Singer-songwriter Juana Molina is a former celebrated comic who enjoyed a brief period of fame in the early 90s with the self-referencing Argentine sketch show, Juana Y Sus Hermanas (Juana And Her Sisters).
Molina had played in various bands as a teenager in Buenos Aires but took a bit part as a comedian on television to raise money for guitar lessons and became a star in her own show.
Molina eventually rejected her celebrity, however, to re-immerse herself in music. According to Molina, she has been in a ‘musical ambience’ all her life. Her tango player father (and sometime Antonio Carlos Jobim and Baden Powell collaborator), Horacio Molina taught Juana to play guitar from the age of five and during the summers the family lived in the same house as bossa nova legends Vinícius De Morães and Chico Buarque.
Juana Molina | Eras
Molina made her recording debut in 1996 with the low-key singer-songwriter effort, Rara. Buoyed by the positive critical reaction to the album, she relocated to America at the end of the 90s, living and playing in Los Angeles and experimenting with new sounds.
Returning to Argentina in 2000, and by now fully committed to making music, she explored a more electronic direction on her next musical outing, Segundo. This charming, dreamlike album later gained international distribution through Domino Records.
Juana Molina | Un Dia
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=NsMYnERBR8Y
For Molina, her music brings about a feeling of being transported: ‘I see things when I listen and these things lead me to places where I can add other forms, both geometric and abstract’.
For those immersed in listening to albums such as Segundo and the follow-ups Tres Cosas (2004) and Son (2006), the latter a more acoustic-based recording, such a state of gentle dislocation is likely to be induced. Molina has notably toured with former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and Prefuse 73 related project Savath And Savalas.
Juana Molina LIVE
Friday, 01 November 2013 | 20:00 CET
HAU 1 | Stresemannstr. 29 | 10963 Berlin/Kreuzberg
juanamolina.com | hebbel-am-ufer.de
