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From Futuromia.

It's Latino USA.

I'm Maria your Hosa.

Love on Love one.

Ye.

Drexler, the famous Uruayyan singer songwriter, first caught the world's attention in two thousand and five when his song al Otro Lado del Rio was in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.

Jorge became the first Uruayan to ever win an Oscar.

This is the first Academy award and nomination for fort Hay Drexler, and this was the first time a Spanish language song received an Academy Award.

Clavo Miremone Lavua Jevo tureimon Elmeo.

I spoke with Jorge about key moments in his life as a young artist, from growing up as the son of a Holocaust survivor to becoming a doctor and then deciding to drop his career in order to pursue music.

He also tells us why he turned down the opportunity to become a global pop star just after winning the Oscar, and of course we talk about his album Binta Epimpo and why it almost didn't come to life.

Our interview first aired in twenty twenty three.

No No Ma's mascotro Vicu.

Nina.

Okay, first of all, welcome to Latino, USA.

I was trying to remember when I interviewed you last.

It turns out I spoke with you in two thousand and five.

Yeah to the Oscars.

I think, yes, right after the Oscars, and you were so happy.

Yeah, and here we are comest us.

Well, I'm happy, I'm in New York.

It's really a pleasure to be here.

Thank you first of all for inviting me, for having me here today.

Here's the crazy thing.

So as I was prepping for the interview, and of course I'm reading about you, listening to your music all the time, which was a gift.

And then I at one point I turned around.

I was like wundo itra otto rino.

My father was an ear nose and throat doctor.

Really my father was doctor Raulins from the University of Chicago.

Helped to create the cochlear implant, eliztabs to the and gone the electron microscope.

My father and my mother both were illnos and throat doctors.

I helped them for six years in surgery.

We never did implantic or cochlear implant, but we would work a lot with many illness that you that affect the hearing.

The cockle is a little harp that turns two and a half times inside a shell.

And that's inside your that's inside.

Your ear, and that's the harp that resonates with the sounds.

If I saying there's.

One little string in that heart that's raising as if you do it with a guitar or with a real heart.

You know.

I never finished illnoson throat.

I stopped studying in the second of the third year of the post degree.

But I do love Ironos's throat.

I do love physiology and anatomy.

And my my brother is a in t.

My sister, she's a she's an ordontologist, so it's a whole family of that.

I'm the older son of a Jewish family, half Jewish at least because my mother converted to marry my father.

But she's from Christian Spanish origins, so I was really supposed to follow the family tradition, those heneracion as manners.

I grew grew up in a very closed environment Uruguaian dictatorship, the house of two e in t doctors.

All their friends were et doctors, and no musicians around solo.

Just I really had a good life.

I had a very good job.

But at the same time, all that time, since I was five years old, I was studying music and I started writing songs when I was fifteen sixteen, and I never stopped doing music.

So at some point I, when I looked deeped inside myself, I said, what I really want to do is to make a living on music.

So I moved to Spain.

And your mom and dad were like cc no.

No, they got completely crazy.

When I left.

My father had been training me for six years in secret microsurgery techniques that he had learned in Germany, and he said, you're throwing away something that people are graving for.

But you know, I'm a really, really lucky person.

Even loving this thing, I had another one that I loved more, so I moved to that one.

Porkala Muru lamento and herusalen la.

My father, I can't completely understand him, I mean, but he had He did the same with his own father.

His own father a Jewish immigrant that my father was born in Berlin too.

He escaped the Nazis when he was five years old in nineteen thirty nine, and his father lost everything his family.

They started again in Bolivia.

They lived in Bolivia for twelve years, in Oruro, in Altiplano.

In Oruro, in Oruro.

Wait a second, yeah, wait, wait wait from Berliev.

Wait what year are we talking about?

Nineteen thirty nine until nineteen fifty something like that.

I just am having a moment of your grandfather and your dad at five years old somehow getting from Berlin to Duro.

Can you just give me the short version of how the hell that happens?

German Jews were very, very German.

They didn't want to leave Germany.

They felt really proud of being German.

They thought that that was what was happening in the Holocaust was something that was going to happen to the other Jews, you know.

Not to them, because they were lighter skinned, and they were educated, they were wealthy.

They were like every immigrant.

