Jacbern
For this Latinos in the US we sat down with singer/songwriter Jacbern. Born in Mexico but raised in the States, this young artist shares why he has transitioned from making music in English to Spanish and many other things! YouTube/JacbernVEVO/ Latin Times

Breaking it into the music scene is not easy. But this young artist had a dream, and has been working towards it ever since he realized he was passionate about music. First he and his twin brother teamed up, and formed a successful band called The June Junes. A few years later, this guy’s attraction for his Mexican roots, Latin flavors and the Spanish language, drove him to do a full 180 and re-focus his music to do something different, something he felt was more true to himself. We’re talking about Samuel Jacobo Woldenberg, better known as Jacbern. Today, we feature him as our success story for Latinos in the US.

Latin Times: So why Jacbern, what does it mean?

Jacbern: My real name is Samuel, but Jacbern is a mix of my middle name, Jacobo, and my brother’s middle name, Bernardo. So I mixed them.

LT: When did you decide that you liked music and you wanted to pursue it as a career?

J: Since I was very little, music has always been around my family. My parents, my cousins, my uncles, they would always be playing and singing at weddings and having a good time. So I think they passed their love of music to me in a way. When I was five years old they got me my first guitar, and my brother’s first drum set. So it started out like that.

My parents always pushed it, but it wasn’t until I was 10 that I realized I wanted to do it because I wanted to do it, not because my parents wanted me to do it, and I started taking guitar lessons, and when my brother and I went to Los Angeles (we were raised in Texas), we started taking voice lessons and recording demos, and we were like “This is awesome, this is amazing, we should keep on doing this.” And we got into that and my brother and I formed a band called Max and Sam, and then became the June Junes, and we played at Six Flags, and The Troubadour, and different things, and then different doors just kept on opening, which was amazing.

There was this movie that wanted to use our songs, so we had two songs featured in the film, and that was also a huge opportunity, and adding more things to the resume, and about a year ago I decided to do a new project, this new solo project and do something in Spanish. My brother and I played at the Exa festival in Guadalajara about three years ago and it was in front of 12,000 people and it was amazing. I loved being in Mexico. I go there very often for family, events, parties, and work, and I love being around the Latin culture and my roots. That’s what really got me motivated to do Spanish music.

LT: Let’s talk about your childhood. You were born in Monterrey, then moved to Texas and then to LA. How old were you when you moved to Texas?

J: I moved to Texas when I was like two and a half, maybe three years old.

LT: So you don’t really remember much about life in Monterrey. It wasn’t a huge culture shock when you moved to Texas, or was it?

J:Culture shock came from moving from San Antonio, Texas to Los Angeles.

LT: How old were you then?

J: I was 14. I moved there before high school. In L.A. we saw different people, different personalities, I’m not sure if I liked it more. I think my parents brought me up really well and I think it’s very important to understand people for what they really are and some of these bigger cities there’s always a certain mask or someone’s trying to portray what they’re not, or trying to be something else, and sometimes in the smaller cities you get to see the person, and they’re more honest and real about what’s going on. But from Mexico to Texas I didn’t feel the culture shock. San Antonio is pretty Latin in a way.

LT: What made you take the big step and go solo?

J: Just different things. My brother and I were working on different projects. He was focused more on techno. My brother’s a genius when it comes to producing and writing, and I’ve barely ever met people as creative as my brother. I’ve worked with many people in the past and I think creatively my brother is one of the best I know. But I wanted to work on other things. But what I would love to do with my music is to grab different influences. I love listening to bachata, merengue, French music, African music… I wanna grab little influences from here and there, interpret them my own way. My brother wanted to focus more on his own thing. But we’re best friends, we write together all the time, I help him out, he helps me out, and we’re both very excited for each other.

LT: Your song “Oro” is out now. What was your motivation to write that song? What inspired you?

J: I came up with the theme of the song maybe two years ago. It’s about deception. It’s how people are trying to be something else, but they’re not really that. Unfortunately we live deception every day in our lives with love or friends, work or whatever it is. So I think it’s important to really be who you are.

LT: What would you say has been the biggest deception of your life?

J: I don’t think I could name one in particular as the biggest deception, but one that bothered me was when I had a really good friend, really close for four years, and then he moved to New York, where I live. We were great friends. And you think you can trust someone, but all of the sudden they go behind your back and talk things about you that are not true. And that happens many times. I was in Los Angeles when I came up with the idea for the song, and I was thinking that not everything that glitters is gold. But I never meant the theme to be taken as superficial, and for me the song turned out meaning that sometimes we get so involved in the passion, and we think it’s love, but it’s not love, it’s just passion. There’s different ways to look at what it’s about.

LT: What are your influences?

J: Café Tacvba, Zoe, I’ve been listening to J Balvin a lot, there’s a bunch of people I listen to. One of my favorite bands is Keane, and I listen to Police, Sting, and many others.

LT: How would you define your genre?

J: It’s pop. I think everything nowadays is pop that finds its own niche, its own audience.

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