Uruguayan popular music is enjoying a whole new lease of life, with a generation of singer/songwriters that are updating its idioms and gestures. Influenced by artists such as Eduardo Mateo, Fernando Cabrera, Jorge Drexler and Mauricio Ubal, these young performers are bringing popular music to an audience that was previously strange to it.

And Ismael Collazo is one of the most emblematic singer/songwriters of such a movement. Born in 1980, he plays a healthy mixture of traditional Uruguayan music. Murga, tango, candombe, chacarera… his repertoire includes all of these, in equal measures.

His first album was titled “Rincones” [Corners], and it was issued by Perro Andaluz in 2009. As of the time of writing this, Ismael is recording his second album.

I’d like to share a couple of live performances with you, along with the links to his MySpace and Facebook pages. The videos are for the songs “Todo Alguna Vez” [Everything Sometime] and “Río de Tambores” [River of Drums].