October 12, 2025 • 29 mins
Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler knows what it's like to live different lives within one. An ENT doctor until his early 30’s, he then decided to leave medicine behind, as well as his life in Uruguay, to pursue a music career in Spain. He became the first Uruguayan to win an Oscar with his song “Al otro lado del río.” In this episode of Latino USA, the multiple award-winning musician walks us through key moments in his career, including the creative process behind his latest album “Tinta y tiempo”—and drops a few gems about his personal life on the way.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm Lisaakazawa. Join me on season two of Stars and
Stars with Lisa, where I sit down with some of
the most exciting stars of our time to find out
what their birth chart reveals about their life's purpose, their relationships,
and their challenges. Winner of the Signal Award for Most
Inspirational Podcast, Stars and Stars will help you make sense
of today's complicated times. Even if you're an astrology skeptic.
(00:29):
You can listen to Stars and Stars with Lisa wherever
you get your podcasts. Don't forget to follow the show
so you never miss an.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Episode from Futuromia. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Jojosa. Jorge Drexler,
the famous Uruayan singer songwriter, first caught the world's attention
in two thousand and five when his song Altro Lao
(00:56):
del Rio was in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Clavo Mire Molavua Jevo Ture.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Jorge Drexler, the famous Uruayan singer songwriter, first caught the
world's attention in two thousand and five when his song
Altro Lado del Rio was in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.
Jorge became the first uruwayan to ever win an Oscar.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
This is the first Academy award and nomination for Orgy Drexler.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
And this was the first time a Spanish language song
received an Academy Award.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Clavo mi remone lagua jevo turemonel mio.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I spoke with Jorge about key moments in his life
as a young artist, from growing up as the son
of a Holocaust survivor to becoming a doctor and then
deciding to drop his career in order to pursue music.
He also tells us why he turned down the opportunity
to become a global pop star just after winning the Oscar,
(02:04):
and of course we talk about his album being That
Eat Pimpo and why it almost didn't come to life.
Our interview first aired in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
No's moscitro vicu.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, first of all, welcome to Latino, USA. I was
trying to remember when I interviewed you last. It turns
out I spoke with you in two thousand and five.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Yeah, after the Oscars, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yes, right after the Oscars and you were so happy. Yeah,
and here we are, comeost us.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Well, I'm happy, I'm in New York. It's really a
pleasure to be here. Thank you first of all for
inviting me, for having me here today.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Here's the crazy thing. So, as I was prepping for
the interview, and of course I'm reading about you're listening
to your music all the time, which was a gift,
and then I at one point I turned around. I
was like Roperatos Wundo era Otto Rino. My father was
an ear nose and throat doctor. Really, my father was
(03:17):
doctor Raulinosa from the University of Chicago, helped to create
the cochlear implant, Eliztavis to the and gone the electron microscope.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
My father and my mother both were illnos and throat doctors.
I helped them for six years in surgery and we
never did implanted or cochlear implant, but we would work
a lot with many illness that you that affect the hearing.
The cocka is a little harp that turns two and
a half times inside a shell, and that's inside your
(03:47):
and that's inside your ear, and that's the harp that
resonates with the sounds. If I saying there's one little
string in that heart that that's raising as if you
do it with a guitar with a real heart. You know,
I never finished here knowson throat. I stopped studying in
the second of the third year of the post degree.
(04:08):
But I do love Heronoson's throat. I do love physiology
and anatomy. And my brother is a in t. My
sister she's a she's an ordontologist, so it's a whole
family of that. I'm the older son of a Jewish family,
(04:28):
half Jewish at least because my mother converted to marry
my father. But she's from Christian Spanish origins, so I
was really supposed to follow the family tradition.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Those caacions manners.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
I grew grew up in a very closed environment Uruguaian dictatorship,
the house of two e in t doctors. All their
friends were et doctors and no musicians around. So just
I really had a good life. I had a very
good job. But at the same time, all that time,
(05:03):
since I was five years old, I was studying music
and I started writing songs when I was fifteen sixteen,
and I never stopped doing music. So at some point I,
when I looked deeped inside myself, I said, what I
really want to do is to make a living on music.
So I moved to Spain.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
And your mom and dad were like CCC no, no.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
They got completely crazy when I left. My father had
been training me for six years in secret microsurgery techniques
that he had learned in Germany. And he said, you're
throwing away something that people are graving for. But you know,
I'm a really, really lucky person. Even loving this thing,
I had another one that I loved more, so I
(05:46):
moved to that one.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Porcala, Murro, Lamento and Heru Saleen Ladora.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
My father, I can't completely understand him, I mean, but
he did the same with his own father. His own
father a Jewish immigrant that my father was born in
Berlin too. He escaped the Nazis when he was five
years old in nineteen thirty nine, and his father lost
everything his family. They started again in Bolivia. They lived
in Bolivia for twelve years, in Oruro, in rel ti Plano,
(06:24):
in Oruro, in Oruro.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Wait a second, yeah.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Wait, wait, wait from Berlin?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
What year are we talking about?
