Through some alignment of the moon and stars, Chicago was
graced with two talented Latin American singer-songwriters in the same week,
one three decades into a successful career, the other a rising star of indie pop. I
attended both shows, and I can safely say that there was zero crossover of
audience between them, separated as they are by nearly a generation.
Jorge Drexler plants his artistry squarely in the tradition
of the wandering troubadour (the album cover pictured here reproduces his passport). His songs are literate observations of multiple
identities, and given his background, it seems as though they could be about
little else. His father, a German Jew, moved to Montevideo, Uruguay as a child
to escape the Nazis. His mother is of Spanish, French and Portuguese descent.
He studied medicine and became a doctor (like his parents) but decided to be a
musician instead.
After releasing a pair of albums in Uruguay, he moved to Madrid
in the early 90s, where he still lives. He began to garner international
attention with his 1999 album Frontera, produced by fellow Uruguayan Juan Campodónico. If
that name sounds familiar, it should. Campodónico and Argentine
musician Gustavo Santaolalla are the brains and muscle behind Bajofondo’s
globally encompassing brew of Río de la Plata music (the waterway separates [or connects,
depending on your point of view] the two countries). Drexler has a Beatlesque
melodic touch, and Campodónico’s production illuminates this while
simultaneously re-connecting Drexler to the Uruguayan musical traditions of milonga and candombe. Frontera’s electronica-enhanced
sound was followed by three more collaborations; Sea, Eco, and 12
Segundos de Oscuridad. I love the
sound of all of them, because my senses crave the flavors that these
layered musical elements provide. I’m not sure, frankly, that I would
appreciate Drexler as much if the arrangements stuck to a more conventional
sound.
I brought a slight
apprehension with me to the concert hall, as I really didn’t know what to
expect. Would there be a band? Or just a guy, a voice and a guitar? The answer,
it turns out, was somewhere in between. For the most part, a relaxed and youthful-looking
Drexler performed solo on a
fairly stark stage, decorated only with a glowing, color-shifting orb
positioned at the back. His guitar playing is perfect for his songs, often
interrupting simple strumming for odd, jazzy time changes and note choices. He’s a terrific Brazilian guitarist as well. His “band” was a set of foot pedals that
sent his voice and guitar through a sequencer, subtly layering the sound of each to
create multiple rhythmic and melodic patterns that echoed around the room. Drexler is clearly enamored of his electro
sounds: He brought on a colleague for a few songs to play “percussion” on what
looked like a souped-up iPad and even made room for a theremin
solo. In the end, Drexler achieved the best of both worlds. The intelligentsia
in the audience could experience his contemplative, probing lyrics intimately
while the more musically attuned could smile at the ethereal sound, tap their
foot and sing along to catchy choruses.
Three nights later,
I again found myself entering a concert hall with questions. Carla Morrison is
the latest darling of the Latin indie music set. There are multiple identities
and influences at work in her music as well. She was born in Tecate, Baja
California. Both of her parents are Mexican, but the name Morrison comes from her
father’s adopted name, as he was raised on the San Diego side of the border by an Anglo. Carla
moved to Arizona for both high school and college and was immersed in the
alternative rock scene there. She studied voice, piano, guitar and ethnomusicology
before returning to Tecate, where she was in several bands before starting a
solo career in 2007. By 2010, she was independently releasing music, starting
with a pair of EPs and then the album length Déjenme Llorar in 2012. She
has since moved to Mexico City.
I’ve recently been
reading an anthology called The Late Great Mexican Border, which argues
that “border culture” is a thing unto itself, distinct from Latin America but
also different from Latino identity in the United States. People may live on
one side of the border or the other, but their ideas and identities are shaped
by both. I think Morrison’s music is representative of this. Her songs are
simple, but very well written. She writes and sings almost entirely in Spanish,
but the music is indie pop at its most pristine, full of twee touches like ukuleles,
toy pianos and glockenspiels. Her voice is charmingly delicate; her lyrics
survey matters of the heart, especially heartbreak. Now, heartbreak is a
longstanding, perhaps even obsessive subject of Latin pop, but Morrison’s take
leans more toward sweet melancholy than to tragedy. I like it enough, but it’s
not in my daily diet.
Onstage, Morrison is confident, charming, sincere and
playful in equal measure. Her band has surprising heft, powering her songs from
quiet ruminations to fairly muscular, almost orchestral pop-rock. The drummer and
bassist are rock solid yet capable of much finesse, while each side of the
stage is flanked by multi-instrumentalists who supply strongly voiced colors
ranging from trumpet to electric guitar (and those ukuleles) and synthesizers.
Morrison pretty much owns the rest of the stage, whether pounding out a batucada rhythm on a drum, strumming an
acoustic guitar or playing her own gorgeous, white hollow body electric.
Seriously, it was the most beautiful guitar I’d ever seen, and Morrison made
great use of its rich sound. When she wasn’t playing an instrument, she prowled
the stage with a hand held microphone. She switched instruments pretty much
between every song, and the result kept the music varied as the set moved back
and forth easily from quiet ballads to upbeat power pop, even dropping a quick banda into the mix to acknowledge her
Baja birthplace. And, in classic pop tradition, Morrison has a penchant for
inserting wordless “ooos” into her songs. On the title track from Déjenme Llorar, piano, glockenspiel and tambourine
combine on a spare ballad for a little touch of Springsteen’s E-Street Band. (The
Boss has been covering, en español, songs
by beloved Latin American poet/songwriters on his South American tour. I’d love
to hear what he’d do with this one.)
Morrison has hinted that she would like to one day write and
sing in English, but for now she is content to develop her artistic identity in
her first language. She seems in no hurry to conquer the Anglo market. Jorge
Drexler never has, but he really has no need to. He gained a bit of U.S. fame a
few years back for his Academy Award winning theme song to The Motorcycle Diaries, Al Otro Lado del Rio. Other
than a cover of Mose Allison’s I Don’t
Worry About a Thing (sung with his friend, jazz pianist and vocalist Ben
Sidran), he’s continued to record exclusively in Spanish. Well, there was also that
Radiohead cover. Anyway, I think the difference is that Drexler is a Latin artist
who interacts with the Anglo world by choice, while Morrison, the border artist, has a
foot on each side and full artistic claim to both.
We shall see.
