Jorge Drexler: From Uruguayan Doctor to Oscar-Winning Singer-Songwriter

Jorge Drexler faces eight Latin Grammy nominations for his latest album Taracá ahead of the upcoming ceremony on 12 November.

During a music industry event in the basement of Madrid’s Movistar arena, Drexler performed tracks including Guitar y Vos and El Otro Lado del Rio, which he composed for the Che Guevara road movie The Motorcycle Diaries.

The singer-songwriter was still largely unknown when El Otro Lado del Rio won the best original song Oscar in 2005. Not invited to perform at the ceremony at the time, Drexler delivered a short a cappella version in lieu of an acceptance speech in an act of defiance.

From Medicine to Music

Born and raised in Montevideo, Drexler spent his formative years under a civic-military dictatorship that was hostile to musicians, artists, and liberal-intellectual families. He started out as a moonlighter, writing and performing at night while studying medicine as an ear, nose and throat specialist, and paying for his own first recordings with money earned in clinical practice.

Jorge Drexler: From Uruguayan Doctor to Oscar-Winning Singer-Songwriter — Photo: powerpopradio.com

Fellow musicians treated him as a hobbyist, while fellow doctors viewed him as a weirdo with an earring.

Drexler described the duality of his early career, stating: Working in a hospital, I hid my guitar under my white coat. Playing in a bar, I hid my white coat in my guitar case. He was already in his 30s when Spanish musician Joaquín Sabina invited him to play in Madrid, where he stayed to make his way as a cantautor.

Drexler Reconciles Poetic Impulses with Scientific Interests

Drexler has noted that it took decades to shake the effects of the dictatorship out of his joints by making an album called Bailar en la Cueva (Dancing in the Cave). Reflecting on his past restraint, he noted that he did not dance until he was 45.

Sales-wise, his early albums were complete failures until he began to reconcile his romantic or poetic impulses with his scientific interests, broadening his scope to the cosmic and biological.

His first hit, Todo Se Transforma (Everything Changes), was based on Antoine Lavoisier’s Law of the Conservation of Mass. At his recent Madrid performance, backed by three drummers playing in the Afro-Uruguayan candombe style, he showcased tracks from his new album Taracá.

Keep reading