Angelica Garcia - Cha Cha Palace (2020)

Two years in the making, 25-year-old Angelica Garcia’s album Cha Cha Palace is the result of an artist’s need to SAY SOMETHING. The second song on the record, “Jícama” might only be a minute and 25 seconds in its entirety, but the message spans generations and is one that resonates deeply for Garcia with her Mexican and Salvadoran roots. Singing/shouting, “I see you, but you don’t see me Jímaca, Jímaca, Guava Tree…I’ve been trying to tell ya, but you just don’t see, like you I was born in this country,” Garcia tells the reality for millions of Americans unapologetically and with passion.

She recalls the first time she performed the song live in Los Angeles, “Sometimes your audience appears unexpectedly,” she states simply. “I was playing Bardot in Hollywood as part of KCRW’s School Night! series when I debuted ‘Jícama’ and I remember looking out into the crowd – and in front of me were all these young Latinx kids, singing back, every word, even though it was a song I had never played live, or released – and I had a moment of, ‘this is exactly who I wrote this song for, anyone who feels like they are in-between two identities and their heart is in two places.'”