By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 10 2002 (IPS)

Uruguay’s singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, the only artist from this small country — small by South American standards — to be nominated for a Latin Grammy musical award this year, is “home” for a concert tour, reinforcing his ties to his origins, he says.

Drexler’s nomination for a Grammy in the category of “best male pop vocal album” — the Latin Grammy awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles on Sep. 18 — is his first ever in a musical career of six albums.

These albums have built a bridge for him between two continents and carried — or pulled — him through an array of musical influences.

Living in Spain for the last seven years, he says he still feels like an immigrant, but not an unwelcome one. And his nostalgia for his country of origin is evident throughout his lyrics, as is his situation as someone who has uprooted himself from his home.

Although he now lives across the Atlantic, Drexler’s music continues to be deeply rooted in Uruguay, with strong influences of the local ‘candombe’, ‘murga’, and folk styles, while continually incorporating more universal nuances.

While this element was more pronounced in his previous album ‘Frontera’ (Border, 1999), in which the title song said “I don’t know where I’m from, my house is on the border”, the sensation persists in his latest, Grammy-nominated album, ‘Sea’, with references to his German-Jewish ancestry, the ocean that separates the two continents, and nostalgia for the “country with the name of a river”, his native Uruguay.

On ‘Sea’ he has gone further with computerised production technologies, continuing the shift away from the more traditional singer-songwriter-with-guitar of his earlier albums.

Drexler said in a conversation with IPS that what he needed at the time was “to reconnect with Uruguay”, so he chose to work with a Uruguayan production team on his last two albums, in spite of having the opportunity to work with others in Spain.

And his choice in producers has played a major part in his musical evolution. Juan Campodónico and Carlos Casacuberta, who were both in the now-defunct rap-rock band Peyote Asesino and whose families were exiled to Mexico during the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985), have contributed a whole new set of variables to Drexler’s music.

Drexler says his decision to work with fellow-musician Campodónico and with Casacuberta, a life-long friend, was an attempt to develop aesthetically “through confrontation”, referring to the clash of genres, of rap and computerisation with the more traditional singer-songwriter approach.

“I didn’t want them to say ‘yes’ to everything I proposed. I wanted our ideas to clash in the positive sense. And that confrontation ranged from polite suggestions to fervent discussions. We progressed more as a result of counterweights than through synergy,” Drexler said.

Casacuberta, meanwhile, recognises that having spent childhood and adolescence in Mexico City, with its proximity to the United States and access to music from that country and from all of Latin America, has influenced his and Campodónico’s musical preferences and inspirations as adults.

In Drexler’s music “we have inserted corrido, bolero and tropical styles in unusual places, but the music is definitely more from the south” of Latin America, although it has elements from everywhere, Casacuberta told IPS.

When asked how he would define his musical style, Drexler said he would prefer not to, but if pressed, he would call it “MPU”, the Spanish acronym for Uruguayan pop music, which he says in itself is still a vague definition.

Music critic Guilherme Pinto, who writes for the Uruguayan weekly newspaper ‘Brecha’, applauds the “computerised pop” of Drexler’s last two albums, pointing out that it is a “unique case of someone who is much younger as he approaches age 40 than he was on his first album a decade ago.”

“His lyrics are extremely simple, in spite of a very detailed production, and they are lyrics that anyone can understand,” said Pinto in a conversation with IPS.

“There is a great deal of originality, but with very little pretentiousness,” he added.

Drexler caught the attention of Joaquín Sabina when the Spanish star was in Uruguay on a Latin American concert tour. With Sabina as his mentor, Drexler carved out a space for himself and his music in Spain over the last seven years.

“I am conscious of the fact that opting to record an Uruguayan album may have closed the doors for me in Spain’s more commercial musical world,” says Drexler. “But the intelligent Spain is going to understand me.”

Proof of the universal appeal of Drexler’s simple yet emotion-provoking lyrics is the fact that such luminaries as Spain’s Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel, and Cuba’s Pablo Milanés have performed or recorded his songs.

Also in the running for the “best male pop vocal album” of the 2002 Latin Grammys (Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) are Miguel Bosé’s ‘Sereno’ (Spain), Alejandro Lerner’s ‘Lerner.Vivo’ (Argentina), Gian Marco’s ‘A tiempo’ (Peru), and Marco Antonio Solís’ ‘Más de mi alma’ (Mexico).

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