They wanted to release their pasts.

They changed a surname when they came into Germany.

They wanted to have a new identity.

They wanted to leave all the stettle and the Yiddish and although they spoke Yiddish, they didn't want to speak English at home.

They thought German was better.

So they didn't want to live and they left in the thirty nine after the Crystal Nach, the moment that they decided to live, it was almost impossible to live.

Already, the only country that stayed open to Jewish refugees was Bolivia.

It was a very brave nation.

I have a song called Bolivia.

It's a song that I wrote to thank you know, the poorest country in South America giving asylum to one of.

The richest country in Europe, you know.

And we should not forget that.

And obviously and the young cannot and last conci because that goes back and forth all the time.

I mean, we we come and we go, and we receive and we ask for.

As I look.

Anti from.

In nineteen fifty one, I think so they entered little while from scratch.

My grandfather built a a short factory.

Like a very Jewish professional Jewish profession.

He did really good, and at some point he offered the factory to his two sons, my father and his brother, and both of them said, I want my own life.

I want to be a doctor.

So that happened again with me and.

With him and lad Vermev korason Espera sing Sabermivia.

Okay, So the trauma, the exodus, the fear, the persecution.

Were you growing up with a sense of six million Jewish, including my own family, were persecuted.

How did you understand that part of your legacy.

My father is a war child.

He doesn't trust reality, and he doesn't think that situations are continuous.

He knows that they change, and he knows that they can change for bad.

So he's always been prepared for that, and he always transmitted that fear and that you know, that alert to us too.

So I think it takes more than two or three generations to lose that feeling of you know, the feeling that the children in Ukrainia are having today that trauma is not going away easily.

I also got my share because I grew up in a dictatorship.

I entered the dictatorship with nine years and I came.

Out with twenty.

All my emotional life, my sex life, all my relationship life was built in a very oppressive system.

And that's going to take a long time.

I had to write.

I had to make a record called by just to take the dictatorship out of my joints because I couldn't dance.

By Layla while La.

By Lay, I'm.

Still fighting that, I'm still Dictatorship is a very It's inside me and I go everywhere with it.

And holocaust is also inside me through my father and.

I read my Starff and s and you.

In life, if you can celebrate, do celebrate, because celebrating is a way of acknowledge that you will not always be able to celebrate.

So just grasp that little joy that you find.

Because we come and go from saddness to by lay.

I have a lot of sadness and melancholy my songs too.

But but if I can celebrate, I think, and I celebrate.

You know, it's a choice, it's a choice.

A man, Kayla sing pila and la cuela.

You make this decision to say, my boy, and I'm going to become an immigrant by your own choice in Spain.

And there were many places that you could choose to live.

What was it about Spain?

It wasn't a conscious decision.

I was thirty years old, I wasn't young, and I had my own flat, my own practice, and I moved to Spain to share a flat.

With nine other year wires in.

Madrid with no money and I think maybe two bathrooms lightly so.

More so nice passim.

Yeah, I'm just playing little cafes for forty people and not the Nine days later, I met the mother of my first child, Anna, and of my first son, and I fell in love with her so well I should really it wasn't a brain decision.

Actually, stamos vilos, polkist tamos and movie mento.

But I have to say when I got to Spain, very quickly I was invited by Joaquin Savina, mervous Spanish musician.

He invited me to perform with him in Spain and I got to meet through him many other artists that I admired, and very quickly they started asking me for compositions and Abilene Victor, Manuel Keetama, Pablo Milanaise Rosario Flores.

At first, my parents were like horrified because I was throwing a whole life and prosperity and a career outside.

But then I started making a little place for me in the Spanish music as a writer, and very quickly they moved to being just sad because I was away.

Love overcame that feeling of I think you ruined your life, But at some point that they realized that I was.

Really happy and that made them happy too.

I started making a living of music when I was thirty, but I started doing good when I was forty already, and that was the first time I was having a little success and it came all together.

You know.

Before that, the first ten years in Spain were really hard.

I didn't sell records.

I was a completely failure in my own selling record history.

Although I was really happy.

I was writing for other people and I was making the records I wanted to make.

That was an important thing.

Laplace through my rest plan to Elviento del.

Bocasus coming up on Latino USA Porte head Drexler's career as a singer songwriter takes off to the very top.

