Jorge Drexler

Hailing from Uruguay, Jorge Drexler has earned worldwide recognition as a singer and songwriter. His music draws deeply from national traditions such as candombe, murga, milonga, and tango, while also incorporating samba, bossa nova, pop, jazz, ambient electronic experiments, and EDM. Although he launched his recording career in the early 1990s, widespread commercial breakthrough arrived only in 2004, when the song “Al Otro Lado del Río” appeared over the closing credits of Walter Salles’s film The Motorcycle Diaries and captured the Oscar for Best Original Song. The 2006 album 12 Segundos de Oscuridad, an intensely reflective work shaped by the dissolution of a marriage, earned a Grammy nomination, as did the 2008 live set Cara B, which favored previously unheard material over familiar hits. In 2010 the buoyant Amar la Trama was tracked before a studio audience and collected four Latin Grammy nominations. Bailar en La Cueva, which reached the Top Ten in 2014, signaled a deliberate shift toward dance music and EDM. By contrast, 2017’s Salvavidas de Hielo examined isolated physical attributes of the acoustic guitar—strings, wooden body, tuning pegs—track by track. Following a five-year recording hiatus, Drexler resurfaced with Tinta y Tiempo in 2022.

Born September 21, 1964, in Montevideo, Uruguay, into a Jewish family that had escaped persecution in Germany, Drexler initially trained as an otolaryngologist in the manner of his parents before electing to follow music instead. He issued his debut full-length album, La Luz Que Sabe Robar, in 1992 and followed it with Radar in 1994. Invited to Spain in 1995 by the veteran singer/songwriter Joaquín Sabina, who introduced him to the Madrid scene and helped secure an international contract, Drexler relocated permanently after finding the city so congenial. There he assembled a band of Spanish musicians to record fresh songs alongside reworkings of earlier material; the resulting Vaivén appeared in 1996 as the first of four Virgin España releases. Its strongest tracks, together with highlights from Llueve (1998), Frontera (1999), and Sea (2001), were later anthologized on La Edad del Cielo in 2004.

After moving to Dro Atlántic, Drexler attained greater critical and commercial heights with the widely praised Eco in 2004. Much of the album’s international impact stemmed from the Oscar-winning “Al Otro Lado del Río,” prominently placed in the closing sequence of The Motorcycle Diaries, making Drexler the first Uruguayan to receive an Academy Award. The project’s success prompted a 2005 reissue with additional material under the title Eco². Drexler later described the anguished, inward-looking 12 Segundos de Oscuridad as therapeutic work undertaken after the end of a marriage; the album received a Grammy nomination. Two years afterward he released the double-length live album Cara B, notable for consisting chiefly of unreleased songs, which also earned a Grammy nod. The lighter Amar la Trama arrived in 2010, climbed to number five in Spain, and garnered four Latin Grammy nominations.

Drexler toured extensively throughout 2011 and 2012. In 2013 he finished writing material for an album ultimately recorded in Colombia with co-producers Carlos Campón and Sebastián Merlín. Issued in March 2014 as the eleven-track Bailar en la Cueva, the set featured guest contributions from Caetano Veloso, Ana Tijoux, Bomba Estéreo, and Eduardo Cabra of Calle 13. It reached number seven on the Latin Pop Albums chart, won two Latin Grammys—for Recording of the Year and Best Songwriter Album—and was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Latin, Urban, or Alternative Rock category.

Following extended international touring, Drexler grew eager to return to the studio and became absorbed by the guitar—not merely as an instrument but as an assemblage of physical components capable of generating sound. Working in Mexico City and Madrid, he constructed songs around guitar-based loops, samples, and beats derived from strings, wood, the metal resonator cone of a dobro, and the tension hoop and Mylar skin of a banjo. In April 2017 he appeared among the inaugural speakers at TED en Español during the TED 2017 conference in Vancouver, Canada, discussing interconnections among local cultural expressions alongside figures such as Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos and Colombian activist Ingrid Betancourt. Salvavidas de Hielo, the resulting collection of guitar explorations, was released that September; despite its experimental methods, the songs retained Drexler’s signature accessible style. The album received a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album and collected Latin Grammys for Best Singer/Songwriter Album as well as Song of the Year and Record of the Year for the single “Telefonia.”

Drexler continued touring Latin America, Europe, and the United States until the COVID-19 pandemic intervened. As a songwriter he shared a Latin Grammy for C. Tangana and Andrés Calamaro’s “Hong Kong,” named Song of the Year in 2021, and joined Brazilian singer/songwriter Marisa Monte for a duet on her hit single “Vento Sardo.”

Tinta y Tiempo appeared in 2022 as Drexler’s return to recording. Advance singles “Tocarte,” another Tangana collaboration, and the video single “Cinturón Blanco” preceded an album produced by Carlos Campós that also included duets with Rubén Blades, Israeli singer Noga Erez, and fellow Uruguayan Martín Buscaglia.