Jorge Drexler

Jorge Drexler is a Uruguayan singer-songwriter, guitarist, and physician born in Montevideo in 1964 to Jewish parents whose families had fled Nazi Germany and Bolivia for Uruguay. He grew up in a household that mixed European classical music with the milongas and candombes of the Río de la Plata, and he trained as an otolaryngologist before deciding to make his living as a musician.

His earliest albums, recorded in Montevideo in the early 1990s, drew the attention of the Spanish singer Joaquín Sabina, who encouraged him to move to Madrid. Drexler relocated in 1995 and gradually built a Spanish-speaking audience with records such as Frontera (1999), Sea (2001), and Eco (2004), blending bossa nova, candombe, milonga, and electronic textures around his soft, conversational voice.

In 2005 he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Al otro lado del río, written for Walter Salles's film The Motorcycle Diaries, becoming the first Uruguayan to receive an Oscar. The Academy did not invite him to perform the song on the broadcast, and his Spanish-language acceptance speech, sung a cappella, became one of the night's lasting moments.

Subsequent albums including Amar la trama (2010), Bailar en la cueva (2014), Salvavidas de hielo (2017), and Tinta y tiempo (2022) have collected multiple Latin Grammy Awards, with Tinta y tiempo taking Album of the Year and Record of the Year. He has collaborated with C. Tangana, Jorge Carrasco, Mon Laferte, and many others, and continues to tour widely.

The name Jorge is the Spanish and Portuguese form of George, from the Greek Georgios meaning farmer or earth-worker. Carried into Iberian use through the cult of Saint George the dragon-slayer, it has remained common across Latin America. He wears it as the sober name of an unhurried storyteller.