SARGENTO GARCÍA
Francia
Sergeant Garcia burst onto the French music scene in the 1990s with a pungent mix of Jamaican reggae and dancehall with Latin rhythms that he called "salsamuffin". As a veteran of French punk and indie rock, Sargento García has explored his Spanish roots and passion for Latin and Caribbean music to create a popular sound that earned him worldwide fans and sales of hundreds of thousands of albums.
Bruno García, aka Sergeant Garcia, was born in 1964, the year of the dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac, in a small mountain town in France near the Swiss border. He is the son of a Spanish Basque father and a French mother, with family connections ranging from Algeria to the Ivory Coast. As a child, Bruno and his family moved to Bilbao and then settled permanently in Paris when he was five years old. Bruno recalls, "It was like a hybrid family with many colors. I spent a lot of time with my cousin, whose father was from the Ivory Coast. His family had a very African flavor: someone from the African family always came to visit us for weeks. We listened to music African, soul, American music, they exposed me to a lot of different things. "
Although no one played an instrument in his family, music was an important part of Bruno's childhood and his family had an eclectic and diverse record collection, including Africa, America, and Caribbean music, not to mention French sounds. and Spanish. At age 14, Bruno started playing on a friend's guitar, later joining his rock band as a bassist. "I used to say that I had played with the best musicians in the world, because I have learned with records." Bruno points out, "I learned from Bob Marley, Joe Strummer, Bob Dylan, I've learned with a lot of people that I liked. At first, he just copied their styles, you know, when you're a kid ... From hard rock, Bruno moved on to Punk, listening to bands like The Clash, The Stranglers, The Ramones and others At the same time, Bruno becomes a fan of reggae and especially gravitates with punk bands that mix reggae and ska.
When he was eighteen years old, Bruno moved to Barcelona for a year and a half where he experienced the energy of an emerging country. "It is not the Europe we know now, the whole territory. For Europeans, Spain was basically Africa. There was really a lot of freedom, it was the end of the dictatorship. Spain was breathing, and there was a lot of air to breathe. They were hungry for everything. , rock, art, sex, drugs, everything you know. It was a very crazy time! "
Bruno returned to Paris in 1984 to start a group called Ludwig von 88. The band became one of the most popular groups on the French alternative rock and punk scene, recording over ten albums and playing together for thirteen years. "It was the years of the alternative rock movement," says Bruno, "In France it became a very big movement, because there were a lot of bands generating a large audience. This was very new, the heritage of world punk and the movement of alternative rock. And within the punk movement, there were also a lot of political movements, and mixed with all this there was an explosion of reggae music. The hip-hop movement, reggae music with its range of styles. All these things are they gathered in Paris. "
In the 1990s, French reggae, hip hop, Arabic and Latin music had begun to come together in powerful hybrid music or in a movement called "mixed music". Bruno started a side project: DJing with a Jamaican-style sound system. That's where he started using the stage name of Sergeant Garcia. The name was inspired by a character from the television series El Zorro who was very popular when Bruno was a child. The fat, clumsy and drunk Sergeant Garcia was Zorro's clumsy enemy, and they nicknamed him that in the schoolyard. But Bruno began to like the idea of taking the name of the anti-hero. "If everyone wants to be El Zorro", explains Bruno, "I will be Sergeant García. I think he is the true man of the people, not El Zorro. El Zorro is a landowner and is part of the aristocracy."
Since he had returned from Barcelona, Bruno had tried to stay connected to his Latin roots. "I wanted to be in contact with the Latino community and the Spanish language, so I was listening to Latino radios, and I started going to Latin parties. I went to see Los Van Van at the New Morning in Paris, it is a jazz club , and it totally blew my mind. I had never seen such a large band on stage. I started listening to a lot of Latin music with another ear, with one eye in my ear, "jokes Bruno.
Bruno, already like Sergeant Garcia, began to investigate other styles of Latin music, from Colombian cumbia to the bomba and full Puerto Rican, and of course, the foundations of Cuban music. Bruno came to visit Cuba for the first time in 1998, and immediately found something he had been searching for all his life. "When I was in France, I needed more Latin flavors and when I was in Spain, I needed more hybrid culture. When I arrived in Latin America, this was exactly what I was looking for. It reminded me of my family: a mix of Africa with Spain. A culture very hybrid. " Since then, Bruno has visited Latin America and the Caribbean on numerous occasions, crossing the continent in search of new sounds and new collaborators.
