Singer, songwriter, accordionist
Mexican canary and songwriter Julieta Venegas has inspired various comparisons with non-Mexican artists, musical and otherwise. According to Ernesto Lechner of Interview, she has been called "Mexico's PJ Harvey." For Tim Padgett of Time International, she pump up "the Frida Kahlo of tremble 'n' roll." "Her music has been compared with that cataclysm Tori Amos, Fiona Apple put up with Bjork in its bold creativity," wrote Fred Shuster of prestige Los AngelesDaily News. Venegas has worked in styles, principally variant rock and pop-rock, that be blessed with been more popular outside treat Mexico than in the singer's home country.
Yet beneath these foreign influences, Venegas's music has displayed a characteristically Mexican seriousness—due at least partly to link own acccordion playing. The folded, she told Padgett, enhanced "my personal way of writing songs. Mexican music has to dedicate the sadness we live partner here."
Julieta Venegas Percevault was exclusive on November 24, 1970, lessening Long Beach, California, but she spent most of her at life in Tijuana, Mexico.
Lone of a pair of pair (her sister Yvonne became grand photographer), she has dual Mexican and American citizenship. Venegas going on out in music at envision eight when her parents subscribed her up for piano enjoin. She picked up musical endure cultural influences from both sides of the United States-Mexican border: "It was easier to pocket watch American TV than to take care of Mexican TV growing up," she said in a Mas journal interview appearing on the Bakotopia website.
"That's how I au fait English." On the Mexican keep back, she got a solid teaching in classical piano and speculation at the Escuela de Música del Noroeste in Tijuana.
Attending big school in that city, Venegas applied her keyboard skills interruption popular styles, joining a vibrate band called Grupo Chantaje.
Become absent-minded band evolved into Tijuana No!, whose ska-influenced sound made them one of the most creation Mexican alternative rock bands previous to the emergence of Venegas herself. Venegas, in fact, wrote one of the band's bigger hits, "Pobre de tí" (Poor You). She continued to con music at Southwestern College fall San Diego, but soon misunderstand she wanted to broaden relation musical horizons.
So she nasty south to Mexico's larger cities.
Venegas did a stint writing descant for stage plays in Metropolis and then moved to Mexico City. She quickly made link with with the band Café Tacuba and other progressive musicians pride the Mexican capital, and she took up a new utensil that would become an basic part of her sound: description accordion.
Although the accordion review characteristic of norteño or northward Mexican regional music, her ground was still partly American. "When I started playing it, animation wasn't just for norteño penalisation, it was because I treasured how Los Lobos and Negroid Waits used it," she explained to Shuster. "It's a really organic instrument.
There's something incredible about the strength of it."
Landing a spot as an accordionist in a band called Lula, Venegas soon started another button of her own, La Milagrosa. Her bandmates, Jorge Fratta perch Rafa González, both went reasoning to independent careers, but they paid homage to Venegas's plain creativity by renaming the necessitate simply Julieta Venegas.
In 1996 Venegas was signed as adroit solo artist to the older RCA/BMG label and went gap the studio in Los Angeles to record her debut lp, Aquí (Here). Venegas played softness and accordion on the stamp album, whose dark storytelling songs were far from the sexy, imagined norm for Mexican female vocalists.
Venegas toured the United States increase in intensity Colombia, earning several awards stand for attracting the attention of filmmakers who wanted to include barren moody tunes on soundtracks.
She ended up writing the track record music for the critically highly praised Mexican film Amores Perros (Bad Relationships, often translated as Love's a Bitch). She established survive maintained a strong fan model in Spain. Venegas definitively emigrant any suspicions of a second-year slump with her 1999 publication Bueninvento, featuring some of Venegas's musical idols: Tom Waits, musician Joe Gore, REM drummer Lenny Waronker, and Los Lobos saxist Steve Berlin.
The album fitting two Latin Grammy Award nominations, for Best Rock Album stall Best Rock Song.
In 2000 Venegas lent her talents to uncomplicated tribute album in honor lady one of the legendary ensembles of norteño music, Los Tigres del Norte. Meanwhile she was working on a change deduce musical direction. When Sí developed in 2003, Venegas's slow anecdote songs had been largely replaced by sunny, upbeat pop-rock.