Speaker 6 (06:32):
Nineteen thirty nine until nineteen fifty something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I just am having a moment of your grandfather and
your dad at five years old, somehow getting from Berlin
to Duro, Can you just give me the short version
of how the hell that happens?
Speaker 6 (06:51):
German Jews were very, very German. They didn't want to
leave Germany. They felt really proud of being German. They
thought that that was what was happening. The Holocaust was
something that was going to happen to the other Jews, you.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Know, not to them, because they were lighter skinned.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And they were educated, they were wealthy.
Speaker 6 (07:10):
They were like every immigrant. They wanted to release their past.
They changed a curt name when they came into Germany.
They wanted to have a new identity. They wanted to
leave all the stettle and the Yiddish and although they
spoke Yiddish, they didn't want to speak Eadlish at home.
They thought German was better. So they didn't want to
live and they left in the thirty nine after the
crystall Nach, the moment that they decided to live, it
(07:32):
was almost impossible to live already. The only country that
stayed open to Jewish refugees was Bolivia. It was a
very brave nation. I have a song called Bolivia. It's
a song that I wrote to thank you know, the
poorest country in South America, giving asylum to one of
(07:52):
the richest country in Europe, you know, and we should
not forget that. Topam obviously, and the doos An cannot
and last can see because that goes back and forth
all the time. I mean, we come and we go,
(08:15):
and we receive and we ask for as I look
at the sea, antilnot focus, he believe. In nineteen fifty one,
I think so they entered little while from scratch. My
(08:35):
grandfather built a a shared factory.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Like a very Jewish professional Jewish profession.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
He did really good, and at some point he offered
the factory to his two sons, my father and his brother,
and both of them said, I want my own life.
I want to be a doctor. So that happened again
with me and.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
With him and lad were.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Korason spera since saberm.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Okay, So the trauma, the exodus, the fear, the persecution.
Were you growing up with a sense of six million Jewish,
including my own family, were persecuted. How did you understand
that part of your legacy.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
My father is a war child. He doesn't trust reality
and he doesn't think that situations are continuous. He knows
that they change, and he knows that they can change
for bad. So he's always been prepared for that, and
he always transmitted that fear and that you know, that
alert to us too. So I think it takes more
than two or three generations to lose that feeling of
(09:48):
you know, the feeling that the children in Ukrainia are
having today, that trauma is not going away easily. I
also got my share because I grew up in a dictatorship.
I entered the dictator ship with nine years and I came
out with twenty. All my emotional life, my sex life,
all my relationship life was built in a very oppressive system,
(10:12):
and that's gonna take a long time. I had to write.
I had to make a record called by Luea just
to take the dictatorship out of my joints because I
couldn't dance.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
By layla wi la.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
By la la.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
I'm still fighting that. I'm still Dictatorship is a very
It's inside me and I go everywhere with it. And
Holocaust is also inside me through my father and.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I read my start and Samians.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
In life, if you can celebrate, do celebrate, because celebrating
is a way of acknowledge that you will not always
be able to celebrate so just grasp that little joy
that you find, because we come and go from sadness
to by la. I have a lot of sadness and
(11:15):
melancholy my songs too. But but if I can celebrate,
I think, and I celebrate. You know, it's a choice.
It's a choice.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
A man.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Kayla or Ino sing most by la la cuela.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You make this decision to say, my boy, and I'm
going to become an immigrant by your own choice in Spain.
And there were many places that you could choose to live.
What was it about Spain?
Speaker 6 (11:48):
It wasn't a conscious decision. I was thirty years old,
I wasn't young, and I had my own flat, my
own practice, and I moved to Spain to share a
flat with nine other year wires in Madrid with no
mind and I think maybe two bathrooms lightly so sonnae passion, yeah,
(12:09):
and just playing little cafes for forty people. And nine
days later I met the mother of my first child, Anna,
and of my first son, and I fell in love
with her, so I should really it wasn't a brain decision.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Actually, mis teramos, fibos, pocist tamos.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
And movie minto. But I have to say. When I
got to Spain, very quickly, I was invited by Joaquin Savina,
mirvous Spanish musician. He invited me to perform with him
in Spain and I got to meet through him many
(12:50):
other artists that I admired, and very quickly they started
asking me for compositions and a wellin Victor Manuel Keetama,
Pablo Milanaise Rosario Flores. At first, my parents were like
horrified because I was throwing a whole life and prosperity
(13:11):
and a career outside. But then I started making a
little place for me in the Spanish music as a writer,
and they very quickly they moved to being just sad
because I was away. Love overcame that feeling of I
think you ruined your life, But at some point that
they realized that I was really happy and that made
(13:32):
them happy too. I started making a living on music
when I was thirty, but I started doing good when
I was forty already, and that was the first time
I was having a little success and it came all together,
you know. Before that, the first ten years in Spain
(13:54):
were really hard. I didn't sell records. I was a
completely failure in my own selling record history. Although I
was really happy, I was writing for other people and
I was making the records I wanted to make. That
was important thing.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
La Plasure grew my rest Plano Elviento del.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Bocasus coming up on Latino USA port head. Drexler's career
as a singer songwriter takes off to the very top.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
Stay with us.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
La Plaza and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Welcome back to Latino USA. And before the break, I
was speaking with Uruwayyan singer songwriter porth Heead Trexler about
abandoning his career as an ear nose and throat doctor
and then making it as a musician in Spain. I
wanted to ask him about the aftermath of winning that
Academy award in two thousand and five, because Horka became
(15:14):
the first Uruguayian to ever win an Oscar and this
was the first time a Spanish language song received an
Academy award. You can't get any higher than winning an
Oscar and performing and people falling in love with you
as a result. And then you go into a very
dark place. You end up getting a divorce, and you
(15:35):
end up making an album about your divorce. How do
you understand that process? The falling.
