A song about being invisible has earned Angelica Garcia rather a lot of attention lately. In December, Barack Obama shared his lists of favourite things of 2019 – a kind of presidential Richard and Judy Book Club with numerous tips worth following.
Under music, sitting alongside big guns such as Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys, was the Virginia-based singer-songwriter’s single Jícama. Named after a Mexican root vegetable, the song explores her experience of growing up in east LA as an American with Mexican and Salvadoran heritage. “I see you, but you don’t see me,” she sings over a slinky Latin groove. “I’ve been trying to tell you but you just don’t see/Like you I was born in this country.”
On Garcia’s debut album, Medicine For Birds from 2016, the music was more rootsy, a bit country, more American. On this follow-up she’s largely singing about the mix of influences on her childhood with a far more varied sonic backdrop. She’s been listening to Colombian cumbia and Peruvian chicha music. It Don’t Hinder Me finds her yelling, “If you stop eating tortillas maybe you’d lose weight!” over chugging rock guitars. Guadalupe, inspired by Mexican Catholic iconography, pitches the Virgin Mary as an empowerment idol while vocal samples stutter and synths clamour wildly.
Aided by the team at Richmond, Virginia’s Spacebomb Records, which also brought us retro yet contemporary albums by Natalie Prass and Matthew E White, Garcia has embraced her roots and hit upon an eclectic style all her own. It’s a fusion fit for a president.
