In 2019, the musician and producer from A Coruña Juan de Dios he participated in the production of an album by Comisario Pantera with which he aspired to a Latin Grammy; he didn’t win. He repeated in 2021, also without an award, as co-author of a song by the also nominated Cami. This year he is competing for the North American Grammy for the best tropical Latin music album thanks to his work as a producer on ‘Quiero verte feliz’, by the Mexican-American band La Santa Cecilia, an album of cumbia and other Latin styles recorded and mixed during the pandemic with those responsible spread around the world.
Marc Anthony, Carlos Vives, La Santa Cecilia, Tito Nieves, Víctor Manuelle and Spanish Harlem Orchestra. These six candidates aspire on February 5 to collect the Grammy award for best tropical Latin music album. In one of them there is a person from A Coruña responsible for the recording, mixing and production of the album: he is Juan de Dios Martín, the man in front of the sound tables of “I want to see you happy”, the latest work by the Mexican-American band La Santa Cecilia. It will be the third Grammy that the Galician musician and producer has opted for after two failed attempts at the Latin Grammys in 2019 and 2021.
The musician Juan de Dios aspires to his first US industry award for the production of an album by the band La Santa Cecilia
This time they are the general Grammys, the more than ninety distinctions awarded each year by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to the music industry. “Being among giants is already a prize. I give myself for won ”, admits Juan de Dios just by seeing the name of your job in a select listing. “What am I doing here?” She asked herself as soon as she learned of the nominations and read among them La Santa Cecilia, a group that already knows what it is to raise a Latin Grammy.
“I want to see you happy”, the band’s eighth album, mixes Latin American sounds and cultures with cumbia as a rhythmic engine. “The Galician cumbiero, they called me,” recalls De Dios. It is a work that is the result of understanding at a distance thanks to technology, with Juan in A Coruña and the musicians spread across the Atlantic, in Miami, Los Angeles and Oaxaxa (Mexico), from where the revered singer-songwriter Lila Downs intervened. in a collaboration.
“We prepared the album before we went into lockdown due to COVID and we wanted to have recorded it before April 1, 2020, which was when the group was going to start a tour. With the pandemic it was impossible and in the end we each worked from home, I made the last mixes in my studio in A Coruña”, reviews the musician, who after more than six years of working in Los Angeles has returned to settle in the city herculine.
This is the first Grammy that De Dios, who has produced musicians such as Amaral, Barón Rojo or Xoel Lópezaspires as a producer, since in the Latin Grammys he had participated in a song from the nominated album of the Chilean Cami “Monstruo” (in the category of best Latin/alternative rock album) and in half of “Cosmovisiones” of the Mexican group Comisario Pantera (candidate for best pop rock album).
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Cumbia with Galician airs in the next edition of the Grammys