Speaker 6 (15:42):
I think it's a natural process. That's one thing with
prices and with expectations. I mean, there is no good
way out of expectations. If you do achieve what you
expected to achieve, the void that comes after that. You know,
I actually didn't expect to win that. It was a
crazy thing. It was the first price I got in
(16:03):
my life, and it was the highest after the oscars.
I had the choice to decide whether I wanted to
follow the circumstances or to have agency in my life. Immediately,
everybody told me, you move to Miami and to LA
and you know you have an oscar. Every door is
going to be open. You can make your big crossover record,
(16:24):
your big Latin happy crossover record. And I said, okay,
but you know what I have to choose if I'm
going to make a record in what I am actually feeling,
which is sadness. Dos said, twelve seconds of darkness the
name of the record, A very dark the darkest record.
If I have to follow my instinct and my truth,
(16:45):
or if I have to follow the circumstances, and I said,
I'm going to follow my truth. I mean it's as
that symbol I got a divorce we're already thinking about
that for a long time. But then I fell in
love really quickly after the divorce, and I couldn't cope
with that mixture of success and the happiness and sadness
(17:09):
at the same time, because divorcing with children it was
the toughest thing that happened in my life.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Jews came rumbo, the regress, I think and contra.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I think it's my most important record, actually, and I'm
so proud because after that, I realized why am I
a songwriter? Why do I write songs for? You know?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Because you are like a deeply emotional person and you're
connected with all of these and.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
I respect my emotions too more than I respect the circumstances.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So I want to talk about your evolution as a
musician a little bit through your own songs. And yeah,
I'm gonna take you back a little bit. So I
want you to pick a song from your album This
is Caabe. It's two thousand and eight, okay, three years
after the Oscar It's a two hour long live album.
(18:25):
So one song from Karabe that you're like, yeah, this
is this one captures it.
Speaker 6 (18:31):
I have the only song that I've co written with
my wife, and it's called Doves Doves Dova, which is
a very strange song. It's that's the only song we
wrote together, and it's a song try lingual helf in Spanish,
a little bit in Italian and a little bit in English.
We wrote it together. We were in the first years
(18:51):
of our relationship and it's a song I really love
and I never got to air too much. You go
and wait time.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
All right, we're gonna move forward to twenty ten. Yeah,
you release a mad La Rama. Is there one that
stands out for you?
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Yeah? I have two songs that send out actually after
those wos a very dark record. This is a record
filled with a in the name ahmar la Trama really
open feeling, open chest feeling. It's an homage to Madrid.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
Comino for Madrid and to company.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
I was leaving ader for a long time, but I
fell in love with the city. I fell in love
with this amazing woman. We had this amazing son. So
those two songs, that one called La tral listen Lassi
that's dedicated to Leonora Damasquez, and there's Nocti Luca dedicated
(20:02):
to my son Luca, which is when I realized that it
was going to be a father and for the second time,
and all the healing that came to my life, not
just the bas with having that second child, that put
everything in an order in your life after a very
(20:24):
happy but difficult years, you know, of transition from one
life to another.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
We will be right back. Hey, we're back.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
We're gonna pick up where we left off with what
head Wrexler and talk about his song plan my Estro,
the master Plan. So he planned Maestro. I mean, that's
like a pretty big title, the master Plan. This is
on the album This is pro written by your cousin
who lives in Venezuela, who is an astrophysicist. You have
(21:11):
a very high performing family. You talk about having the
relationship of humanity close to you as you write. So
you write this song with your cousin who's in Venezuela
when you're in Madrid. How are you doing it together
and how did this play into you? Know, you have
(21:31):
to have a relationship in music when you're writing it.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
She's my cousin. She has the same age. I'm only
a few months older than her. So we have this
really strong connection, like an umbilical connection.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
Gorira del Guana Quesa slu la vision.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
I don't have told this anyone, but we actually operate
like twins with her. We have the same age. We
were best friends we were children. We shared these common interests,
like we had the same hard disk. You know, she
is a scientist, but she's also a poet. Will always
feel this connection. And we started writing songs when we
were fifty five years old. And she's been the great
(22:14):
the biggest influence I had in my in my music
in the last years. When you go to my concert,
the concert is opened by her voice. She speaks for
four minutes talking about the invention of love in a
Mesoproterozoic era one six hundred years ago, where the first
(22:37):
two cells got together. It's a love story Meso. She
wrote this beautiful decimo, which is a very complex verse
form that you have in Mexico, in the Songharrocho and
the Wapangua. It's a ten verse structure that you have
(23:00):
all over Latin America.
