This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on Guatemala.
Decades ago, the Drexler family used to spend their summers in a house near the lighthouse in the seaside town of La Paloma, three hours east of Montevideo. The resort became a gathering place for the Uruguayan family’s multiple budding artists, including brothers Jorge and Daniel Drexler and their cousin Ana Prada, who all reportedly wrote and premiered their early songs there.
Now, the Drexlers’ musical careers are firmly established—along with their medical careers: following in their parents’ footsteps, the brothers are also physicians. So Daniel and Jorge, with other equally stellar accomplices, launched La Serena Festival de la Canción. Every January for the last decade, guitar-wielding songwriters and a devoted audience gather in La Paloma for a week of concerts, informal beach performances, and talks and workshops on environmental topics and poetry. Earlier this year, AQ traveled to the resort for the latest edition of this “Atlantic Utopia,” as the organizers describe it.
Over a long weekend, the audience shuttled between three stages in town and on the beach for daily concerts by songwriters from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and a few from Europe. The festival culminated with a three-hour, open-air concert at Parque Andresito, a local landmark, that had the feeling of a variety show, with a couple dozen artists onstage in different configurations, including brilliant solo sets by Jorge Drexler, Conociendo Rusia, Jota.Pê, and Silvia Pérez Cruz. In addition to the performances, each concert featured a specialist on environmental topics. The music was widely varied, but the artists shared the elusive label of “songwriters,” presenting songs in which poetry and music are equally important.
Al otro lado del río
Jorge Drexler
This column’s accompanying playlist features many of the artists that were present at La Serena in 2025, starting with superstar Jorge Drexler, who is the only Uruguayan to have received an Academy Award—in 2005, for the song “Al otro lado del río,” from the movie Diarios de motocicleta, alongside dozens of Grammys and other awards. “Camino a La Paloma,” one of his early hits from 1999, shows several hallmark traits: folk music-inspired rhythms, subtly virtuosic harmonic and melodic phrases delivered effortlessly, and happily melancholy poetic figures.
Podría ser
Ana Prada
Ana Prada’s milonga “Podría ser” is the song closest to traditional Uruguayan rhythms on her latest album, No. Based on the sound of the guitars, including the characteristically propulsive picked patterns and melodic interventions that respond to the voice, the evocative lyrics are always in the foreground.
Canto da Praya
Hamilton de Holanda and Mestrinho
Mestrinho is a composer and accordionist from northeastern Brazil, from an illustrious family of musicians. He is equally at home singing and playing easygoing songs such as “Te faço um cafuné,” and trading instrumental virtuosity with bandolim legend Hamilton de Holanda on their 2020 joint album Canto da Praya.
La Voz de la Diosa Entropía
Daniel Drexler
Daniel Drexler has released nine albums, the latest dedicated to the concept of entropy or dispersion, which, in his view, is in constant struggle with life, itself a marvel of organization, albeit a brief and exhausting one. “El tiempo del tiempo” is a metaphysical candombe that speaks about our perception of reality and time with lively choral interjections and a killer brass section.
Los instrumentos
Martín Buscaglia
“Los instrumentos,” by Uruguayan singer Martín Buscaglia, is a poetic tour de force over an eerie and vaguely Andean accompaniment that responds quirkily to the lyrics. Buscaglia lists all the musical instruments and why he likes them, including the human voice, which he ties intimately to poetry. These instruments become a metaphor for the listener’s gifts, which he encourages them to use, lest they fall into disrepair.
La Paloma becomes a magical place in early January, which AQ was as excited to visit as Drexler was when he wrote the song years ago.
Listen to this AQ Playlist on Spotify.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sebastián Zubieta
Reading Time: 3 minutesZubieta is music director at Americas Society and a composer and conductor who has taught music in Argentina and the U.S. He has conducted early and contemporary vocal music and presented his compositions throughout the region.
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