JD Natasha

An exception in the Latin music world, JD Natasha debuted her singer/songwriter alt-rock on a major label at the tender age of 16, causing quite a stir in the process. While singing/songwriting teenage-girl alt-rockers aren't all that novel in the English-speaking pop music world (Avril Lavigne, for one), they are certainly few and far between in the Spanish-speaking world, if not altogether nonexistent. That's partly why Natasha got the go-ahead from EMI Latin -- because there was a gaping void. Surely, not all young Latinas favored the sweeping ballads of Ednita Nazario or the bombastic tropical music of Olga Tañon, nor did they necessarily favor the male-dominated Mexican regional scene or the often sexist style of reggaeton. Chances are, they either favored the Latin pop of Paulina Rubio and Juanes or the broader realm of English-language pop. No matter how you look at it, though, there were very few young Latinas making music for major labels in the early to mid-2000s, the exceptions being Shakira and Julieta Venegas, though by the early 2000s, those two weren't exactly young anymore. Enter JD Natasha, the sort of multicultural, freely expressive, guitar-wielding young Latina missing from the picture -- the Latin Avril, if you will. Not only did she write her own songs from her own teenage-girl perspective, but she played some mean guitar, dressed like a neo-new waver, and took her inspiration from Nirvana and Radiohead, not Thalía or Kumbia Kings. The Miami-born daughter of an Argentine father and Cuban-American mother, Natasha Janeth Dueñas took up guitar as a tween. Influenced by English-language alt-rock and taking little interest in Latin music per se, she began writing songs quickly and recorded a demo tape before long. That demo tape would be her golden...