Speaker 7 (23:01):
Undrcelos who's they have the galeron in Venezuela and Peru,
pay Repentistas in Cuba, Pajas in Chile, that they use
the same verse form everywhere.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
Pang in Mexico and Panamas.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So one of the things that you and I are
lucky about, Jorge is that one that we're still here,
that we're still alive.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
That's a big one.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
That's a big one.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And you and I are lucky in this one particular way, Jorge,
that you and I still have a little bit of
cred with the younger generations. Yeah, oh, Jo, I mean
you're playing with care, You're playing with Natalia and so
many others, and I just you know, when you pause
and you think about that, just how do you understand
to process as we get older and at the same
(24:01):
time that you got some intergenerational credit.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Young people love you too.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
I was taught this by my father actually, when he
was forty, he had the Beatles records. It was the
only person in his generation in Euroguhite that would actually
understand that there was a newer world and that newer
world wasn't worse than the older world. When when he
grew up and I mean he grew up with jazz music,
but he understood the Beatles and he gave the Beatles
(24:28):
to me when we got into Bob Marley, he said,
can I hear that again? That's really interesting. I mean,
who's this guy and it's my music in my generation.
But he was open to my music and he gave
me this message. Older people are still alive. I remember
reading a book about Mario and Ede tile Treja and
asking him this book this is crazy. I was a teenager.
(24:51):
It's a book about a forty year old guy that
falls in love. I mean, that can't be possible. You
don't fall in love when you're forty or fifty. And
he said, we have to have this talk. Is tell
you know, love has no age, Beauty has no age,
sex has no age, and art has no age. And
you can be open to things that are new.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Okay, look at Okay, look at case, Okay, look at Okato.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
I have this world that I started using a few
months ago. But it's called neophobia. Neophobia like the phobia
to the new. It's a generational thing. I think younger
people accept you and listen to you just because you
listen to them. That's the secret. Because when I hear
but Bunny, I tried to understand what's going on. And
(25:44):
I'm not lying when I say I really admire his work.
He's very different from me. Setangana is his age which
I worked a lot, and he was one of the
other big influences in my music. Talk my daughter year old.
She comes and showed me some music. I sit down
on the floor and I listened very carefully to her advice.
(26:06):
I take it really seriously. It's like breathing new for me.
I want to know what the world is about, just
because I hate being nostalgic. I hate thinking that the
best part of my life has already passed. There are
(26:31):
great things that I learn right now, and that you know,
my past is beautiful. It's my past. It's not better
than my present. Actually, my presence is the only thing
that I have, so it should be I should take
it seriously. So I love urban music. I listen to
urban music a lot. I'm looking forward to working with
people that have very different styles from mine. It's not
(26:54):
a record company advice. It's not a management or a
marketing advice. I just being alive.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Dididimo tendi tim and I love the present.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
I love dancing, and love going out and meeting people
and trying to feel that life is still has a
lot of things, of course, to offer you.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Cantar lenamente Lucas, thank you for offering me this time.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
It has been just so much fun.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Thank you, m Tim, Tim, Tim.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
M HM.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This episode was produced by Patricia Sulvaran. It was edited
by Marta Martinez. It was mixed by Julia Caruso and
Gabriella Gience. Fernando Echavari is our managing editor. The Latino
USA team also includes Roxanna Guire, Jessica Ellis, Rebecca Vara,
Renaldo Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Gruzsado, Luis, Luna Riman Marquez,
(28:15):
Julieta Martinelli, Monica Moreles, Garcia, JJ Carubin, Adriana Rodriez and
Nancy Trujillo. Bennile Ramirez and I are co executive producers.
