Sense of Place: How Madrid helped Jorge Drexler fully embrace the music

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published July 12, 2023 at 11:11 AM MDT

Today, World Cafe kicks off the latest edition of its Sense of Place series, and this time, we're headed to the Iberian Peninsula.

In this session, we sit down with Academy Award-winning musician and longtime Madrid resident Jorge Drexler. Like many creative people who flock to the Spanish capital, Drexler was drawn here by Madrid's rich cultural scene.

Jorge Drexler performing in front of a live audience at Metropol Studios in Madrid.

Drexler is originally from Uruguay, and he was invited to Madrid by a fellow musician in 1995. A decade and several albums later, Drexler won an Oscar for his song "Al Otro Lado del Rio" which appeared in the film The Motorcycle Diaries. His latest album, Tinta y Tiempo, has also racked up awards. The album, which he struggled to write during the pandemic, won six trophies at the 2022 Latin Grammy awards, including song of the year and record of the year.

You'll hear him perform that song of the year winner during this session that we recorded in front of a live audience at Metropol Studios in Madrid in April as we kick off our new Sense of Place: Madrid series.

World Cafe producer Miguel Perez contributed to this post.

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

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