Stay with us.

Either Lovelazlan.

Welcome back to Latino, USA.

And before the break, I was speaking with Uruwayyan singer songwriter Porthhead Drexler about abandoning his career as an ear nosen throat doctor and then making it as a musician in Spain.

I wanted to ask him about the aftermath of winning that Academy Award in two thousand and five, because Horge became be first Uruaian to ever win an Oscar and this was the first time a Spanish language song received.

An Academy Award.

You can't get any higher than winning an Oscar and performing and people falling in love with you as a result, And then you go into a very dark place.

You end up getting a divorce, and you end up making an album about your divorce.

How do you understand that process, the falling?

I think it's a natural process.

That's one thing with prices and with expectations.

I mean, there is no good way out of expectations.

If you do achieve what you expected to achieve, the void that comes after that.

You know, I actually didn't expect to win that.

It was a crazy thing.

It was the first price I got in my life, and it was the highest after the oscars.

I had the choice to decide whether I wanted to follow the circumstances or to have agency in my life.

Immediately, everybody told me, you moved to Miami and to la and you know you have an oscar.

Every door is going to be open.

You can make your big crossover record, your big Latin happy crossover record.

And I said, okay, but you know what I have to choose.

If I'm going to make a record in what I am actually feeling, which is sadness, twelve seconds of darkness the name of the record, A very dark the darkest record, if I have to follow my instinct and my truth or if I have to follow the circumstances.

And I said, I'm going to follow my truth.

I mean, it's as that symbol.

I got a divorce.

We're already thinking about that for a long time.

But then I fell in love really quickly after the divorce, and I couldn't cope with that mixture of success and the happiness and sadness at the same time.

Because divorcing with children, it was the toughest thing that happened in my.

Life, jos cab Lumbo, the Regresso sing.

I think it's my most important record actually, and I'm so proud because after that I realized.

Why am I a songwriter?

What?

Why do I write songs for?

You know?

Because you are like a deeply emotional person and you're connected with all of.

These and I respect my emotions to more than I respect the circumstances.

Ok No, sys, So I want to talk about your evolution as a musician a little bit through your own songs, and yeah, I'm gonna take you back a little bit.

So I want you to pick a song from your album.

This is Carabe.

It's two thousand and eight, okay, three years after the oscar It's a two hour long live album.

So one song from Caabe that you're like, yeah, this is this one captures it.

I have the only song that I've co written with my wife, and it's called Doves Doves bela Dova, which is a very strange song.

It's that's the only song we wrote together.

And it's a song try lingual, half in Spanish, a little bit in Italian and a little bit in English.

We wrote it together.

We were in the first years of our relationship and it's a song I really love that I never got to air too much.

You go on a way away time.

All right, we're gonna move forward to twenty ten.

Yeah, you release a Madla Drama is there and that stands out for you?

Yeah, I have two songs that send out Actually after those wos a very dark record.

This is a record filled with a.

In the name ahmar La Trama really open feeling, open chest feeling.

It's an homage to Madrid.

Camino for Madrid and to company.

I was living order for a long time, but I fell in love with the city.

I fell in love with this amazing woman.

We had this amazing son.

And so there's two songs that one called La tram Listen Lassi that's dedicated.

To leonor Signal da Mosquez.

And there's no the Luca dedicated to my son Luca, which is when I realized it was going to be a father and for the second time, and all the healing that came to my life, not just with having that second child, that put everything in an order in your life after a very happy but difficult years, you know, of transition from one life to another.

We will be right back, Hey, we're back.

We're gonna pick up where we left off with what head Wrexler and talk about his song Plan Maestro, The master Plan, So planned Maestro.

I mean, that's like a pretty big title, The master Plan.

This is on the album.

This is written by your cousin who lives in Venezuela, who is an astrophysicist.

You have a very high performing family.

You talk about having the relationship of humanity close to you as you write.

So you write this song with your cousin who's in Venezuela when you're in Madrid.

How are you doing it together?

And how did this play into you?

Know, you have to have a relationship in music when you're writing it.

She's my cousin.

She has the same age.

I'm only a few months older than her.

So we have this really strong connection, like an umbilical connection.

Kria Era del Mesoku Guanda Queesa Slula Visionaria.