I'm your host Maria no Josa. Latino USA is part
of Iheart's Mike Couldura podcast Network. Executive producers at iHeart
are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us again on
(28:39):
our next episode. In the meantime, we'll see you on
all of our social media. And don't forget, dear listener,
Join Futuro Plus. It's our new membership program. You get
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bonus content What's not to love? Join Futuro Plus and
you'll be happy you did. Astor approximayas Chao.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising
Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
More at hsfoundation dot org.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines
of social change worldwide, and the John D.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
I'm Lisaakazawa. Join me on season two of Stars and
Stars with Lisa, where I sit down with some of
the most exciting stars of our time to find out
what their birth chart reveals about their life's purpose, their relationships,
and their challenges. Winner of the Signal Award for Most
Inspirational Podcast, Stars and Stars will help you make sense
of today's complicated times. Even if you're an astrology skeptic.
(00:29):
You can listen to Stars and Stars with Lisa wherever
you get your podcasts. Don't forget to follow the show
so you never miss an.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Episode from Futuromia. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Jojosa. Jorge Drexler,
the famous Uruayan singer songwriter, first caught the world's attention
in two thousand and five when his song Altro Lao
(00:56):
del Rio was in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Clavo Mire Molavua Jevo Ture.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Jorge Drexler, the famous Uruayan singer songwriter, first caught the
world's attention in two thousand and five when his song
Altro Lado del Rio was in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.
Jorge became the first uruwayan to ever win an Oscar.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
This is the first Academy award and nomination for Orgy Drexler.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
And this was the first time a Spanish language song
received an Academy Award.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Clavo mi remone lagua jevo turemonel mio.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I spoke with Jorge about key moments in his life
as a young artist, from growing up as the son
of a Holocaust survivor to becoming a doctor and then
deciding to drop his career in order to pursue music.
He also tells us why he turned down the opportunity
to become a global pop star just after winning the Oscar,
(02:04):
and of course we talk about his album being That
Eat Pimpo and why it almost didn't come to life.
Our interview first aired in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
No's moscitro vicu.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, first of all, welcome to Latino, USA. I was
trying to remember when I interviewed you last. It turns
out I spoke with you in two thousand and five.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
Yeah, after the Oscars, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yes, right after the Oscars and you were so happy. Yeah,
and here we are, comeost us.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Well, I'm happy, I'm in New York. It's really a
pleasure to be here. Thank you first of all for
inviting me, for having me here today.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Here's the crazy thing. So, as I was prepping for
the interview, and of course I'm reading about you're listening
to your music all the time, which was a gift,
and then I at one point I turned around. I
was like Roperatos Wundo era Otto Rino. My father was
an ear nose and throat doctor. Really, my father was
(03:17):
doctor Raulinosa from the University of Chicago, helped to create
the cochlear implant, Eliztavis to the and gone the electron microscope.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
My father and my mother both were illnos and throat doctors.
I helped them for six years in surgery and we
never did implanted or cochlear implant, but we would work
a lot with many illness that you that affect the hearing.
The cocka is a little harp that turns two and
a half times inside a shell, and that's inside your
(03:47):
and that's inside your ear, and that's the harp that
resonates with the sounds. If I saying there's one little
string in that heart that that's raising as if you
do it with a guitar with a real heart. You know,
I never finished here knowson throat. I stopped studying in
the second of the third year of the post degree.
(04:08):
But I do love Heronoson's throat. I do love physiology
and anatomy. And my brother is a in t. My
sister she's a she's an ordontologist, so it's a whole
family of that. I'm the older son of a Jewish family,
(04:28):
half Jewish at least because my mother converted to marry
my father. But she's from Christian Spanish origins, so I
was really supposed to follow the family tradition.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Those caacions manners.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
I grew grew up in a very closed environment Uruguaian dictatorship,
the house of two e in t doctors. All their
friends were et doctors and no musicians around. So just
I really had a good life. I had a very
good job. But at the same time, all that time,
(05:03):
since I was five years old, I was studying music
and I started writing songs when I was fifteen sixteen,
and I never stopped doing music. So at some point I,
when I looked deeped inside myself, I said, what I
really want to do is to make a living on music.
So I moved to Spain.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
And your mom and dad were like CCC no, no.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
They got completely crazy when I left. My father had
been training me for six years in secret microsurgery techniques
that he had learned in Germany. And he said, you're
throwing away something that people are graving for. But you know,
I'm a really, really lucky person. Even loving this thing,
I had another one that I loved more, so I
(05:46):
moved to that one.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Porcala, Murro, Lamento and Heru Saleen Ladora.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
My father, I can't completely understand him, I mean, but
he did the same with his own father. His own
father a Jewish immigrant that my father was born in
Berlin too. He escaped the Nazis when he was five
years old in nineteen thirty nine, and his father lost
everything his family. They started again in Bolivia. They lived
in Bolivia for twelve years, in Oruro, in rel ti Plano,
(06:24):
in Oruro, in Oruro.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Wait a second, yeah.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Wait, wait, wait from Berlin?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
What year are we talking about?
Speaker 6 (06:32):
Nineteen thirty nine until nineteen fifty something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I just am having a moment of your grandfather and
your dad at five years old, somehow getting from Berlin
to Duro, Can you just give me the short version
of how the hell that happens?
