At the 2014-2015 Austin Music Awards, Gina Chavez cleaned up, claiming prizes for Musician, Album (Up.Rooted), and Song Of The Year (“Siete-D”). Last year’s Up.Rooted is a tour-de-force, worth the seven-year wait. While her debut, Hanging Spoons, was more muted, Up.Rooted pushes Chavez’s songwriting into more interesting directions, matching bossa nova and cumbia rhythms to politically-charged lyrics.
Prior to writing the album, Chavez and her partner Jodi Granado spent eight months teaching English at a girls’ school in El Salvador. After returning to Austin, the pair established a college fund called Niñas Arriba for the girls, and the experience also inspired “Siete-D.” The reggaeton-influenced song–which also features Adrian Quesada and Grupo Fantasma–gets its own video release party this Saturday at Stateside at the Paramount, and it’s today’s song of the day. Take a listen and download below, and you can also see a Studio 1A performance of the song.
–Art Levy
