Lourdes Perez: Nova Trova by Kerry Dexter When you think of Puerto Rico and music, perhaps your first thoughts are of salsa and merengue, or, given their recent rise to the top of the pop charts, of Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez. Lourdes Perez wants you to hear a different aspect of Puerto Rico. She's extended the music of her native island, both exploring the troubadour tradition and adding influences of African American blues and Mexican rancheras. It's a music grounded in emotion and idea. "There's a place that I have, a place of pain," Perez explained, "and that's gonna come through in the music. In the music you are the strongest and also the most vulnerable. You have to have some way of making this happen on stage, representing yourself in a way that is spiritual, that is soul."

Though she grew up in San Sebastian province in a family that loved music and was interested in the politically progressive nueva canción style, Perez didn't consider making music her profession. "That just wasn't what you did," she recalled. "Not enough money, too many drugs — it just wasn't a career."

So she studied psychology. "I was in the middle of studying for my master's degree," she said, "and over the summer a friend invited me to visit her in Connecticut. I was planning to go back and finish my thesis — and I didn't." It was somewhat of a scandal, too, Perez remarked, "because the program was very exclusive, very difficult to get into, and also because in my family getting an education was the way to get ahead. But I just didn't feel it was right to go back."

Perez used her training to get jobs in social work, pursuing singing on her own time. "I wasn't writing songs then," she said, "but singing music I'd grown up with, nueva canción and music of the jibaro [mountain people]." She cites the music of Puerto Rican troubadour El Topo, as well as Mercedes Sosa and Violetta Parra, as influences during this time.

"It was cold," Perez recalled of her first years in the United States, "I didn't have any money, and I didn't speak English. It was difficult, but it was very interesting. Then I moved from Connecticut to New York, where you either speak or die, and I began speaking English!" said Perez, who had studied the language in school. Although she's lived in the United States since 1983, Perez writes and sings entirely in Spanish.

Eventually, Perez ended up in Houston, Texas, still with a day job as a social worker. She had by this time begun writing songs, "although I still didn't sing what I wrote much," she said. Manager Annette d'Armata recalled, "I heard her singing a song one day and I asked, 'Who wrote that one?' When she said, 'I did,' I thought, 'Oh my God...' " Encouraging Perez to develop her unique talents, d'Armata suggested they move to Austin, which she thought would offer more avenues for Perez to pursue a musical career. "I wasn't taking it too seriously at that time," Perez explained, but then she went to see a concert by one of her musical heroes, Mercedes Sosa. Though she was uplifted by the music, she was depressed because she herself was not performing regularly. Perez and d'Armata set out to figure out how to change that. They were so successful that two years later, when Sosa again played Austin, Perez was her opening act, and so impressed was Sosa that she invited Perez to open for her at several concerts in the Northeast, as well. And Perez was by that time singing almost all songs that she herself had written "in the decima tradition and nueva canción kind of things, as well," she said. "We call it nova trova – new troubadour — so nobody really knows what we mean," d'Armata joked.

A new recording is in the works, and the working title is Agua Bendita ("Blessed Water"). It will have piano accompaniment (as well as guitar, violin and cello; virtuoso Peruvian violinist Javier Chaparro has been her accompanist since 1995). "I think living in Austin has been a good thing," d'Armata added, "because so many people come through Austin, it gives you a chance to get new ideas, and get your music exposed to new people, and get support." Award-winning Austin folk musician Tish Hinojosa has invited Perez to appear with her. "She has opened a lot of doors," Perez said, "for all who come after her." d'Armata pointed out the contrast between the two artists, as well. "It's entirely natural for Tish to move between English and Spanish in her music because that's who she is, how she grew up. For Lourdes, as she says, her emotions were formed in Spanish, and that's how she continues to write."

Perez has performed in the war zones of Chiapas for Zapatista indigenous communities as one of few Puerto Ricans, and as the only woman trovadora in festivals in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Perez' dark, soulful voice communicates meaning regardless of language, a fact the Indigo Girls recognized when they invited Perez to participate in a recent tour. "Seeing all different sorts of audiences, and ones we really didn't know anything about before we got there, that was a real challenge," Perez said. The best audiences for her, she reflected, "are people who are gonna get that this is a different kind of career, that this is real music, real emotion comin' at you — music that might change you!" Although the subjects of her songs are often serious, "You can't go up there on stage and preach," she added. "You have to experiment, to have fun and try different things. The best audiences are the people who will get that."