Speaker 6 (06:51):
German Jews were very, very German. They didn't want to
leave Germany. They felt really proud of being German. They
thought that that was what was happening. The Holocaust was
something that was going to happen to the other Jews, you.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Know, not to them, because they were lighter skinned.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And they were educated, they were wealthy.
Speaker 6 (07:10):
They were like every immigrant. They wanted to release their past.
They changed a curt name when they came into Germany.
They wanted to have a new identity. They wanted to
leave all the stettle and the Yiddish and although they
spoke Yiddish, they didn't want to speak Eadlish at home.
They thought German was better. So they didn't want to
live and they left in the thirty nine after the
crystall Nach, the moment that they decided to live, it
(07:32):
was almost impossible to live already. The only country that
stayed open to Jewish refugees was Bolivia. It was a
very brave nation. I have a song called Bolivia. It's
a song that I wrote to thank you know, the
poorest country in South America, giving asylum to one of
(07:52):
the richest country in Europe, you know, and we should
not forget that. Topam obviously, and the doos An cannot
and last can see because that goes back and forth
all the time. I mean, we come and we go,
(08:15):
and we receive and we ask for as I look
at the sea, antilnot focus, he believe. In nineteen fifty one,
I think so they entered little while from scratch. My
(08:35):
grandfather built a a shared factory.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Like a very Jewish professional Jewish profession.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
He did really good, and at some point he offered
the factory to his two sons, my father and his brother,
and both of them said, I want my own life.
I want to be a doctor. So that happened again
with me and.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
With him and lad were.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Korason spera since saberm.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Okay, So the trauma, the exodus, the fear, the persecution.
Were you growing up with a sense of six million Jewish,
including my own family, were persecuted. How did you understand
that part of your legacy.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
My father is a war child. He doesn't trust reality
and he doesn't think that situations are continuous. He knows
that they change, and he knows that they can change
for bad. So he's always been prepared for that, and
he always transmitted that fear and that you know, that
alert to us too. So I think it takes more
than two or three generations to lose that feeling of
(09:48):
you know, the feeling that the children in Ukrainia are
having today, that trauma is not going away easily. I
also got my share because I grew up in a dictatorship.
I entered the dictator ship with nine years and I came
out with twenty. All my emotional life, my sex life,
all my relationship life was built in a very oppressive system,
(10:12):
and that's gonna take a long time. I had to write.
I had to make a record called by Luea just
to take the dictatorship out of my joints because I
couldn't dance.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
By layla wi la.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
By la la.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
I'm still fighting that. I'm still Dictatorship is a very
It's inside me and I go everywhere with it. And
Holocaust is also inside me through my father and.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I read my start and Samians.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
In life, if you can celebrate, do celebrate, because celebrating
is a way of acknowledge that you will not always
be able to celebrate so just grasp that little joy
that you find, because we come and go from sadness
to by la. I have a lot of sadness and
(11:15):
melancholy my songs too. But but if I can celebrate,
I think, and I celebrate. You know, it's a choice.
It's a choice.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
A man.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Kayla or Ino sing most by la la cuela.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You make this decision to say, my boy, and I'm
going to become an immigrant by your own choice in Spain.
And there were many places that you could choose to live.
What was it about Spain?
Speaker 6 (11:48):
It wasn't a conscious decision. I was thirty years old,
I wasn't young, and I had my own flat, my
own practice, and I moved to Spain to share a
flat with nine other year wires in Madrid with no
mind and I think maybe two bathrooms lightly so sonnae passion, yeah,
(12:09):
and just playing little cafes for forty people. And nine
days later I met the mother of my first child, Anna,
and of my first son, and I fell in love
with her, so I should really it wasn't a brain decision.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Actually, mis teramos, fibos, pocist tamos.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
And movie minto. But I have to say. When I
got to Spain, very quickly, I was invited by Joaquin Savina,
mirvous Spanish musician. He invited me to perform with him
in Spain and I got to meet through him many
(12:50):
other artists that I admired, and very quickly they started
asking me for compositions and a wellin Victor Manuel Keetama,
Pablo Milanaise Rosario Flores. At first, my parents were like
horrified because I was throwing a whole life and prosperity
(13:11):
and a career outside. But then I started making a
little place for me in the Spanish music as a writer,
and they very quickly they moved to being just sad
because I was away. Love overcame that feeling of I
think you ruined your life, But at some point that
they realized that I was really happy and that made
(13:32):
them happy too. I started making a living on music
when I was thirty, but I started doing good when
I was forty already, and that was the first time
I was having a little success and it came all together,
you know. Before that, the first ten years in Spain
(13:54):
were really hard. I didn't sell records. I was a
completely failure in my own selling record history. Although I
was really happy, I was writing for other people and
I was making the records I wanted to make. That
was important thing.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
La Plasure grew my rest Plano Elviento del.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Bocasus coming up on Latino USA port head. Drexler's career
as a singer songwriter takes off to the very top.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
Stay with us.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
La Plaza and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Welcome back to Latino USA. And before the break, I
was speaking with Uruwayyan singer songwriter porth Heead Trexler about
abandoning his career as an ear nose and throat doctor
and then making it as a musician in Spain. I
wanted to ask him about the aftermath of winning that
Academy award in two thousand and five, because Horka became
(15:14):
the first Uruguayian to ever win an Oscar and this
was the first time a Spanish language song received an
Academy award. You can't get any higher than winning an
Oscar and performing and people falling in love with you
as a result. And then you go into a very
dark place. You end up getting a divorce, and you
(15:35):
end up making an album about your divorce. How do
you understand that process? The falling.
