The origins of the band

​

Cosmica Bandida was born from a meeting between two worlds.

 

Manuela Illera, born in Bogotá, Colombia, in the late 1980s, comes from an extraordinarily musical country—one that has created its own genres and developed a cultural avant-garde around Latin American sound. She absorbed these rhythms early on and later studied visual arts in Bogotá and Buenos Aires before settling in Munich, where she has lived for the past decade and shaped her interdisciplinary artistic practice.

Her encounter with German musician David Blitz gave Cosmica Bandida its second axis. Born in Cologne in the 1970s, Blitz grew up in London and spent his twenties in San Francisco, where he first encountered Latin and Caribbean rhythms while living in a city deeply influenced by Mexican culture. His background in experimental music, electronic sound, and countercultural scenes merged naturally with Manuela’s sonic and artistic universe.

 

Together, they form Cosmica Bandida—an ongoing dialogue between cultures, aesthetics, identities, and the political histories carried by rhythm.

 

Their paths crossed at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2019. David was working as a professor’s assistant, and Manuela was a painting student searching for a new direction in her interdisciplinary practice. The class where David taught focused on time-based media, and his studio was filled with machines, synthesizers, tape loops, and handmade instruments. Manuela had been experimenting with music and sound since her teenage years, and she wanted to give that drive more space. 

 

As curator of the academy’s record label AKASCOPE, David launched an open call for a new vinyl release — and, without knowing it, selected one of Manuela’s tracks, an ambient composition made with self-built ocarinas. When they finally met, she wanted to operate the machines in his studio, and that impulse sparked a collaboration that would grow into Cosmica Bandida.

 

As artists, they have also developed installation projects and built various types of sound devices, exhibiting their work in art institutions as an extension of their sonic and performative practice.

 

As a cultural encounter, Cosmica Bandida has become a playground for political debate and questioning around artistic and cultural practices. The fusion of their backgrounds enriches a dialogue that goes beyond music — touching on migration, queer identity, and contrasting lived experiences. These exchanges are not only conceptual but embodied; they permeate the music itself, giving it its tension, tenderness, and sense of transformation.

 

During the pandemic, the duo began composing, recording, and experimenting. Their first live appearances featured noisy, slowed-down cumbias (rebajadas) and improvised sets. A year later, their songs started taking clearer form, and by the end of 2022 they had developed a full dance-oriented set. Since then, Cosmica Bandida has played more than sixty shows and released two records — a journey that continues to evolve through rhythm, experimentation, and the chemistry between two artists deeply engaged with the aesthetic, cultural, and performative dimensions of music-making.