Folkalist Records is thrilled to announce that Juana Luna’s new album is out today! Set against a minimalist, electro-indie folk sound, Luna brings untold stories to light, including new takes on four Argentine classics.
In "Canciones en Blanco y Negro" (Songs in Black and White), delicate but strong threads connect what might seem at first improbable tales of disparate characters.
A young girl gets pregnant and is cast adrift by her family, who sends her half a world away. Elsewhere, a decades-long love story is never consummated. A paper boat defies the odds and crosses the ocean. A blind magician dusts off his top hat and pursues his dream of fame in the New York City subway.
Juana sings about “those journeys in which you leap into the void and leave your home forever, whether you know it or not.” She adds, “I realized much later that every song is a bit my journey — but also my mom’s, and my grandmother’s, and my great-great-grandmother Emilia’s.”
“[Emilia’s] story was not told because they were ashamed, because she got pregnant, she was 15 years old in Italy, and they put her on a ship and sent her to Argentina. Alone,” she continues after a pause. “And that's where my family comes from. That is where I come from. I found out about her last year from an aunt who told me the story. My mother never told me. So, I feel that not only did her own family condemn Emilia, but all the following generations condemned her as well — and I am making a break here.”
“Emilia,” a moving tribute by Luna, is a highlight and sets the emotional compass of the album.
In “Barco de Papel,” which echoes “Emilia” by featuring the same instrumentation and arranging approach, Luna seems to address her directly as she sings: “No one believed you could cross the ocean; you must have known something.” “Flor de la Noche,” another original, sets her great-great-grandmother's story in a larger context with a nod to the ‘me too’ movement. “You pretend to hide your scars / That your voice trembles / doesn't mean that what you say is less true,” she sings. “That is a journey that touches all women,” underlines Luna.
“Olmedo” celebrates Olmedo Renteria, Olmedini the Magician, an Ecuadorian performer who was famous in his country and already in his 60s when he decided to follow his dream and try his luck by moving to New York City in 1988. He turned subway cars into his rolling stage and managed to make a living, but in 2012 a stroke left him blind. Two years later, encouraged by family and neighbors, his talent and spirit intact, he went back to the subway.
“All the characters in these journeys have very big vulnerabilities,” says Luna. “Emilia is pregnant. She has everything to lose. Olmedo too. ‘Barco de Papel’ is a paper boat. In ‘Flor de la Noche,’ the woman is alone with her scars in the middle of the night, her voice quivering. These people and their journeys share something deeply human,” says Luna.
Luna unfolds her stories unhurriedly over deceptively simple, spacious settings. Four songs include string quartets featuring arrangements commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which were performed live during their NY Phil Bandwagon pop-up series in 2021.
“I like to tell a story, and for that, I want to have the room to breathe and be calm,” she says. “It’s a rather nostalgic, old sound.”
“Canciones en Blanco y Negro” is mostly sung in Spanish, with one song performed in English. The album follows an EP released in 2017, and her full debut album, “Ocean Avenue”, released in 2019.
Juana Luna came from Buenos Aires to the States to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production in 2013. Soon after, she moved to Brooklyn, NY. But sourcing her work on traditional folk music was not merely because she rediscovered her roots through her memories and distance from her homeland. Simply, this is the music she grew up with.
“My grandparents, my great-grandparents were all musicians and very traditionalist. I grew up going to horse-riding marches, dressed as a gaucho,” she recalls. “The first thing I did as a kid was to get on a horse, go to jineteadas (a rodeo-like event very popular in rural Argentina, Uruguay, and the South of Brazil). That was my childhood.”
“My family participated a lot in these things — traditional horseback rides, marches that lasted days. Gauchos from all over the province of Buenos Aires came dressed in their Sunday best, and every night, there were guitarreadas (open sessions of guitar playing and singing), and I danced every folkloric style. I knew them all.” It’s a long way from Brooklyn, but even then, “It was a very strange thing because, afterward, I would go back to Buenos Aires, to my bilingual school, and I was the freak who knew the whole folk music repertoire.”
In “Canciones en Blanco y Negro” she includes four classics of Argentine folklore, including “Las Golondrinas” (The Swallows) and “Merceditas,” a chamamé, a style popular in Argentina’s northeast. The song tells the true story of unrequited love between a country girl and the smitten songwriter. Despite two rejected marriage proposals, their story lasted nearly two decades until the composer’s death.
“This is an album about women. My mom passed away a few years ago, and ‘Las Golondrinas’ was her song,” says Luna. Juana sings “La Paloma” (The Dove), a traditional Basque song that was a favorite of her grandmother, evoking the arrangement her grandparents sang together when she was a child.
“My whole world is in this album,” she says.