Having lived in Madrid for nearly three decades, Jorge Drexler returned to the place where his parents met and where he was born to record his new music. Though he visits a few times a year, he felt compelled to reconnect with Uruguay more deeply following his father’s recent death. “Reconnecting with Uruguay meant reconnecting with its main rhythm, the Afro-Uruguayan candombe,” Drexler tells Remezcla.
For the first time in 20 years, the Oscar and Grammy Award-winning artist recorded in his native Uruguay, giving birth to Taracá (released March 13). This album pairs Drexler’s poetic prose with candombe, a drumming tradition created by enslaved Africans in the country in the 18th and 19th centuries to communicate when they weren’t allowed to speak or sing. When asked about this history, Drexler clarifies he’s not a musicologist and is “a singer-songwriter that loves candombe.” Today, many candombe players in Uruguay don’t have African heritage—it’s a genre of music also played by Uruguayans with European and Indigenous ancestry.
On the album, he turned to Rueda de Candombe, an Uruguayan collective of musicians that formed in 2023 to help introduce the traditional Afro-Uruguayan drums to listeners around the world. Rueda de Candombe plays free weekly candombe events in the capital city, Montevideo. Several of the group’s musicians are Afro-descendant and brought the sounds of their ancestors to three tracks on Taracá. In Montevideo, cuerdas de tambores gather on the street every Sunday to play candombe for free, led by the collective.
While candombe’s popularity has grown in recent years, it wasn’t always accessible post-slavery. Rubén Rada, an Afro-descendant Uruguayan, pioneered candombe in the 1960s. But between 1973 and 1985—when Drexler was growing up in Uruguay— the country experienced a civic-military dictatorship where live music was rare due to censorship that suppressed political dissent. Many Uruguayan musicians fled the country, such as Jaime Roos, Alfredo Zitarrosa, and Daniel Viglietti. But when the dictatorship ended, Viglietti and the other musicians returned, and Drexler noticed they began adding candombe to their new records. “Candombe hasn’t stopped growing since then,” he says. He included candombe in his songs “Aquellos tiempos” (1999) and “Bienvenida” (2010).
Since Drexler didn’t grow up in a musical home, he wasn’t exposed to the unique drumming style until he was a teen in the ‘80s, when he went to listen to the candombe groups Ansina and Cuareim in the historic Black neighborhoods of Barrio Sur and Palermo in Montevideo. “They had different ways of playing candombe and came from different parts of the neighborhoods,” Drexler recalls. Today, one of the most prominent Black candombe artists is Chabela Ramírez, a celebrated Afro-feminist who is dedicated to preserving candombe’s cultural heritage.
Though Afro-Uruguayan drums have appeared in Drexler’s music before, they take center stage on Taracá, inspiring the album’s name. “There are three drums in candombe: piano, chico, and repique. The tambor chico is fixed and repeats the same sound over and over,” Drexler explains. “Taracá” is an onomatopoeia for the tambor chico’s rhythmic pattern, and “tar’ acá” is also a shortened way of saying “estar acá.”
The album’s first track, “Toco Madera,” honors Uruguay’s Afro-descendant roots and features Rueda de Candombe musicians who are also the stars of the song’s music video. The title plays on a double meaning: knocking on wood for luck and striking the wooden drum with a stick to create candombe’s rhythmic clave. “Yo no era supersticioso, pero hoy no soy lo que era y, por las dudas, toco madera,” he sings in the song. Drexler’s music is defined by such profound lyrics. “Lyrics are really important for me, and I take them really seriously. I wrote four times as many lyrics as are on the record. I write everything, many, many times,” he says. “I like to write unconsciously, without lyrical intentions. I just write.”
Rueda de Candombe appears again on “Ante la duda, baila,” in which the lyrics reference candombe’s 1807 ban: “They considered it a lewd and impure dance / for the way it moved the hips.” Two centuries later, in 2006, candombe gained legal protection in Uruguay, and UNESCO recognition as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity followed in 2009.
The album’s nostalgic journey continues with “¿Qué será que es?”, Drexler’s adaptation of Gonzaguinha’s Brazilian classic “O Que É, O Que É?” His version features Rueda de Candombe and a chorus urging listeners to “Live without being ashamed of being happy / sing and sing and sing the beauty of being an eternal learner.” The accompanying music video uses footage from Drexler’s 1970s Uruguayan childhood, mostly filmed by his late father.
Extending his collaborative spirit, while in Puerto Rico for Bad Bunny’s residency shows, Drexler worked with Puerto Rican star Young Miko, who sings rather than raps on their ballad, “Te llevo tatuada.” “She has amazing flow and is a great singer. I’m honored she chose to sing with me,” Drexler says.
Another Uruguayan genre on the album is milonga, a fast-paced folk music, which appears via “Cuando cantaba Morente,” performed by Uruguayan guitarist Julio Cobelli. Drexler wrote it as an homage to flamenco singer Enrique Morente, and sang it with Spanish flamenco artist Ángeles Toledano. The ode to traditional Uruguayan music concludes with “Las Palabras,” the album’s final song, featuring Murga Falta y Resto. “Murga is a vocal ensemble known for humor and political critique during Carnaval,” Drexler explains. It pays tribute to the typical murga farewell song and is dedicated to his father.
Taracá is an album about memory, the present, and the future. “I write from my personal experience and about what I feel. Rhythmic music, like candombe, is spiritual,” Drexler says.
Writing the album was a tool for helping him process the grief of losing his parents while reconnecting with joy, which he hopes will serve as a reminder that when in doubt, dance.
Taracá is out now.