Colombian-born, New York-based singer/songwriter Carolina Oliveros is best known for being the frontperson of acclaimed act Combo Chimbita. Oliveros will be stepping out into the spotlight with her solo debut Ya Rompimos el Silencio, which is slated for a November 6, 2026 release through Chulo Records.
Inspired by her journey of healing from childhood trauma, Ya Rompimos el Silencio is an act of reclaiming voice, body and memory. The album’s material follows the path forward towards truth, resilience, queer love, collective healing and liberation. Each song is both a personal testimony and an invitation for others to break their own silences.
Sonically, the album reflects Oliveros lifelong dialogue between worlds. Anchored in the Afro-Indigenous musical traditions of Colombia and the Caribbean, vocal harmonies serve as connective tissue marrying bullerengue, cumbia, tambora, rumba, bolero, dembo, salve and other ancestral rhythms with adventurous contemporary production. The result if a sound that’s simultaneously intimate and expansive, ritualistic and contemporary — and honors tradition while boldly pushing it forward. Throughout the album’s runtime, its songs move effortlessly between ceremony and celebration, contemplation and the dance floor, revealing that healing can be a defiant, joyful act.
While showcasing another dimension of Oliveros’ artistry, Ya Rompimos el Silencio is rooted in the belief that music carries memory across generations, that telling the truth can be liberating and transformative, and breaking silence is not an ending, it’s a decision to choose a freer way of living.
The album will include the previously released “Oye Camina,” “RAYO” feat. Orquesta Akokán, and the album’s latest asingle, album closing track and title track “YA ROMPIMOS EL SILENCIO.” “YA ROMPIMOS EL SILENCIO,” which translates into English as “WE’VE BROKEN THE SILENCE”is a furious, defiant and fiercely politically charged song that directly confronts gender-based violence, abuse and the systems of ear, shame and impunity that allow them to persist. The track sees Oliveros alternating between spitting haymaker-like bars and crooning over a woozy production featuring Afro Latino percussion, bubbling synths and samples of a chorus of equally defiant women demanding to be heard.
Written in solidarity with women, girls, nonbinary, trans folks and families, whose stories have become intertwined with her own, “YA ROMPIMOS EL SILENCIO” is an uncompromising, unafraid declaration of resistance, solidarity and compassion for all victims and a demand to be heard. “I wrote it with all the women, girls, and families in mind whose stories have become intertwined with my own—people who have been silenced by fear, shame, power, and impunity,” says Oliveros. “It is a song born from outrage, but also from the conviction that breaking the silence is the first act of justice.”
Directed by Oliveros and Bodgehost, the accompanying video features the Colombian-born artist with a collection of Latin women and non-binary folks in all the shades in solidarity while also proudly taking up space and refusing to be shamed or silenced. Anchored around a simple concept, the video is as powerful as the song.