudarla, it’s hard, you have to sweat it.”
Mugre Sur has been influential for anyone doing hip-hop in Quito, said Gonzalo Arroyo, a rapper and music producer who performs under the name R3tal. “They have been pillars of Ecuadorian hip-hop since forever. Any rapper when they are starting out, in my case it was 2005, 2006, Mugre Sur was there,” he said.
Arroyo produced their latest album, “Mugresuréate.” He said he first showed them his new beats, but then he decided to show Moposita some old ones that he really liked. “I believe more than half of ‘Mugresuréate’ has my old beats. That is really incredible because Moposita gave life to these beats that I didn’t think anyone would ever use,” he said.
Moposita said he’s explored new sounds since what he calls his more professional album came out in 2009. “It had sounds more Latin, more Ecuadorian, more ours, and that kind of shook up the hip-hop movement a bit,” he said.
The youngest member of Mugre Sur, Luis Miranda, is 22 and has been with the band since he was 18. He said initially his parents didn’t like the idea, but they came around.
“My dad said it was better to be with the group than on the streets,” he said.
Moposita hopes his four kids or maybe his bandmate’s children will carry his mantle.
“Mugre Sur will be open to all of them. That’s why it will last for a long time. When I’m gone, they can each take a costume, put it on and represent us,” he said.
His daughter Sisa, who is 16, has performed and recorded with the group. But she said she wants to be a marine biologist.
Support for this story was provided in part by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.