Sergeant Garcia's first official recording was the song "Salsamania" in a compilation on the 1996 Tchatche attack. In May 1997, Sergeant Garcia released his first full-length album, Viva el Sargento, which he presented to the French public with his unique blend of salsa, raggamuffin, reggae and hip hop that he himself called "salsamuffin". Invited to play at a Latin music festival, Sargento García needed to go from a studio project to a band, so Bruno brought together six of the best local musicians to form a band called Los Locos del Barrio. They rehearsed feverishly for a month and created an amazing show, with rave reviews.
More concerts were held and rumors began to circulate, so Sergeant Garcia signed with EMI France's Virgin Records label. Sergeant Garcia's second album Un Poquito Quema'o came out in February 1999 and Sergeant Garcia immediately achieved a great level of success at home and abroad. Two years later, Sergeant Garcia and Los Locos del Barrio began working with French engineer Renaud Letang (known for his work with Manu Chao) to record Sin Fronteras, with guests including Amadou & Mariam, the great artist from Mali.
In 2003, Bruno traveled to Jamaica and Cuba to record La Semilla Escondida, an album that explores the musical and cultural connections between these two Caribbean islands. The album is an attractive mix of roots reggae and Afro-Cuban rhythms. It was a great success. The group continued to tour the world, performing throughout Europe, Egypt, Indonesia, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and beyond, gaining fame for their impressive live performances.
After returning from a lengthy tour, Bruno settled in his current headquarters in Valencia, to start recording Masks, an album that focused on the urban sounds of the street he heard on the road, mostly focused on the bustling music of Mexico with its typical metals. Masks, published in 2006 and recorded between Monterrey, Paris and Valencia, was produced by Toy Hernández, known for his work with the rap group Control Machete.
At the same time, Bruno began working at Radio Timbo (www.radiotimbo.com), an Internet radio station based in Valencia, but with an international guest list from Argentina, Mexico, the US, Paris and others. places. Every Monday at 23:00, Radio Timbo plays the best of world reggae, and Latin and African sounds, uniting faithful listeners from all over the world in a community of mixed music.
Bruno had the opportunity to discover the richness of the Colombian music scene for the first time when he traveled there in 2005. "Colombia is incredible. There were very good bands playing every day on the streets, in bars, anywhere ... a a lot of different styles, a lot of people making music, making art, everything was very, very interesting and the vibration of the people is incredible. " In Colombia, Bruno worked with Richard Blair of Sidestepper on an EP titled Cumbiamuffin. After the electrifying sessions Bruno knew that he had to produce an album using the peculiar style of the Colombian musicians, and began to lay the foundations for the Una y Otra Vez project.
The album was recorded over various periods and in different places. Bruno and Iván Darroman Montoya, the Cuban percussionist of Sargento García and co-producer of the band's albums throughout the last ten years, first began to develop arrangements and compositions in Valencia. Then they went to Paris to record with the rest of the group that has accompanied them in recent years, the Iyé Ifé Collective, magnificent musicians with an impressive career.
Final destination: Colombia, where Bruno met with the team of local musicians found on previous trips and with whom he wanted to record, including Jacobo Vélez, clarinetist and leader of the group La Mojarra Eléctrica, Erika Muñoz, one of the singers of the Sidestepper group , the electro-tropical pioneers, musicians from the group La-33, the rising stars of Colombian salsa and Li Saumet, singer of Bomba Estéreo and many others. "I wanted to bring all these musicians together for this album; they are the cream of the day in the Colombian music scene," says Bruno.
The result of these multinational sessions is Una y Otra Vez, Sargento García's sixth full-length album. For years, Sergeant Garcia was with EMI France, but for this special project Bruno decided to return to his independent roots and sign with the United States-based label Cumbancha (www.cumbancha.com). A sequel to Putumayo World Music (www.putumayo.com), which has featured numerous songs by Sargento García in his best-selling compilations. Jacob Edgar the founder of Cumbancha, counts among the biggest fans of Sergeant Garcia. "I still pinch myself regularly to make sure I'm not dreaming," exclaims Jacob, an ethnomusicologist, music critic, and host of the television program Music Voyager (www.musicvoyager.com). "Working with Sargento Garcia, one of my all-time favorite artists, is truly an honor, and I am especially excited by the incredible Una y Otra Vez, which is the best album I have ever produced."