Canter Bridge

Kany García is not one vocal artist. She is two.

Cualquier Día begins on the better half of this split, artistic personality. This one, Good Kany, is sensitive, balladic, and performs at moderate-to-low volume. She is the promising Kany García, singing from the heart, not trying too hard to succeed too quickly, too early, too explosively. Roughly two of every three songs give this Kany García a chance to emerge and make her point.

Bad Kany—the term is relative and deeply dependent on this reviewer’s preferences—raises the volume beyond Kany’s technical capacity and tries by force of will to win the listener over. She fails at this task, but this hardly dooms her debut album so long as she looks toward the future, focuses on her core capacity, and builds out from there.

`Estigma de amor’ is a good example of what Kany García can accomplish in her native genre. The song is reflective, nostalgic, a classic Latin tale of lost love the ghost of which lingers long, appealingly, even enslavingly. Here the artist’s voice is lucid, flowing in solidarity with lyrics that seem to have been born in her and to work themselves out from the core. The same can be said of the almost haunting `Hoy ya me voy’.

`Amigo en el baño’, `¿A dónde fue Cecilia?’ and, say, `Carla se fue’ are tunes that Kany may sing convincingly one day. But not just yet.

So how does one evaluate such a new artist’s foray into the Bigs? With appreciation, it must be said. Some of these songs grew on this reviewer almost from a first hearing and then, when they began to hit the airwaves, were welcome like old friends who turn up unannounced at the door. One places a certain bet as well on the potency of continued vocal training. Noteworthy singers began stellar careers with voices that were only modestly blessed but that matured into full flower under what one presumes to have been very hard and expertly accompanied work. One thinks here of Chicago‘s Peter Cetera, later to own a formidable career under his own name. Or even the durable Gloria Estefan, a musician quite close to García’s own genre, if immensely more supported by her eventual husband’s resources.

In short, Kany García tiene futuro. She’s not there yet. There’s no fault in that.