Kany García goes for ‘The love we deserve’

In the midst of a packed tour and album release, Kany Garcia takes time to celebrate “The Love We Deserve.”

In an interview by video call from San Juan, Puerto Rico, García said he was happy to “see the madness of the people, with the intensity with which the concerts are lived” and that he is trying to keep the energy up for “everything what is happening so beautiful”. The artist will continue her tour in August and September through Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and San Antonio Texas, among other cities.

While those concerts arrive, he released on Friday “The love we deserve”, his most recent album that began as a solo adventure at the beginning of last year, when he wrote songs with the idea of ​​​​simply putting down his pen. In the summer she went on a trip with a friend who helped her find a direction for these issues.

“He told me a phrase that stuck with me… he had a drink in his hand and he told me ‘this is the life we ​​deserve, just this one!’” Garcia said. “I used to laugh, but from there I felt the great need to write songs in which self-esteem and who one is as a person are vindicated… write songs that not only made me feel good, but also made me analyze each one of them. the relationships one has in life.

This album also brought her the winner of two Latin Grammys for best singer-songwriter album, for “Mesa para dos” and “Contra el viento” out of a total of five Latin Grammys she has received in her career, her first experience in a composers.

“I wanted to sit down with other people to write too, not just write alone,” she said. “I think the pandemic left me with a lot of that too, from too much loneliness to too much interaction, and this is an album that totally lacks that loneliness.”

Among the composers with whom he collaborated, the Venezuelans Yasmil Marrufo and Servando Primera stand out, as well as the Colombian Richi López, who was also in charge of the production of the album. With them he tried new rhythms and included traditional folk instruments such as requintos, maracas and tumbadoras in songs like “Agüita e Coco” and “Mi plan de vida”, the second about one of “those relationships that everyone bets will not work ”.

“It has a lot of that sound and folklore that they bring to the table from Venezuela and from many other angles that perhaps I didn’t have and that I loved how they let me explore,” he said.

“Wounded Bird” is another of the songs with traditional sounds, in this case from the bachata of the Dominican Republic, which contrasts with the melancholic theme of the song.

“It’s a bachata that I loved doing with Dominican musicians,” Garcia said. “I’ve explored the bachata genre (before) but maybe not from a very classic bachata angle, like this song is.”

With the release of the album, García premiered the video for the single “Muero” with Alejandro Sanz. “It’s the most nostalgic song on the album,” Garcia said.

It was, in fact, the first of his production that he wrote and he was clear that he wanted to perform it with Sanz. When the Spanish artist accepted and sent him the recording of his voice, he had “total confirmation” that it was a wise move to let himself be carried away by his instincts.

“Another thing is that an artist sends you a track that moves you inside as it happened to me,” Garcia said. “I wanted to hear Alejandro’s voice all the time. It was a song that I feel like he could easily have said he wrote it, it could be part of his repertoire.”

The video, directed by Spaniard Willy Rodríguez, was filmed in Cali, Colombia, where Sanz was on tour and where García had not imagined he would go.

“It was a spectacular experience,” he said. Two middle-aged women appear in the video, each one grieving in her home for not having dared to live her love. “Their love story of hers is narrated by two girls who are almost identical to them, but younger, and they are amazing dancers,” Garcia said.

Another of her guests on the album is the Spanish singer-songwriter Rozalén, with whom she performs “Justito a tiempo”, a song celebrating getting out of a toxic relationship before it’s too late, to the rhythm of cumbia.

“That violence, which is the one we receive daily, which is the one that is not seen because it does not hit, is the one that enters you psychologically, is the one that enters you emotionally and is the one that is most difficult to detect and that is why it is a a song that on the one hand celebrates that just in time and that celebration is cumbia”, said García.

“I love doing it with someone like Rozalén, she is a woman that I admire, that I love, but apart from that we are well aligned in things that we feel are important to tell.”

The second part of “Justito a tiempo” could well be “Me quedo sola”, the last song on the album in which García sings why she is better alone than in bad company.

The theme is against “the way our education has operated, that we are a better half, that we are simply complete when we have someone by our side. When are you going to get married? When are you going to have children? All these things that society has imposed on us as women,” Garcia said. “For me ‘Me quedo sola’ was the most eloquent way to end the album”.

His third guest on the album is the Puerto Rican urban artist Jay Wheeler, with whom he enjoyed recording together in the studio “Don’t come back”, a song in which the reggaeton player lets romanticism and nostalgia emerge, while Garcia comes alive with his modern style reflected in the electronic touch of the song.

“It seems to me that there is a very negative view of the urban singer who does not sing and everything is (the software) autotunes, and it is not true,” García said. “There are many who sing and I think Jay is one of them, he sings and sings a lot … I think it’s a song that is a bridge between us that does us both a lot of good.”