SHORT BIO

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Aquiestoy (Spanish for “I am here”) is the expansive, rhythm-forward creative music project of guitarist, producer, and singer-songwriter Carlos Snaider. Raised with a love of music by a Nuyorican mother and Ecuadorian father across cities in the US, briefly in Quito, Ecuador, his music reflects an identity in motion. Currently based in Seattle, Aquiestoy builds a sound language that integrates arrangements with a live band, production with analog synthesizers and compositions in English, Spanish and Spanglish.

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The name Aquiestoy fuses the words “here” and “I am,” evoking a sense of presence without fixed ground. His compositions create worlds that invite to be inhabited and felt, accessible even when language dissolves.

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LONG BIO

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Aquiestoy is the acoustic-meets-analog creative music project of guitarist and multiinstrumentalist Carlos Snaider. Based in Seattle with Nuyorican and Ecuadorian roots, Aquiestoy bridges creative music sensibilities with hip-hop, electronica, and latin music, along with lyrics sung in English and Spanish, with the intention that the message be felt in the music even if the words are lost in translation. Carlos has directed his years of writing for jazz and latin bands into a forthcoming solo-produced album as Aquiestoy that explores hybridity, diaspora, devotion to nature, and alertness of mind and body, all expressed with acoustic instruments, analog synths, drum machines, and his voice. Most songs are tracked on his own, with some pieces recorded alongside collaborators Mario Layne Fabrizio (drums), Julian Weisman (bass), Daniel Mendoza (congas) and Elias Hampton (acoustic guitar). 

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His self-produced debut album Til We Dissolve (2026) resists the pull toward fixed identity in either sound or language. Originally conceived as Multiverso, the album thinks through islands as individual universes — each one complete, each one in relation — offering reflections on depth, transience, closeness and distance. Informed by creative music, salsa, boleros, beatmakers, hip-hop, rock, and singer-songwriters, the album moves through live band arrangements, hardware synth production, and songwriting in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. The sound worlds are there to be felt, even if the meaning is lost in translation. 

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Snaider has led live ensembles in both Seattle and Quito, with different voices and instrumentations that keep the music mutable. He has worked closely with Ay Ombe Theatre, the international performance troupe founded by poet and performance artist Josefina Báez, whose practice of community-building through the autobiography of the self has been a formative influence on his work. He studied at Harvard University with Vijay Iyer, Yosvany Terry, and George Lewis, and has maintained ties to the New York creative music scene.