Guitar strumming, ‘it’s been a hard oneeeeeee, reaaaaal with myself...yeah yeah!” phone-lines ringing, nannananan, doodododo,” ‘rememberrrrrr’ chimes in an auto tuned Mac Demarco, a news clip follows, “back in Howard Beach, Queens the family had an idea what was going on..” YEAH YEAH Juan’s repeats like a signature. If song lyrics included all present sounds, Wauters’ recent release “Real”, feat. friend and former roommate Demarco, would read as such. And here’s what it sounds like. Wauters’ discography oscillates between english and spanish with a Queens / Uruguayan affect. He brings us into the experiences that opened his mind to his poetic deconstruction of language. 

Juan Wauters is a musician from Queens and Montevido whose experiences in both places shaped his understanding of music as a synthesis of sounds; a sonic poetry in which his accent is a creative tool, an unedited indicator of identity. Many non-North American native speaking artists exhibit a vocal assimilation in which accents are lost, prominently heard with British artists like The Kooks / Mick Jagger / Phil Collins. In these songs and much of their music, there’s no hint of place, no indication of UK regional accents in their sound but when speaking, there would be. It seems that this is largely due to the way vowels are pronounced when singing, there’s a smoothing of accents that makes most singing sound like American English (“Why British Singers Lose Their Accents When Singing”). Wauter’s accent, in contrast, takes his songs out of language barriers while retaining his accent. We spoke with Juan Wauters following his recent release Real Life Situations about the idea of assimilation through vocal performance and his philosophy on sound.

Wauters moved to Jackson Heights, Queens from Montevido, Uruguay at age 16, finding himself in a community where “having an accent wasn’t something that made you stick out. Everyone is either an immigrant or their kid is an immigrant. In some ways, I consider myself to have had a privilege. A half way into America by living in a community in which I saw myself as one more.” A school “vocal correction” class taught ESL students sounds that are phonetically unique to English - a course, despite its cringey name in the “woke era,” (as Wauter describes our contemporary cultural consciousness) was opportunistic for Wauters. “Americans get offended when I say “vocal correction.” To me, it was really helpful. I form synthesis differently than a person that stayed their whole life in a spanish speaking country. It gives me tools to play around with language. I find that interesting. I don’t limit myself to grammatical rules when it comes to songwriting.”

Living in Queens and learning english made him think of language and sound formation with an abstract lens. Thinking phonetically, his vocals developed to capture a multiplicity of place. “I think of music as sound. And we choose the sounds that we end up using in our music. The vocals and the way I use the sound is chosen because in some ways they sound good to me. I have never so far consciously manipulated my accent within a song like I want my accent to sound like this.” Rather than “correct” vocals, he “[wants] his accent to show.”

His first track “Let Me Hip you to Something” from 2014 debut solo album North American Poetry is like an opening artist statement. Right away, he manipulates grammar and semantics, an act of vocal dissimilation. “Everyone knows what that means,” he says of the line. Untethering words, sounds, and meaning, became his approach to songwriting. “I listen to music in all different languages. That has brought me to understand that when i songwrite, i shouldn’t pick the words only because of their meaning, but because of their sound. They sound attractive together so that someone who doesn’t know the language can enjoy the sounds.” Listening to his multi-second rolling rs in “rrrrrrrrrica la fruta,” (“Disfruta La Fruta”) you’re taken out of the word and wholeheartedly into the sound. The sound, also known as the “alvrolar trill” may bar the those trying to follow along and imitate - foreign to one’s tongue and throat, but in the end of the day, it’s a physical action that can be practiced and learned, the same way Wauters learned english phonetics.

Regionally and locally, the affect of accent is everywhere. Reflecting on spending more than half of his life in New York, Wauters realizes, “Everyone has an accent - you go to the south and people talk mad weird. You go to California and people talk differently. In the Bronx people talk differently than Brooklyn. Accents are a part of people talking. it’s ridiculous because once you live here so long and become an adult and see the world differently you think i have an accent yes but who doesn’t?”

(Audio easter egg is 'Audiio_PassengerJetTakeOff1.wav', used in OTB's sound library.)