In mid-February 2020, the Gallery5 release party for singer-songwriter Angélica Garcia’s record “Cha Cha Palace” was a triumph.
Powered by multi-layered vocals, the album offers a technicolor swirl of defiant, romantic, autobiographical songs that embrace her blended identity as a first-generation American of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. Former President Barack Obama had listed the album’s single “Jicama” on his Best of 2019 list. NPR had scheduled a Tiny Desk Concert for release. Garcia was about to go on tour and make new fans.
Then much of the world shut down.
“The ‘Cha Cha Palace’ tour got cancelled because of the pandemic,” says Garcia. “If you remember, there were all the different Richmond musicians that were on the recording, but that was more of a Spanglish record.” When she relocated from Richmond back to Los Angeles and played it for her family — “this whole album honoring my family” — she realized they could not understand it. “It was not in their language. I decided to challenge myself to fully speak and write new songs in Spanish.”
Garcia left Richmond during the COVID shutdown; there was no work here and growing opportunities for her elsewhere. Initially, she moved in with her grandparents on the West Coast, before living in New York City for a year and a half, during which time she worked at The House of Yes, a Brooklyn nightclub and performance space, and developed the rhythm and vocal structure for her latest album, “Gemelo.” She moved back to LA in early 2024.
Garcia makes a rare return to Richmond this weekend, headlining a show featuring Kenneka Cook and Shera Shi at The Camel on Saturday, Nov. 8. It is a near-perfect lineup: Cook and Garcia were frequently paired as backup singers in bands in the late 2010s. Brittany O’Neil, fronting Shera Shi, is in roughly the same position Garcia was before her 2020 breakthrough second album, “Cha Cha Palace.”
Garcia’s linguistic shift has opened new audiences and artistic possibilities.
“I got to learn so much about the differences of English and Spanish,” she explains. “English is fast; it takes way more words to complete a thought in Spanish. English is like a sword fight, fast and quick and like fencing. Spanish is like writing poetry by a window when it is raining. It lends itself more to poetry. You luxuriate with words where in English you luxuriate in sentences.”
Different languages provide different constraints and expressive opportunities.
“Inanimate objects are masculine or feminine in Spanish. You can’t play with words as much and be grammatically correct. But it is more percussive. Little inflections become like drumbeats. You can run sentences together in an interesting way that would not work in English,” she adds.
In her RVA years, Garcia was a master of solo looping; building the sound, motif by motif, each rendered with delicacy, power and impressive control. When the wordless vocal architecture was complete, she sang lyrics over it, keying the freshly recorded components with a compact controller. Her songs soared through angel choruses of asynchronous a capella. Looping is not entirely gone on tours for her latest album, “Gemela,” but rather than being created live on the spot, it is a prerecorded track accompanied by a live drummer.
“The wireless mic is a game changer,” Garcia says. “It is much freer; I get to get to express myself with movement. I can look people in the eye, have more of a human connection.”
It also works better on festival stages in Europe and elsewhere, where large audiences may lack the patience to wait for an artist to assemble a song on imperfect equipment. “You do not want feedback blasting the crowds at Primavera [in] Portugal,” she says. Last June, Primavera Sound Porto had an estimated attendance of 100,000 people.
This new approach is already proving successful. “Gemela” was chosen as the number two 2024 Latin album by Rolling Stone and made NPR and other best-of lists. Here in Richmond, her 2021 EP “Echo Eléctrico” was shortlisted for a Newlin Music Prize. Garcia appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk a second time in a bolero collaboration with Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada. This weekend’s Richmond appearance is on a requested night off from a tour opening for alt R&B star JMSN (pronounced “Jameson.”)
The Camel gig will also feature her duet collaboration with Chile-born, LA-based drummer Val Sepulveda. “She went with me on several ‘Gemelo’ tours last year,” Garcia says. “We did Mexico together. We did North America. We had a very rough European tour, and she got me through that with her very positive personality and her way of being. She is super dope. I know you guys are going to love her.”
Garcia continues to grow as an artist. Her next album, working with producer and TV on the Radio member Dave Sitek, will lean more into the electronic side and feature a mix of English and Spanish lyrics. Richmond audiences should get an early listen to her latest music at The Camel gig.
Another thing that has changed is her onstage fashion style. Once she stood behind a microphone and looper stand, often decked out in a rainbow of colors. Now she favors black, reflecting the serious themes of cultural duality on “Gemelo,” as well as interacting with its rhythms through dance movements — a wordless, post-RVA addition to her expressive language.
The beautiful thing about music, which Garcia knows well, is that people can connect to it no matter what language they speak.
Angélica Garcia, Kenneka Cook and Shera Shi play The Camel on Saturday, Nov. 8. Tickets are $24.14, including fees.
