Bee Humana’s musical act of defiance

A number of the tunes on Bee Humana’s debut self-titled EP existed long before the band solidified its current lineup last year. Singer and songwriter Bee Shuman said she penned album track “Sirena Pura,” for one, “about a million years ago,” back when her kids were still little (around 2015, to be more precise).

“I’ve always played guitar and sang, and over the years, every once in a while, I would write a song. And it became this thing where I started writing more and more until it reached this point where I finally understood what people were talking about when they would say, ‘You know you’re an artist when you can’t not do it,’” said Shuman, who will join bandmates David Holm (Ugly Stick, Bigfoot) and Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks, Divine Fits) in celebrating the release of Bee Humana’s new EP at Secret Studio on Saturday, Nov. 22. “Because that is what I arrived at, and it reached this point where I felt really driven and I couldn’t stop.”

Shuman, who studied in Bolivia and then lived for a stretch in Valencia, Spain, swings between English and Spanish in her songwriting, having drawn early inspiration from the likes of Chavela Vargas, whose distinctive interpretations of Mexican ranchera songs left a deep impression on the musician. These included Vargas’ version of the folk song “La cárcel de Adelanto,” which makes reference to its narrator being grabbed “American style” by gun-toting police, and which Bee Humana recently updated for the times. 

“I’d been thinking about doing it, but a month or two ago my husband sort of lit the fire, and we rewrote the lyrics and brought it into the modern era,” said Shuman, whose updated take centers on masked ICE agents disappearing immigrants at gunpoint. “And it’s sad and crazy how many of the lyrics from the original version we were able to preserve. There’s this line [in the original] where ‘the Cananea jail is located on the mesa,’ and in our song, I sing, ‘The Adelanto jail is located on the mesa.’ And I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Adelanto jail, it’s the biggest detention center in America right now, and it’s the one that’s most been in the news. And it’s also on a mesa, so I could keep that line intact.”

While not her native tongue, Shuman said she first gravitated toward writing in Spanish for myriad reasons, including how heavily immersed she was in the Spanish-speaking world at the time, the naturally poetic nature of the language, and the cover it offered her at a point when she lacked a degree of confidence as a performer. “I used to be very insecure about what I wrote,” she said, “so there was also this element where it was a little more obscured.”

In the years since, the decision has taken on added dimensions, with Shuman noting that even performing completely apolitical Spanish-language songs such as “Migracion,” a delicate reflection on cautiously falling in love, could in these times be read as an act of defiance.

“When I first really started playing out in 2019 … I remember saying to somebody, ‘I feel like it’s a political act even to go out there in public and sing in Spanish.’ And now of course it’s 2025, and that feeling is even more so,” said Shuman, who keeps present-day events in front of mind when playing songs such as “La cárcel de Adelanto.” “I’m absolutely rooted in the political moment when I perform it, and I have to be careful to keep myself [present] musically, because I can get carried away. … I’ve performed it twice at this point, and both times I was in tears.”

The songs can similarly impact Shuman’s bandmates even in those times when the language barrier obscures their precise meaning, the emotional weight of her words carried in her delivery and amplified by the melody.

“I don’t really speak Spanish, so on occasion we’ll ask Bee what the song is about, or she’ll tell us,” Holm said. “But … sometimes I don’t even want to know, because the sounds Bee is making are so beautiful that I can feel it emotionally.”

These sounds and songs have continued to evolve in recent months, with different musical shades emerging as the players have forged a deeper creative partnership. Witness the EP opening “To A.,” which pairs drummer Sam Brown’s propulsive rhythms with finger-picked guitar from Shuman that circles the track like hypnotic smoke curls.

“I feel like people look at me and they’re like, ‘Oh, here’s this lady with a classical guitar, it’s going to be all folky and sweet and stuff,’” Shuman said. “And really, my origins are very punk. And I realize it doesn’t feel that way, necessarily, to even look at us as a band. And I understand we don’t sound punk whatsoever. But that’s my sensibility, and so I’m happy in those times when we leave folk-land.”