In 2005, Jorge Drexler was nominated for an Oscar for his song “Al otro lado del río,” but he was sidelined by the production team, who considered him too low-key to appear on the broadcast. However, upon winning the award, instead of giving a speech, the Uruguayan artist sang a snippet of his song. In doing so, he turned the moment into a poetic protest—discreet yet forceful—against television conventions.
Today, as Drexler remains active in the music industry and the Academy Awards face a ratings crisis—viewership has dropped from 42 million in the United States to just 17.9 million for the 2026 ceremony—his role takes on new significance.
Taracá: What does it mean in Jorge Drexler’s career?
The artist has just released a new work that reconnects him with that lost paradise of his youth and with lesser-known rhythms shared by rural Uruguay and neighboring Brazil: candombe.
Taracá is the title of Jorge Drexler’s new album —the fifteenth of his career—with which he returns to his roots and records in Montevideo again after many years. His reasons: to honor the memory of his recently deceased father, Gunther Drexler, a renowned German-Uruguayan doctor, scientist, and writer.
The title Taracá (Sony Music, 2026) refers to the rhythmic shift of the candombe drum, a genre that, since 2009, has been recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. “I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the drum, which serves as a metronome, a clock, a temporal framework, marks the beat without touching it, avoiding it, circling around it, ” he confessed in a letter addressed to his fans.
Jorge Drexler: Return to Uruguay and Reaffirmation of Identity
After more than three decades living in Madrid, Jorge felt he had to return to Uruguay and record this album. In 2023, in the Spanish capital, Drexler was named “Ambassador of Afro-Uruguayan Culture and Music” on African Culture Day, which sparked complaints from arts groups because the artist is not Afro-Uruguayan. Drexler clarified the issue by acknowledging the misunderstanding and valuing Afro-descendant history. Back in the 1980s, Paul Simon had been accused of cultural appropriation for the album Graceland —one of his most successful albums—recorded in apartheid-era Johannesburg, South Africa. Drexler didn’t go that far: he decided to stick to his own thing.
And yes, perhaps that somewhat controversial fact also played a role in the artist’s return to and appreciation of his South American identity. The truth is that Taracá navigates some rather interesting existential waters across 11 songs. Like “Toco madera, ” a single where the drum is, as in most of the songs, the protagonist.
“Everyone thinks there’s something better out there; it doesn’t matter what the goal is, as long as you win the race,” read part of the single’s lyrics. And although it draws on the tradition of the aforementioned rhythm, the song also features a beat and samples that give it a more contemporary feel and vaguely evoke acid jazz.
That said, it has a strong pop and carnival vibe. After all, both candombe and samba share African roots of resistance and the use of festive drums.
Dancing Despite It All: Drexler, History, and Rhythm as Resistance
“How Do You Love?” is another track that stands out for its deeply personal pop vibe—which shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the singer has always been known for exorcising his inner demons through music. In the song, the artist laments the pitfalls of modern life.
“I don’t know if it’s just me or if you’re noticing it too, but it used to be so simple and now it’s become so complicated…,” she sings.
And things get, quite literally, baroque when his song “Ante la duda, baila” begins with a manifesto recited aloud: “At the beginning of the Spanish Baroque, during the reign of Philip II, in July 1583, a decree issued by the mayors of the Royal Household and Court of Madrid prohibited dancing the Zarabanda under penalty of two hundred lashes and six years rowing in galleys, for moving the hips…” He then moves on to other historical moments, such as the Inquisition’s ban on recreational dancing in New Spain and, later, the censorship of candombe and tango in Uruguay and Argentina.
Thus, Drexler turns it into a manifesto that champions dance as a sign of the times. In fact, the song ends as an ode to Latin music and references the raids in Puerto Rico in the 1990s under Operation Sentinel, which seized reggaeton from stores, considering them subversive. It’s very fortunate that someone is bringing that musical fascism out of oblivion—a phenomenon that didn’t take hold with the advent of digital music.
From Puerto Rico and Brazil to Uruguay: Drexler and the Soundscape of Taracá
And the references to Puerto Rico don’t stop there; “Te llevo tatuada” also makes an appearance—a song in which the Puerto Rican artist Young Miko features not on an urban track but on a ballad that breaks somewhat from the tone set by Drexler himself on the album. However, this acoustic ballad is emotional enough (it could even have been written by a band like Red House Painters or Mazzy Star if it had been sung in English with a more alt-country sound) to warrant its inclusion.
Also featured is “¿Qué será que es?”, an original song by Brazilian star Gonzaguinha titled “O Que É, O Que É?” and adapted into Spanish by Jorge Drexler himself. In the song, the singer starts off in the style of Joan Manuel Serrat, only to fill our ears moments later with MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) influenced by samba, bossa nova, and jazz.
His video, which brings things full circle, is a real trip down memory lane, edited from footage shot on Super 8 between 1972 and 1980 by the Drexler Prada family.
