Miguel Caos tour: inside the stage design

Miguel Caos Tour set — (Image credit: Courtesy of Miguel)

In a rehearsal space deep in the San Fernando Valley on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Miguel stands tall on top of an overturned police cruiser with a fist in the air and a microphone to his lips. Above his head, suspended from the rafters, a colossal sculpture in the style of an ancient Olmec head watches over him like an observant god. It’s a powerful image, a man caught between righteous defiance on the streets and the legacy of his ancestral history, and one that’s at the heart of the Grammy-winning R&B star’s electrifying new tour.

Last October, on the same day he turned 40, Miguel released his first album in eight years. Caos was born out of a transformative period in his personal life, during which he became a father for the first time and composed some of the most intimate and introspective music of his career. When he began planning exactly how he would take Caos on the road, he knew the live show would have to feel just as significant.

‘Last year was one of the most important years of my life, and this album is my most important album thus far,’ says Miguel, taking a seat on a black couch during a brief respite from a day spent fine-tuning his performance. ‘I knew I couldn’t come back with a tour where we just come out and do the songs everybody knows. The same amount of thought and consideration had to go into the stage.’

The first seeds for the visual language of Caos were planted during Miguel’s conversations with the writer and filmmaker Margaret Zhang, the mother of his son, who he describes as his ‘creative and strategic partner.’ It was Zhang who introduced him to the work of scenic designer Riccardo Hernández, whose extensive work on Broadway has earned him Tony nominations for designing shows such as Lempicka and the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill. ‘I immediately connected with the way his approach pulls the viewer in and seems to amplify the storytelling without getting in the way,’ says Miguel.

In collaboration with Hernández, who helped to sharpen and refine his ideas about staging, Miguel began to work on a set that could convey with just a few key elements the idea of chaos: both on an inner subconcious level and a wider societal one. For a symbol of his subconscious self, he hit upon the idea of the Olmec head, the imposing icons of ancient Mesoamerican culture that were carved out of basalt boulders thousands of years ago.

‘I needed a symbol that would convey a certain innate and ancient nature,’ explains Miguel, who points out that while traditional Olmec heads depicted men clad in armour, his version sees his own resemblance wearing the danza de los diablos head scarf, a homage to the celebration of freed African slaves in Mexico. It’s a nod to his own background: Miguel was born in Los Angeles to a Black mother and a father whose family come from Zamora, Michoacán in Mexico.

‘The Olmec head is meant to represent both the id and the child,’ continues Miguel. ‘When I first went to Michoacán and met my family there, I felt like I had known them my entire life. Having my son reminded me of that feeling. Seeing his personality and his nature reminded me how deep our blood runs. That Olmec head is my way of saying that in me there is something that spans space and time and generations. It’s also meant to say that I have an immense pride in where I come from.’

To bring the stage set firmly into the contemporary world, Miguel wanted to incorporate a symbol of societal unrest. ‘I don’t know if there’s anything more raw than to be on top of a cop car!’ he says with a sly grin, adding: ‘Flipping it was instinctual, and just so happened to add a simple but effective uniqueness to the visual composition.’

The car features details that only sharp-eyed fans will notice, such as a bespoke CIA-style logo for the ‘Caos Intelligence Agency’, and will be a key focal point for the live show. Miguel reveals he plans to tag it with spray paint every night during the tour. ‘The police car is a symbol that’s really representative of these systems that we have to take a look at, within and without,’ he adds. ‘Of course, it also pleases the child in me that wants to rage and say: fuck it all!’

The upturned car alone would make for a memorable visual, but by pairing it with the hovering Olmec head Miguel and Hernández have crafted a stage set that speaks volumes all on its own. ‘Those two elements, with me in the centre, are very much meant to evoke this place we’re all in, in the midst of it all,’ says Miguel. ‘We’re all in between our own subconcious pressures and the pressures of reality as it is. I think that’s what this whole thing is all about.’

Miguel’s Caos tour runs from February until May in the United States and Europe.

Kevin EG Perry is a Los Angeles-based writer and journalist with over 15 years experience writing across culture and travel.

Currently Culture Writer at The Independent, his work has also appeared in The Guardian, British GQ, Lonely Planet, NME and Empire.

He was shortlisted for The Guardian’s International Development Journalism Award in 2009.