Luca Moreno and Isa Pietrosemoli Salazar, two native Venezuelan musicians, started their band Stan & Denghy in Raleigh in 2022. However, their vision and ideas were born years ago when they started jamming together in a music academy in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Last semester, Stan & Denghy gained notoriety as they started performing in local house show venue Q House. This summer, they embarked on a tour alongside other Raleigh-based musicians and released a new single on May 20, 2023 called “Verano en Pijama.”
Although the band mainly consists of lead singer and guitarist, Luca Moreno, and lead singer and drummer, Isa Pietrosemoli Salazar, there’s also collaboration with seven other musicians from the area.
“Essentially, Stan & Denghy is me and Luca,” Pietrosemoli said. “We bring the ideas, … but we have a bassist, a keyboard player, a saxophone player, a second percussionist and another singer that helps us out.” However, before becoming Stan & Denghy, they were both members of a band named Saturnalias, from which they met some of the musicians they collaborate with.
“From Saturnalias, Isa and I met people — and through the record label — and we decided to start our own project,” Moreno said.
Something that sets them apart from other emerging bands in Raleigh is their incorporation of their culture into their music, since they compose and perform in their first and native language, Spanish.
“Everyone should bring their cultures [and] their backgrounds into [music],” Pietrosemoli said. “You shouldn’t be afraid of doing that. You should just exalt it and try to bring pride.”
Despite the challenges they’ve faced in finding their audience in Raleigh due to performing in a language other than English, they will continue to write and perform in Spanish.
“The reason why we keep [writing music in Spanish] is cause people still love it even if they’re not understanding it,” Pietrosemoli said. “The lyrics mean something, but it’s about the whole music composition that we want to bring to people. … You can still feel the emotions that we’re feeling even if you’re not understanding what we’re saying.”
When talking about musical influences, they both mentioned the impact Latin groups such as Cultura Profética, Los Cafres and Rawayana — a modern Venezuelan group that combines reggae, funk and salsa — had on them while growing up.
Now their music is a reflection of these influences, incorporating tropical and Caribbean sounds as well as Latin rock elements to create their own style.
“We have a lot of range,” Moreno said. “We can play some mellow reggae stuff and then turn on the overdrive and go crazy for ten minutes.”
Their last single, “Verano en Pijama,” shows their range as it begins with a funky-rock beat and then it changes into a more mellow-reggae rhythm.
“It’s seeing two sides of something [by accentuating it] with different genres. It’s cool to see that contrast,” Pietrosemoli said.
Some of their future plans include beginning to perform only original songs at their gigs, as well as the release of an album. For now, they are both grateful to have finally started this project together, which has been on their minds since childhood.
“We’ve been playing music together for years, even before we moved to the United States,” Pietrosemoli said. “I never saw this as a possibility, so I’m just so thankful.”
