Artists and bandsSara Curruchich
Maya Kaqchikel singer and songwriter from San Juan Comalapa, whose early performances included a concert in the capital.
Songs across languages
In 2015, Sara Curruchich gave her first formal concert in Guatemala City at L’Aperó. She had been travelling between the capital and her home in Comalapa to study music. That year she shared “Ch’uti’ Xtän”, a love song in Kaqchikel whose story, she later said, drew partly on her parents’ lives.
The singer and guitarist Gaby Moreno began performing in Guatemala before moving to Los Angeles. Her musical path reaches back to her native Guatemala City and outward through songs in Spanish and English, collaborations and recordings made elsewhere.
Her performance of “Luna de Xelajú” with Oscar Isaac connects that journey to a song about another Guatemalan city. In Paco Pérez’s waltz, the singer addresses the moon over Xelajú, the K’iche’ name associated with Quetzaltenango. The moon has seen him both singing and mourning a lost love; its light falls on the streets of his youth. It is not a song about the capital; its place here is Moreno’s interpretation and her connection to Guatemala City.
Moreno and Isaac performed it on The Tonight Show in 2024. Isaac has spoken of hearing the song through his grandmother, who sang it in Guatemalan concert halls.
Songs