I don't have told this anyone, but we actually operate like twins with her.

We have the same age, We were best friends where we were children.

We shared these common interests, like we have the same hard disk.

You know, she is a scientist, but she's also a poet, we always feel this connection.

And we started writing songs when we were fifty five years old.

And she's been the great the biggest influence I had in my in my music in the last years.

When you go to my concert, the concert is opened by her voice.

She speaks for four minutes talking about the invention of love in the Mesoproterozoic era.

One thousand, six.

Hundred years ago, were the first two cells got together.

It's a love story.

She wrote this beautiful decimo, which is a very complex verse form that you have in Mexico in the Sanjarrocho and the Wapangu.

It's a ten verse structure that you have all over Latin America.

Unbriselos does who's carrying out.

In Paraham.

They have the galeron in Venezuela in Peru, Pajaores in Uhy, Repentistas in Kuba, Pajas in Chile.

That they use the same verse form everywhere.

What pang in Mexico come to Panama vers.

So one of the things that you and I are lucky about, Jorge, is that one that we're still here, that we're still alive.

That's a big one.

That's a big one.

And you and I are lucky in this one particular way, Jorge, that you and I still have a little bit of cred with the younger generations.

Yeah, oh, Jo, I mean you're playing with Dietrees, You're playing with Natalia and so many others, and I just you know, when you pause and you think about that, just how do you understand to process this as we get older and at the same time that you got some intergenerational cred.

Young people love you too.

I was taught this by my father actually, when he was forty he had the Beatles records.

It was the only person in his generation in euro White that would actually understand that there was a newer world and that newer world wasn't worse than the older world.

When when he grew up, and.

I mean he grew up with jazz music, but he understood the Beatles and he gave the Beatles to me.

When we got into Bob Marley, he said, can I hear that again?

That's really interesting?

I mean, who's this guy?

And it's my music in my generation, but he was open to my music and he gave me this message.

Older people are still alive.

I remember reading a book about Mario and Treja and asking him this book this is crazy I was a teenager.

It's a book about a forty year old guy that falls in love.

I mean, that can't be possible.

You don't fall in love when you're forty or fifty.

And he said, we have to have this talk.

Yes today, you know love has no age, beauty has no age, sex has no age, and art has no age.

And you can be open to things that are new.

Okay, look oka, look atz Oka, look at Oko.

I have this world that I started using a few months ago.

That it's called neophobia.

Neophobia like the phobia to the new.

It's a generational thing.

I think younger people accept you and listen to you just because you listen to them.

That's the secret.

Because when I hear but Bunny, I tried to understand what's going on.

And I'm not lying when I say I really admire his work.

He's very different from me.

Setangan is his age, which I worked a lot, and he was one of the other big influences in my music.

Talk my daughter, eleven year old, she comes and shows me some music.

I sit down on the floor and I listened very carefully to her advice.

I take it really seriously.

It's like breathing new air for me.

I want to know what the world is about, just because I hate being nostalgic.

I hate thinking that the best part of my life has already passed.

There are great things that I learn right now, and that you know.

My past is beautiful.

It's my past.

It's not better than my present.

Actually, my presence is the only thing that I have, so it should be I should take it seriously.

So I love urban music.

I listen to urban music a lot.

I'm looking forward to working with people that have very different styles from mine.

It's not a record company advice.

It's not a management or a marketing advice.

I just love being.

Alive, dmingdim and I love the present.

I love dancing a lot, going out and meeting people and trying to feel that life is still has a lot of things, of course, to offer you.

I decantar linamente Luez.

Thank you for offering me this time.

It has been just so much fun.

Thank you, Pimp Didi tim Didi Timo.

This episode was produced by Patricia Sulvaran.

It was edited by Marta Martinez.

It was mixed by Julia Caruso and Gabriela Bias.

Fernando Echavari is our managing editor.

The Latino USA team also includes Roxanna Guire, Jessica Elis, Rebecca Renaldo Junior, Stephanie LAbau, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Yorman Marquez, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Moreles Garcia, JJ Krubin, Adriana Rodriez, Nancy Trujillo, Benile Ramires and I are co executive producers.

I'm Your Host Maria Josa.

Latino USA is part of Iheart's Mykeldura podcast network.

Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Join us again on our next episode.

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