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When I meet Sophie Castillo on a scorching, 93-degree afternoon in Austin, Texas, she takes a seat by the pool at the Fairmont hotel in a long leather blazer — and tells me she’s keeping it on.
“We went seven consecutive days without sunshine last month,” says the London-born singer-songwriter, who performed at the city’s annual South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW). “I need to soak up the sun!”
The daughter of a Colombian mother and a Cuban father, Castillo is on a mission to amplify the Latin American diaspora in the U.K., primarily through her music: an elegant mélange of balmy electronic textures and Latin American heritage sounds like salsa, bachata and reggaeton. She hopes these genres can take off in the U.K., as did Afrobeats, ska, bhangra and other musical styles that immigrant communities helped integrate into British popular music.
“British people [don’t] get enough credit as to how open-minded they are,” she says. “Whenever I’ve seen people react to Latin music in the U.K., they’re excited. They’re not like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to listen to that because it’s in Spanish.’ They’re like, ‘This is cool, tell me more!’ ”
During the Amigo showcase at Rozco‘s on the night of March 12, Castillo, decked in a cowboy hat and a red velvet ensemble, introduced her new single, “The Betrayal.” A cut from her upcoming EP, due in April, “The Betrayal” is a sultry baile funk song that simmers with righteous indignation. She performed the song live with L.A.-based guitarist and DJ Stylolive.
“I love Brazilian music, so I wanted to try out a funk fusion,” explains Castillo. “It all came together with this Shakira-esque Arabic scale. The drama was there, cinematic element was there, which is what I love.”
Beyond Latinidad, music runs in Castillo’s blood. Her father, renowned salsa dancer and DJ Nelson Batista, studied dance at the Casa de Cultura in Havana before immigrating to London in the 1980s. Sparks flew between him and Castillo’s mother, who emigrated from Colombia around the same time. “My dad is known as the godfather of salsa in the U.K,” says Castillo. “He’s one of the first Cubans to bring salsa from Cuba to the U.K. and start doing salsa classes.”
While Castillo’s parents reveled in the magic of salsa, Castillo’s uncles, Eddie and Lee, took young Sophie to see musicals. And, when she was old enough, they encouraged her to attend an after-school theater program. She then supplemented her musical education by learning how to produce songs using GarageBand at home. She cultivated her own indie-infused style by listening to American chanteuse Lana Del Rey, who is her favorite artist to this day.
“My uncle Eddie dropped off a CD of mine at Universal when I was 13,” she says. “It was so funny. I didn’t know anyone in the music industry, nor the Latin music industry. How do you make noise?”
Castillo built her audience organically on TikTok, where she test-drove clips of her songs among fans of the Marías and Kali Uchis — two U.S.-based acts that were essential in her own development as a Latina artist between cultures. “I always wanted to sing in Spanish, but I was just a little bit shy,” says Castillo. “Kali Uchis really laid out the path for the indie Latina by making English-language music with a bit of Spanish. I really have so much love and respect for that.”
In 2022, Castillo released the song, “Call Me by Your Name” — a spellbinding bachata tune sung in English and Spanish. “POV: you’re listening to an indie bachata by a British Latina,” read the caption of her video. Counting more than a million views, it was an organic viral sensation. “Americans were like, ‘What, you guys are over there?’ ” Castillo recalls. “They’d say, ‘I can’t believe [a] U.K. Latino is a thing!’ ”
While there exist demographic categories for Caribbean people in the census, largely pertaining to the anglophone countries in the region, an accurate count of the Latin American population is hard to find. In 2013, the census reported at least 250,000 Latin Americans living in the U.K. Yet according to a 2024 report, the population of Latin Americans increased by 406% in London and by 395% in England and Wales from 2001 to 2021.
Castillo has performed at various clubs in Brixton and Elephant and Castle, both hubs for London’s immigrant communities. But Castillo landed her biggest gig in the summer of 2024, after she got an email from a promoter inviting her to open for a mysterious “big star” at the O2 Arena in London — “a week later they told me it was J Balvin,” she says. She opened for the Colombian superstar during his June 5 concert, becoming the first U.K. Latina to perform at the venue.
“I’ve had crazy exciting meetings [with labels]. They get it. Latin music is making the most money, the most noise. On the business front, it makes so much sense. It’s just getting them to act on it,” says Castillo. “[Yet] TikTok is such a powerful tool. I [can be] a completely independent artist and have all the freedom and control to do whatever I wanted.”
By connecting with other diaspora kids through her music online, Castillo has grown to understand the critical role that music has in increasing visibility for Latinos in other parts of the world. As we sit in Texas, the home state of Selena Quintanilla, Castillo raises the impact of Quintanilla’s music, which reached her all the way in England. “The O.G. bilingual queen!” Castillo marvels. “All of the hardships that she faced, the things that she had to navigate being from here and from there as well. That journey of hers was definitely so inspiring as someone who grew up in two different worlds.”
Castillo is wrapping her first U.S. tour Friday at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles — where she will bring her indie Latin groove, as well as songs from her upcoming EP. “I think what Latinos are doing around the world is just incredible, and we should all be very proud of ourselves,” she says. “It’s really nice to see Latinos all over the world thriving, building, expanding. I’m proud to be representing in the U.K. and excited for what the future holds for us.”