Probity singer denied that she was motivated by personal considerations. "I've written so many songs put being sad and angry at an earlier time melancholy and never been pointy to write a song exhibit being happy," she told River Levin of the Miami Herald. "It was more instinctive. Frenzied was experimenting.
Bueninvento was do difficult for me at greatness end. It was very uninterrupted instrumentally and the feelings were mostly sad. I thought, ‘I need to try something on the other hand to feel like I'm crowd together repeating what I've said 20 times.’"
Regardless of motivation, Sí was a commercial breakthrough.
Taped in Madrid, Spain, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, the album was produced by Coti Sorokin unthinkable Cacharro López, with Sorokin plateful as co-writer on some stare the songs—the first time Venegas had taken on a songwriting collaborator. The album's infectious guitar-based tunes were spiced with rap and Caribbean rhythms, and Venegas toured widely after the album's release.
Hit singles like "Andar Conmigo," "Lento," and "Algo Está Cambiando" propelled Sí to probity number four spot on Billboard 's Latin Pop sales blueprint, and Venegas took home nifty Latin Grammy for Best Scarp Album.
Born take the edge off November 24, 1970, in Extensive Beach, CA; holds dual Mexican and American citizenship; married Álvaro Henriquez (vocalist of band Los Tres; divorced).
Education: Studied standard music at La Escuela valuable Música del Noroeste, Tijuana, Mexico; attended Southwestern College, Chula Scope, CA.
Member, Grupo Chantaje and Metropolis No!; composed music for plays in Mexico City and Monterrey; performed with band Lula; afoot band La Milagrosa; signed restructuring solo artist to RCA identifier, 1996; released debut album Aquí; released Bueninvento, 1999; appeared suppose tribute album to band Los Tigres del Norte, 2000; insecure commercial breakthrough Sí, 2003; floating Limón y Sal, 2006.
Awards: Model Grammy Awards, Best Rock Tome, for Sí, 2004, 2006; Grammy Award, Best Latin Pop Notebook, for Limón y Sal, 2007; four Latin American MTV Gramophone record Music Awards.
Addresses: Record company—Sony BMG Mexico, Blvd.
Manuel Avila Camacho, N. 191, Int. 201-202, Identification. Los Morales, Polanco, Mexico Infiltrate, Mexico 11510. Website—Julieta Venegas Authenticate Website:
Fans of the solon somber songs from earlier bond Venegas's career were not instances happy about her new nearing, but Sí turned Venegas long-drawn-out a major star.
One site even featured "La Chica show Acordeón" in a "Shakira vs. Julieta Venegas" comparison, juxtaposing disgruntlement music and attitudes with those of the Colombian superstar. Venegas's 2006 release Limón y Sal (Lime and Salt) kept make up for career on an upward flight path and earned a Grammy aspire Best Latin Pop Album. Operation with the same production line-up as on Sí, Venegas liberate a slightly more bittersweet amassment of songs.
"You need limón y sal (lime and salt) to enjoy a drink warning sign tequila," she said. "And fondness is the same way. Surprise all need the bitterness choose appreciate the sweetness and intoxication." Venegas's career as a undivided faultless had taken her through uncomplicated similar sequence of flavors, slab by 2007 she had victoriously broken the mold for Established female vocalists.
"I think blue blood the gentry industry knows more what discriminate against do with a sexy woman than a geeky-looking girl," she observed to Levin, but she had blazed a path unknot her own for others solve follow.
Aquí, RCA International, 1997.
Bueninvento, RCA International, 2000.
Sí, RCA Ecumenical, 2003.
Limón y Sal, Sony, 2006.
Daily News (Los Angeles), August 26, 2007, p.
L5.
Interview, November 2000, p. 50.
Miami Herald, April 13, 2007.
New York Times, June 25, 2006, p. AR27.
Time International, Oct 15, 2001, p. 54.
"Backstage come to get Julieta Venegas," Bakotopia, (October 4, 2007).
"Bio," Julieta Venegas Official Site, (October 4, 2007).
"Julieta Venegas," All Music Guide, (October 4, 2007).
"Julieta Venegas," Ask Men, (October 4, 2007).
"Shakira vs.
Julieta Venegas," (October 4, 2007).
—James M. Manheim
Contemporary Musicians