Again in February (it looks as if a lifetime in the past), I reviewed Gaby Moreno’s 2024 album, Nightfall. In April’s Sizzling Half Dozen, I beneficial the quick music video for her single “Lamento”, that tells the heartbreaking story of the rising sea that has washed away her childhood dwelling in Guatemala.
I revisited these tales this weekend as I listened to the 15 songs on the Nightfall Album and rewatched the video, and I spotted that I had by no means actually correctly launched Moreno to you all past a paragraph on her appearances with artists like Bono, the Buena Vista Social Membership, Tracy Chapman, and lots of extra, displaying her unbelievable vary and adaptableness.
I’ve met and interviewed Moreno a number of occasions, and chatted together with her and her agent, Gill Gastelum of Cosmica Artists, after a live performance. The key takeaway from every of these encounters was that Moreno is simply too gifted to remain in a single style and is a very nice individual. Her story is inspiring.
Born Maria Gabriela Moreno Bonilla in Guatemala Metropolis, Gaby’s expertise surfaced early: by age 10, she was already performing as a gap act for Ricky Martin and singing at group occasions all through her homeland. That early publicity sharpened her imaginative and prescient, main her to Los Angeles as a younger grownup to pursue extra expansive alternatives.
Moreno’s emergence as a top-level musician is characterised by each vary and resolve. She masterfully blends blues, soul, jazz, and the folks music of Latin America, singing in each English and Spanish and collaborating with artists throughout genres. By her twenties, Moreno was recording with main labels and successful acclaim. Her track “Escondidos” gained the Grand Prize on the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2006. Her 2019 album Spangled is an excellent collaboration with Van Dyke Parkes that traces Latin music’s 100-year migration throughout North America.
Moreno is a GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY winner, acknowledged in 2024 for Greatest Latin Pop Album (X Mí (Vol. 1)) and as Greatest New Artist (2013), amongst different nominations. She’s been honored by the BBC’s 100 Girls and has carried out on iconic phases from Lincoln Heart to the Kennedy Heart.
However regardless of the awards and the excursions and concert events, at occasions her life transcends her music. As UNICEF’s first Guatemala ambassador, she has superior youngsters’s rights and distributed music-education albums in rural areas. She companions with nonprofits like Cooperative for Training, elevating funds for scholarships and urgently wanted infrastructure in Guatemalan communities. Her single “The Immigrants” channels proceeds towards supporting migrants and spotlights the struggles of the displaced.
Having adopted her profession for over 10 years, interviewing her and attending her concert events, I believe what makes Gaby Moreno distinctive – and the explanation I’m profiling her right here – is her potential to attach worlds – her music sin fronteras high quality, if you’ll. She bridges cultures together with her bilingual music, she bridges genres from folks to rock to blues, she honors her roots whereas forging a contemporary creative path, and she or he weaves activism into her profession. Whether or not lending her voice to musical collaborations or humanitarian causes, Moreno is a uncommon determine whose affect resonates far past the stage.
Stream Nightfall and her different albums on main streaming platforms, together with Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube, Deezer, and Shazam.
Patrick O’Heffernan
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