Enrique Rodríguez

Enrique "Kike" Rodríguez is a composer, percussionist, keyboardist, and producer from Santiago, Chile. In addition to recording solo, he is the leader of his country’s Negra Chiway Band.
His solo debut, 2018′s Lo Que Es EP, was issued by Extra Lovely Music when he was just 18. He played all the instruments and wrote all ten tracks. It offered an atmospheric ambient intersection between smooth jazz, post-classical, library and soundtrack music, and hip-hop in short, moody, meditative pieces. He formed the Negra Chiway Band in Santiago in 2019. Fase Liminal, the sextet’s debut album was issued by London’s Soul Jazz label in 2020. The band’s music is deeply influenced by the spiritual jazz traditions established by Sun Ra, Horace Tapscott, and the Impulse! and Strata East label discographies of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Their sound melds Latin polyrhythms and strains of Afro-Latin jazz with North American modal, spiritual, and soul-jazz traditions and modern electronic production techniques. Their expansive tonalities are delivered through innovative arrangements that juxtapose electronics, reeds, brass, woodwinds, and syncopated organic and synthetic percussion. ~ Thom Jurek