Speaker 6 (15:42):
I think it's a natural process. That's one thing with
prices and with expectations. I mean, there is no good
way out of expectations. If you do achieve what you
expected to achieve, the void that comes after that. You know,
I actually didn't expect to win that. It was a
crazy thing. It was the first price I got in
(16:03):
my life, and it was the highest after the oscars.
I had the choice to decide whether I wanted to
follow the circumstances or to have agency in my life. Immediately,
everybody told me, you move to Miami and to LA
and you know you have an oscar. Every door is
going to be open. You can make your big crossover record,
(16:24):
your big Latin happy crossover record. And I said, okay,
but you know what I have to choose if I'm
going to make a record in what I am actually feeling,
which is sadness. Dos said, twelve seconds of darkness the
name of the record, A very dark the darkest record.
If I have to follow my instinct and my truth,
(16:45):
or if I have to follow the circumstances, and I said,
I'm going to follow my truth. I mean it's as
that symbol I got a divorce we're already thinking about
that for a long time. But then I fell in
love really quickly after the divorce, and I couldn't cope
with that mixture of success and the happiness and sadness
(17:09):
at the same time, because divorcing with children it was
the toughest thing that happened in my life.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Jews came rumbo, the regress, I think and contra.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I think it's my most important record, actually, and I'm
so proud because after that, I realized why am I
a songwriter? Why do I write songs for? You know?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Because you are like a deeply emotional person and you're
connected with all of these and.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
I respect my emotions too more than I respect the circumstances.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So I want to talk about your evolution as a
musician a little bit through your own songs. And yeah,
I'm gonna take you back a little bit. So I
want you to pick a song from your album This
is Caabe. It's two thousand and eight, okay, three years
after the Oscar It's a two hour long live album.
(18:25):
So one song from Karabe that you're like, yeah, this
is this one captures it.
Speaker 6 (18:31):
I have the only song that I've co written with
my wife, and it's called Doves Doves Dova, which is
a very strange song. It's that's the only song we
wrote together, and it's a song try lingual helf in Spanish,
a little bit in Italian and a little bit in English.
We wrote it together. We were in the first years
(18:51):
of our relationship and it's a song I really love
and I never got to air too much. You go
and wait time.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
All right, we're gonna move forward to twenty ten. Yeah,
you release a mad La Rama. Is there one that
stands out for you?
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Yeah? I have two songs that send out actually after
those wos a very dark record. This is a record
filled with a in the name ahmar la Trama really
open feeling, open chest feeling. It's an homage to Madrid.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
Comino for Madrid and to company.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
I was leaving ader for a long time, but I
fell in love with the city. I fell in love
with this amazing woman. We had this amazing son. So
those two songs, that one called La tral listen Lassi
that's dedicated to Leonora Damasquez, and there's Nocti Luca dedicated
(20:02):
to my son Luca, which is when I realized that it
was going to be a father and for the second time,
and all the healing that came to my life, not
just the bas with having that second child, that put
everything in an order in your life after a very
(20:24):
happy but difficult years, you know, of transition from one
life to another.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
We will be right back. Hey, we're back.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
We're gonna pick up where we left off with what
head Wrexler and talk about his song plan my Estro,
the master Plan. So he planned Maestro. I mean, that's
like a pretty big title, the master Plan. This is
on the album This is pro written by your cousin
who lives in Venezuela, who is an astrophysicist. You have
(21:11):
a very high performing family. You talk about having the
relationship of humanity close to you as you write. So
you write this song with your cousin who's in Venezuela
when you're in Madrid. How are you doing it together
and how did this play into you? Know, you have
(21:31):
to have a relationship in music when you're writing it.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
She's my cousin. She has the same age. I'm only
a few months older than her. So we have this
really strong connection, like an umbilical connection.
