Javier Limón (born 1973) is a record producer, singer and songwriter born and raised in
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
, Spain. Limón has worked with several artists, mainly from Spain, since he incorporates elements of
flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...
rhythm to his work. Besides his work as producer has also dabbled as an interpreter and has released three studio albums, ''Limón'', ''Son de Limón'' and ''Mujeres de Agua''. Since 2003, Limón has done recordings in Israel,
Bogotá
Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the larges ...
, Bristol, Paris,
Bahía Blanca
Bahía Blanca (; English: White Bay) is a city in the southwest of the provinces of Argentina, province of Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires, Argentina, by the Atlantic Ocean, and is the seat of government of the Bahía Blanca Partido. It had 3 ...
, Buenos Aires, New York City and
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
.
[ In 2004, Limón was awarded the ]Latin Grammy Award
The Latin Grammy Awards are an award by The Latin Recording Academy to recognize outstanding achievement in the Latin music industry. The Latin Grammy honors works recorded in Spanish or Portuguese from anywhere around the world that has been r ...
for Producer of the Year
The Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical is an honor presented to record producers for quality non- classical music at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. Honors i ...
for his work on '' Lágrimas Negras'' by Diego El Cigala and Bebo Valdés
Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro (October 9, 1918 – March 22, 2013), better known as Bebo Valdés, was a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. He was a central figure in the golden age of Cuban music, especially due to his big b ...
, ''Cositas Buenas'' by Paco de Lucía
Francisco Sánchez Gómez (21 December 194725 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (;), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flam ...
, ''El Cantante'' by Andrés Calamaro
Andrés Calamaro (Andrés Calamaro Massel, August 22, 1961) is an Argentine musician, composer and Latin Grammy winner. He is considered one of the greatest and most influential rock artists in Spanish. He is also one of the most complete artist ...
, ''El Pequeño Reloj'' by Enrique Morente
Enrique Morente Cotelo (25 December 1942 – 13 December 2010), known as Enrique Morente, was a flamenco singer (in Spanish, cantaor) and a celebrated figure within the world of contemporary flamenco. After his orthodox beginnings, he plunged in ...
, '' Niño Josele'' by Niño Josele and ''Tributo Flamenco A Don Juan Valderrama'' by Various Artists. Javier Limón serves as the Artistic Director of the Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cours ...
's Mediterranean Music Institute, which operates in Valencia, Spain
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area also ...
as well as Boston, Massachusetts.
Background
After completing his musical studies in piano and guitar at the Conservatory of Madrid and at New York's Saint Francis Prep., Limón began his professional career composing flamenco songs for artists such as Enrique Morente
Enrique Morente Cotelo (25 December 1942 – 13 December 2010), known as Enrique Morente, was a flamenco singer (in Spanish, cantaor) and a celebrated figure within the world of contemporary flamenco. After his orthodox beginnings, he plunged in ...
, Estrella Morente
Estrella Morente (Estrella de la Aurora Morente Carbonell) is a Spanish flamenco singer. She was born on 14 August 1980 in Las Gabias, Granada in southern Spain. She is the daughter of flamenco singer Enrique Morente and dancer Aurora Carbonel ...
, Remedios Amaya
María Dolores Amaya Vega (born 1962 in Seville), better known by her stage name Remedios Amaya (), is a Spanish flamenco singer. She represented Spain at the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. Remedios Amaya has been popular with international audi ...
, Potito and Montse Cortés. Following this first stage, he started his career as a record producer with '' Cositas Buenas'' by Paco de Lucía
Francisco Sánchez Gómez (21 December 194725 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (;), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flam ...
, ''Lágrimas Negras'' by Bebo Valdés
Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro (October 9, 1918 – March 22, 2013), better known as Bebo Valdés, was a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. He was a central figure in the golden age of Cuban music, especially due to his big b ...
and Diego El Cigala and ''El Pequeño Reloj'' by Enrique Morente.[ The recording process of ''Lágrimas Negras'', which took three days to record, was filmed by Spanish filmmaker ]Fernando Trueba
Fernando Rodríguez Trueba (born 18 January 1955), known as Fernando Trueba, is a Spanish book editor, screenwriter, film director and producer.
Between 1974 and 1979, he worked as a film critic for Spain's leading daily newspaper '' El País' ...
.[
] The album earned the Latin Grammy Award
The Latin Grammy Awards are an award by The Latin Recording Academy to recognize outstanding achievement in the Latin music industry. The Latin Grammy honors works recorded in Spanish or Portuguese from anywhere around the world that has been r ...
for Best Traditional Tropical Album and received a nomination for Album of the Year. ''Lágrimas Negras'' stayed in the Spanish Album Charts for over 100 weeks. In 2009, Limón was awarded a Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...
for Best Latin Jazz Album for the album '' Juntos Para Siempre'', another collaboration with Bebo Valdés.
Musical style and production
To produce, Limón uses editing software such as Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...
, Cubase
Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-dow ...
, Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, mixing material in an analog way, not digital, and then "edit ngthe album in the appropriate format."[ Limón acknowledges that to make music in modern times, artists can "skip all the costs of intermediaries, but there's nothing like a studio where everyone can play at once, but that costs money to keep."][ The main idea for Limón's production style is not to rely too heavily on the recording technology, so the final result documents the actual performance in the studio as closely as possible. Besides flamenco, Limón works in other musical genres. "There's electronic stuff ]hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
will be interesting to tackle. Now I'm doing some hip-hop, which also interests me."[
About his lyrical style, Limón prefers free metric while writing traditional flamenco music, which is written in tercets, ]quatrain
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...
s and cinquains with classic rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
s. "I consider that my lyrics have content. I sometimes write the lyrics before the music. And I've noticed that one of the interesting ways to enrich the flamenco composition is to write poetry that is not in octosyllabic The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie de ...
or heroic Heroic may mean:
*characteristic of a hero
*typical of heroic poetry or of heroic verse
*belonging to the Greek Heroic Age
*Heroic (esports), a Danish esports organization
*Heroic (horse)
Heroic (1921–1939) was an Australian Thoroughbred ra ...
verse," said Limón to Flamenco World.[ Limón is a fan of Japanese ]haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...
, since he admitted that "the most beautiful flamenco poetry has been written in haikus."[
]
Casa Limón
Limón started his own record label, Casa Limón, with the help of a sponsor (a brand of beer named 1906).[ Limón wanted total creative independence, without pursuing record sales, but to become a well-made product reference.][ The first album released by the label, ''Limón'' (2003), was based on multiculturality and setting down roots. The album includes special appearances by ]Paco de Lucía
Francisco Sánchez Gómez (21 December 194725 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (;), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flam ...
, Niño Josele, La Tana and Potito, among others, performing original scores by Limón.[ Limón asked all the musicians involved on albums by Enrique Morente, Luz Casal, ]Andrés Calamaro
Andrés Calamaro (Andrés Calamaro Massel, August 22, 1961) is an Argentine musician, composer and Latin Grammy winner. He is considered one of the greatest and most influential rock artists in Spanish. He is also one of the most complete artist ...
and Paco de Lucía, among others, to join the label because they were always the same. Piranha, Alain Pérez and Niño Josele were the first musicians joining the project. "It's like a team that has been widening with other artists such as Eliane Elias
Eliane Elias
BrowseBiography.com, 20 November 2011; retrieved 10 September 2014. is a Brazilian jazz pianist, sin ...
, Marc Johnson, the jazz people, Carlinhos Brown
Antônio Carlos Santos de Freitas, known professionally as Carlinhos Brown (Brazilian Portuguese: /kaʁˈlĩɲus bɾaw̃, -iɲuʃ/, 23 November 1962), is a Brazilian singer, percussionist, and record producer from Salvador, Bahia. His musical ...
... I am putting a name on something that already exists." The album received a Latin Grammy Award
The Latin Grammy Awards are an award by The Latin Recording Academy to recognize outstanding achievement in the Latin music industry. The Latin Grammy honors works recorded in Spanish or Portuguese from anywhere around the world that has been r ...
nomination for Best Flamenco Album.[ ]Concha Buika
María Concepción Balboa Buika (born 11 May 1972), known as Concha Buika or Buika, is a Spanish singer. Her album ''Niña de Fuego'' was nominated for the 2008 Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year and ''La Noche Más Larga'' was nominated ...
recorded her first album with Casa Limón and sold 150,000 units in Spain.[
In 2010, Limón produced and composed ''Mujeres de Agua'', a collaboration album with performances by ]Mariza
Marisa dos Reis Nunes ComIH (born 16 December 1973), known professionally as Mariza (), is a Portuguese fado singer.
Mariza was born in Lourenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique, to a Portuguese father, José Brandão Nunes, and a Mozambican ...
, Buika, La Shica, Montse, Genara, Aynur
Aynur is a Turkish and Azerbaijani given name for females. As it is derived from the Turkish word " ay" and the Arabic word " nur", its literal meaning is moonlight.
Given name
* Aynur Doğan
Aynur Doğan (born 1 March 1975) is a contemp ...
, Eleftheria, Estrella, Yasmin Levy
Yasmin Levy ( he, יסמין לוי; born December 23, 1975) is an Israeli singer-songwriter of Judeo-Spanish music.
Biography
Yasmin Levy was born on December 23, 1975, in Baka, Jerusalem. She is of Sephardic Jewish descent. Her parents were A ...
, Susi, Sandra and Carmen Linares.[ Limón described the album as a "search for songs from the ]Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...
that were undiscovered jewels." ''Mujeres de Agua'' peaked at number 14 in the Spanish album charts.
Discography
* ''Limón
Limón (), commonly known as Puerto Limón, is a district, the capital city and main hub of Limón province, as well as of the Limón canton in Costa Rica. It is the seventh largest city in Costa Rica, with a population of over 55,000, and is ho ...
'' (2005)
* '' Son de Limón'' (2008)
* '' Mujeres de Agua'' (2010)
* '' Promesas de Tierra'' (2013)
* '' Oro (Original SoundTrack)'' (2017)
* '' Refugio del Sonido'' (2018)
* '' Todos Lo Saben (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)'' (2018)
* '' OQ (album)'' (2018)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Limon, Javier
1973 births
Living people
Berklee College of Music faculty
Grammy Award winners
Latin Grammy Award for Producer of the Year
Spanish record producers
Musicians from Madrid
Spanish flamenco guitarists
Spanish male guitarists
Flamenco musicians
Flamenco guitarists
Latin music record producers
21st-century guitarists
21st-century male musicians