This is the story of an ongoing journey; a route that has touched points in a map that didn’t exist before because its shape and colour were being invented along the way; a journey that became a motor for life.
One hears that chronic travellers experience gradual and sometimes imperceptible transformations. My work in music is the sound-journal of such an itinerary. As I advance more and more along the way I realize that I am who I am because of what I sing, the story of my life can be read through the albums that I have recorded. Those are the stations in my life map, an audio portrait.
Jaramar
With 11 albums in her discography, Jaramar has ventured along the way to explore a song repertoire that goes from medieval anonymous music to her own compositions; raw materials that have enabled her to dig into her obsessions: life, passion, love, death… shaping and transforming the original songs like clay. The guiding threads for this: her permanent desire for sound exploration, and of course her voice, always open to new colours and textures.
Jaramar says that many of these songs have been a part of her life for a long time: some inherited from her grandmother, from her parents, from friends, books, or from life itself as part of that baggage that we all pick up and carry and that in her case she has kept in a drawer waiting for the right moment to take them out to the light. Some songs were found, but others found her. And of course there are also others, the most recent ones, that she wrote herself. It is through this most recent music production that a new window has been opened in Jaramar’s work; or shall we say several new windows, because it is a music impossible to classify it in just one genre.
Sometimes, when people write about Jaramar’s work, they tend to put it in the alternative or world music drawer because it is the result of a fusion of sounds, colours and textures with various passports. Yes, it is true that in her musical path there are various elements converging that would make one think of that classification: the mystic and the sensual, the sacred and the profane, the global and the regional... but Jaramar is definitely more than that. Each new project is the confirmation that the world her music takes us to is, before any genre classification, “Jaramar Space”, that special space in music that she made us discover and that she made her own almost 20 years ago, with her first album.
And there is more.
All through Jaramar’s professional life, music has shared space, time and creative energy with her work in the visual arts. Jaramar is a painter, a sculptor and a book illustrator and this reflects directly in her approach to artistic creation. Jaramar conceives her songs as “ sound paintings” and when she paints she is creating “visual songs”, in both cases telling stories through images, melodies and her very personal writing. Jaramar’s visual conception has always been present in her stage work and in several of her records she has included her artwork; “Fiestas Privadas” shows it more than ever, starting with the album cover.
Musicians who have shared the road with Jaramar:
Alfredo Sánchez
Eduardo Arámbula
Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez
Nacho Vázquez
Héctor Aguilar
Emiliano Huerta
Mario Rivas
Nathalie Braux
Carlos Avilez
Luis Eduardo “Chino” Arreola
Luis Javier Ochoa
Julio Mangiameli
Yosvani Estepe
Diego Escobar
Elí Prado
Darío Rojas
Rodrigo Amillo Castro
Carlos Sánchez Vilches
Juan Castañón
Luciano Sánchez
Diego Martínez Lanz
Alejandro Alfaro
