Before the Grammy Latin 2025, we present the case of exciting independent launches by Juana Aguirre, Mabe Fratti, Cheo, Marilina Bertoldi, Girl Ultra and Gepe.
Juan Luis Guerra. Natalia Lafourcade. Jorge Drexler, Caetano Veloso and Shakira. Clearly, Latin Grammy voters have demonstrated an excellent judgment again when it comes to highlighting artists who know how to make a beautiful or two records.
At a time when Latin music It continues to experience a state of grace, both in commercial and creative terms, it is likely that the next nominations include most of the main contenders who launched new music between June 1, 2024 and May 30, 2025.
It is likely that some of the most progressive records and oriented to the 2024-25 season can be ignored by the Latin Academy. With that in mind, we have gathered a select list of six Latin artists that should be celebrated. Some may appear when the nominees are announced on September 17, but each of them deserves a Latin Grammy.
Juana Aguirre
In a perfect world, “Anonymous”, the second year student of the Argentine Digital Sorceress Juana Aguirre, would be an obvious candidate for the album of the year. Of course, many artists before her have ventured into the deconstruction of the avant -garde of the composition crafts: his experimentalist partner Juana Molina comes to mind. What places Aguirre Miles ahead of the competition is not only the disturbing vulnerability of her process: she registers at home, in an environment of Lo-Fi, going crazy of frustration when cutting and hitting up to the dismantled bits and those taken from cohesive sound gel, but also the beauty of another world of the finished product. Aguirre lived in New Zealand and Bolivia before returning to the Balmy Buenos Aires neighborhood of San Isidro, and its nomadic past can explain the safe and cosmopolitan environment of tracks such as the Folktronica Lulaby “Lo Divino” and the ghost, the piano piano of Erik Saturday of “Las branches”. A graphic designer and music of the deranged imagination deserve many praise.
Gepe
Gepe, one of the brightest singers/composers who has ever emerged from Chile, is well established in the Americas and could be nominated for its luminous session 2024 “undesastre”, and if that turns out to be the case, well done, Larras. However, it would be important that its triumphant fusion of South American popular roots and agile electronic rhythms are not relegated to the alternative field. A session that slides effortlessly from relaxed and relaxed romantic hymns such as “PlayaPelaya” for stellar with characters like Mon Laferte, Monsieur Periné and Rubén Albarrán de Café Tacvba deserve a place in the race for the album of the year. An orchestral ballad of bone agitation intensity, the majestic “disaster”, with eccentric sound effects and Beatlesque progressions, would be the most elegant possible option for the album and for the song of the year.
Mabe Fratti
In the conversation, Mabe Fratti is fun and unpretentious. She makes dumb jokes and describes her musical progress with selfless joy, apparently unconscious of her own distinguished position as a member of the Latin American avant -garde. A composer, cellist and ethereal singer, Fratti, 33, was born in Guatemala and moved to Mexico City in 2015. The songs in this fourth trend album are amorphous and crystalline, obsessed with finding beauty in the farthest corners. “Feeling that you don't know” has been acclaimed as a masterpiece for critics from around the world, from Pitchfork to The Guardian. His intelligent jazz combination, classic synthesizers, post-rock and dreamers could easily scare the most conservative faction of Grammy Latin voters, and that would be a serious mistake.
Cheo
As a member of the party band from Venezuela, invisible friends, guitarist and composer Chelo, José Luis Pardo, could enjoy a Latin victory in Grammy and several nominations. Unfortunately, it has maintained a lower profile since it went alone in 2014. However, creatively, Cheo remains a formidable composer and arranger. His “Verso well” music was one of the best 2023 albums, including “chest needles”, a glorious duo with Monsieur Perineé Catalina García singer.
During the eligibility period for this year's ceremony, he launched three separate volumes in the “soda” series of EPS, paying tribute to the gender threads that report their music: tropical, funk and Brazilian. “If you were here” underlines Choo's weakness for the bubbling Latin hall, with electric piano flowers and voices without words to the Henry Mancini. “Vol. 3: Cheo Goes Brazil” is probably the most moving group, with remakes of two invisible invisible friends of members of Permano: “Beach Azul”, now sung by Cheo himself and “Las Lycras del Avila”, channeling Antonio Carlos Jobim the snapshots of Rio de Janeiro in the Melody of Rio de Janeiro in the Vally.
Ultra girl
In 2022, Mariana de Miguel converted a mini-album of seven songs about life in Mexico City, “El Sur”, in a dark night-colored dance-pop banquet. This year, the artist known as Girl Ultra qualifies for the Latin Grammy on the force of “blush”: a delicate EP composed of fleeting miniatures, Edm Glamor Noir impressions. The architecture is more refined in bright pearls such as the hypnotic “Blu” and the “Rimel” brutally. But it is Girl Ultra's emotional maneuver that makes the “blush” an unforgettable experience.
At first, these songs seem to provide the soundtrack for the decadent stands of one night. Just below the surface, however, the hopeful yearning in the singer's voice suggests that it can also be a romantic heart. The higher level production and the mixture of digital spices, shaped like Malela of Girl Ultra, rather than justifying a registration nomination of the year for “Blu”.
Bertoldi Marilina
Do you want a touch of genius? Try the 1:30 brand in the song “Self -esteem”, when everything stops, and the majestic chords of an organ of the Church add a spoonful of madness to this melody about the negativity that permeates daily life in Buenos Aires.
Since it arose as a soloist in 2012, Marilina Bertoldi has been established as the resident hurricane of the Argentine rock, blessed with a corrosive sense of the absurd, a gift for the pop-pink melodies and the attitude of plenty. The most important thing is that his album “for whom you work Vol. 1” is a great fun, an evil tribute to the robotic rhythm machines and the baroque synthesizer lines that defined the rock revolution of the 80s in South America, of the classic albums of the genus Godfather Garcia to the radical Moxie of Sumo, and the melodic angular sadness of metropolis.
Fortunately, you do not need to catch all references to feel elevated by Balloldi Ball-Off-Fire's songbook. The clues are firmly set in the now, from the elegant decline of “El Gordo” to the vulnerable “forever is a place.” Bertoldi's albums have been nominated three times in the past, but the rock and alternative fields are simply too narrow and myopic for this shameless and produced jewel.
