Who is Zahara?

First it was Lidia Guevara whom I discovered at Myspace and became an instant fan of after she made contact, and then there was Zahara! María Zahara Gordillo Campos, to give the girl her full name, although she is usually just simply known as Zahara, is another brilliant singer-songwriter from Spain, who plays guitar and performs and records songs in the acoustic and indie-pop genres of music.

I checked out Zahara’s songs on her site and was again instantly impressed, especially with the very catchy song Merezco ("I deserve"). She has an excellent video to accompany this and she deserves (pun intended because what better word is there?) to do very well indeed with this track and her other compositions.

The accent is very much on pop and a fun image in her videos and publicity photos. Red balloons, iced cakes, and a cute girl on a swing. And yet Zahara also has a more rock side to her as was shown in her project known as Zahara Eléctrica in 2006 when she worked with various other musicians.

Zahara has a really distinctive voice and a very European feel to her music. She sings and writes in her native Spanish mainly but moving away from her girly pop image she has also performed covers of songs by Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Radiohead

Besides Jeff Buckley, Zahara lists Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones and Death Cab For Cutie amongst her influences. But I would never have guessed unless I had read it because she doesn't sound like any of them to me. She sounds like Zahara!

Zahara wrote her first song – Una Palabra (One word) – when she was just 15 and she has worked with various musicians and producers since then. In the year 2005 her first release Día 913 came out.

Her professional career as a singer really took off on 26 May this year with the release on Universal of an album entitled La fabulosa historia de...” (The fabulous history of…), which consists of 11 songs and was produced by Carlos Jean and Ricky Falkner.

Lidia Guevara

Zahara has been performing at a lot of gigs in Spain and has an impressive tour lined up for the autumn, including one concert, at time of writing, in Barcelona on 10 October at which Lidia Guevara will also be appearing and which I am very much hoping to find a way of getting to attend.

Zahara, as a name, is apparently of Hebrew and Arabic origin and means “flowering” or “shining.” This seems very apt because I can definitely see a bright future shining ahead for Zahara!