Speaker 5 (21:45):
Gorira del Guana Quesa slu la vision.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
I don't have told this anyone, but we actually operate
like twins with her. We have the same age. We
were best friends we were children. We shared these common interests,
like we had the same hard disk. You know, she
is a scientist, but she's also a poet. Will always
feel this connection. And we started writing songs when we
were fifty five years old. And she's been the great
(22:14):
the biggest influence I had in my in my music
in the last years. When you go to my concert,
the concert is opened by her voice. She speaks for
four minutes talking about the invention of love in a
Mesoproterozoic era one six hundred years ago, where the first
(22:37):
two cells got together. It's a love story Meso. She
wrote this beautiful decimo, which is a very complex verse
form that you have in Mexico, in the Songharrocho and
the Wapangua. It's a ten verse structure that you have
(23:00):
all over Latin America.
Speaker 7 (23:01):
Undrcelos who's they have the galeron in Venezuela and Peru,
pay Repentistas in Cuba, Pajas in Chile, that they use
the same verse form everywhere.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
Pang in Mexico and Panamas.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So one of the things that you and I are
lucky about, Jorge is that one that we're still here,
that we're still alive.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
That's a big one.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
That's a big one.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And you and I are lucky in this one particular way, Jorge,
that you and I still have a little bit of
cred with the younger generations. Yeah, oh, Jo, I mean
you're playing with care, You're playing with Natalia and so
many others, and I just you know, when you pause
and you think about that, just how do you understand
to process as we get older and at the same
(24:01):
time that you got some intergenerational credit.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Young people love you too.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
I was taught this by my father actually, when he
was forty, he had the Beatles records. It was the
only person in his generation in Euroguhite that would actually
understand that there was a newer world and that newer
world wasn't worse than the older world. When when he
grew up and I mean he grew up with jazz music,
but he understood the Beatles and he gave the Beatles
(24:28):
to me when we got into Bob Marley, he said,
can I hear that again? That's really interesting. I mean,
who's this guy and it's my music in my generation.
But he was open to my music and he gave
me this message. Older people are still alive. I remember
reading a book about Mario and Ede tile Treja and
asking him this book this is crazy. I was a teenager.
(24:51):
It's a book about a forty year old guy that
falls in love. I mean, that can't be possible. You
don't fall in love when you're forty or fifty. And
he said, we have to have this talk. Is tell
you know, love has no age, Beauty has no age,
sex has no age, and art has no age. And
you can be open to things that are new.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Okay, look at Okay, look at case, Okay, look at Okato.
Speaker 6 (25:22):
I have this world that I started using a few
months ago. But it's called neophobia. Neophobia like the phobia
to the new. It's a generational thing. I think younger
people accept you and listen to you just because you
listen to them. That's the secret. Because when I hear
but Bunny, I tried to understand what's going on. And
(25:44):
I'm not lying when I say I really admire his work.
He's very different from me. Setangana is his age which
I worked a lot, and he was one of the
other big influences in my music. Talk my daughter year old.
She comes and showed me some music. I sit down
on the floor and I listened very carefully to her advice.
(26:06):
I take it really seriously. It's like breathing new for me.
I want to know what the world is about, just
because I hate being nostalgic. I hate thinking that the
best part of my life has already passed. There are
(26:31):
great things that I learn right now, and that you know,
my past is beautiful. It's my past. It's not better
than my present. Actually, my presence is the only thing
that I have, so it should be I should take
it seriously. So I love urban music. I listen to
urban music a lot. I'm looking forward to working with
people that have very different styles from mine. It's not
(26:54):
a record company advice. It's not a management or a
marketing advice. I just being alive.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Dididimo tendi tim and I love the present.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
I love dancing, and love going out and meeting people
and trying to feel that life is still has a
lot of things, of course, to offer you.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Cantar lenamente Lucas, thank you for offering me this time.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
It has been just so much fun.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Thank you, m Tim, Tim, Tim.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
M HM.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This episode was produced by Patricia Sulvaran. It was edited
by Marta Martinez. It was mixed by Julia Caruso and
Gabriella Gience. Fernando Echavari is our managing editor. The Latino
USA team also includes Roxanna Guire, Jessica Ellis, Rebecca Vara,
Renaldo Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Gruzsado, Luis, Luna Riman Marquez,
(28:15):
Julieta Martinelli, Monica Moreles, Garcia, JJ Carubin, Adriana Rodriez and
Nancy Trujillo. Bennile Ramirez and I are co executive producers.
I'm your host Maria no Josa. Latino USA is part
of Iheart's Mike Couldura podcast Network. Executive producers at iHeart
are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us again on
(28:39):
our next episode. In the meantime, we'll see you on
all of our social media. And don't forget, dear listener,
Join Futuro Plus. It's our new membership program. You get
to listen to everything ad free and you get cool
bonus content What's not to love? Join Futuro Plus and
you'll be happy you did. Astor approximayas Chao.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising
Simons Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
More at hsfoundation dot org.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
The Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines
of social change worldwide, and the John D.
Speaker 6 (29:25):
And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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