By Gema Pazmino
In a cozy apartment bathed in red light, right above a restaurant in downtown St John’s, Francis Dawson showed me all the instruments and gadgets that made up the home studio.
Nadia Duman, the other half of the musical duo Cuerpos, started telling the story of how this project came to be and the musical evolution that followed, while Dawson set the mood with different tracks, tagging along with the rhythm of the story. Cuerpos is an electronic music project that experiments with elements of Latin and Caribbean genres, accompanied by lyrics in Spanish.
“Cuerpos has helped me a lot to think about my geographic origins and my personal identity,” said Duman, who is from Guayaquil, Ecuador. She moved to St John’s in 2014 to attend MUN. She started making music when she was nine years old; her influences came from the hardcore music scene in Guayaquil. In 2018, Duman met Dawson through a mutual friend, and on a cold winter day in 2019, with nothing to do, they created their first song.
Before meeting Dawson, Duman said she was not familiar with electronic music. Dawson was born in St John’s and became interested in music during high school, playing piano and guitar. With a Chilean mother, Dawson spent a lot of time in Chile. There he would hang out with his cousin’s boyfriend, an event organizer and a DJ, and started learning more about techno and electronic music through him.
“This project keeps me more connected to that [Chilean] culture, more connected to my roots.”

Electronic and Latin music was not predominant in the NL music scene at the time Cuerpos was formed, said Duman, and in a way, this helped them take the project in the creative direction they wanted to.
“That was what made us stand out,” said Dawson. “It was different.”
Their distinctive approach to electronic music is not the only aspect that makes them unique in the local scene. Their way of connecting with their roots and combining both Duman and Dawson’s backgrounds is also a big part of Cuerpos’ character.
Intimo, intimate in English, was their first EP. They worked on the project after joining the RPM Challenge 2019, a creative test that encourages artists to finish an original project in a month.
In Intimo, they experimented with reggaeton and cumbia elements and included vocal samples of relevant Hispanic figures such as the writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano and Hispanic Mexican singer Alaska.
Later this same year, they performed live for the first time in the Lawnya Vawnya Festival. Dawson and Duman said it was challenging having to figure out how they were going to transform what they made with a computer into a live set.
“We thought it out, and we did it.”
In 2021, they released their second EP, Plumas (feathers). They started working on this project in 2020, when Dawson moved to Ottawa for his master’s degree. Because of Covid restrictions and with a lot of time on his hands, he started developing these tracks.
Psychedelic-sounding guitar riffs and experimental synths, with some cumbia elements, and lyrics inspired by the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra are what make up their two-track EP.
For Duman, singing in Spanish made sense, because she felt she had more freedom to express herself.
“If I was in a space with more people that spoke Spanish,” said Duman. “Maybe it would have been harder for me to come (to) terms to what I have to say.”
They toured outside of the province for the first time in 2023, after the release of their third EP En Dos Partes (In Two Places), performing in Fredericton, Halifax, and Montreal. Up to that point, all of Cuerpos’ music was created by the two of them in their home studio, so working with local producer Jake Nicoll for this EP was an exciting experience; Dawson stressed how important it was having Nicoll’s perspective on their music.
In 2024, they were part of MUTEK in Montreal, an electronic music and audiovisual performance festival. It was the biggest crowd they have performed for so far, Duman described it as a childhood dream come true.
Their music has changed a lot, said Duman, but it has been an exhilarating creative process, a byproduct that started with two friends hanging out and sharing music. “This project had fueled me creatively. I was not feeling particularly inspired by the music I was listening to; electronic music came to me in the right time.”
The duo hopes to continue producing music digitally, but also in a physical format, and take this project not only to other levels, but also to other places within and outside of Canada.

Gema Pazmino is a journalist living in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Pazmino came to St. John’s to study journalism at the College of the North Atlantic.

Photographs by Lauren Pecore.