Artist
Jorge Galemire
Uruguayan guitarist, arranger, composer & vocalist
Uruguay • 1951 – 2015
Jorge Galemire is a musician from Uruguay, active 1951–2015. Their discography on Gatefold includes 4 records.
4
Albums tracked
1
In collections
1951
Since
Biography
Jorge Galemire spent his life as the smartest guy in the room who couldn't catch a break with the bean counters. He was a session ace first, the guy you called when your arrangement felt thin or your guitar player couldn't find the pocket. He spent the seventies anchored in the Candombe-beat scene, propping up everybody from Eduardo Mateo to Jaime Roos. By the time he finally got around to his solo debut, *Presentación*, the industry was a mess of transition, and he was too sophisticated for his own good. He wasn't interested in being a folk hero or a pop star; he was a harmonic obsessive who wanted the complex chord voicings of Steely Dan to live inside the rhythmic grit of Montevideo. He was a meticulous arranger who could make a simple track feel like a masterclass in tension and release. The records didn't sell by the truckload, but every musician in Uruguay was listening. If you find a clean copy of *Segundos Afuera*, don't blink—just buy the damn thing. It’s the peak of his craft, where the jazz-inflected pop is so sharp it’ll cut you.
The Arc of Jorge Galemire
The pivots — what forced Jorge Galemire to reinvent.
The Sideman Apprenticeship
Before he was the main name on the sleeve, Galemire was the secret weapon in bands like El Kinto and Epílogo de Todo. He was learning at the feet of Eduardo Mateo, figuring out how to lace acoustic guitars into the syncopated pulse of Candombe. You can hear him developing that percussive, fluid style that would eventually define the ‘Uruguayan sound’ of the seventies. He wasn't leading the sessions yet, but his fingerprints were all over the arrangements of his peers.
The Solo Architect
When he finally stepped out with *Presentación* in 1981, he wasn't interested in the raw, lo-fi charm of his predecessors. He brought a polished, almost clinical precision to the studio that pissed off the purists but floored the tech-heads. Working with guys like Jaime Roos and Jorge Trasante, he built layers of vocal harmonies and sophisticated guitar lines that felt closer to West Coast AOR than the street-level folk of the era. This was the moment he realized he could be a songwriter and a conductor at the same time.
The Exile Refinement
Moving to Spain in the early nineties changed the math for him. He was away from the Montevideo bubble, and the music reflected a guy looking back at his roots through a more distant, jazz-heavy lens. He stayed active in the Spanish scene, but the records he produced later, like *Trébol*, show a man who had stopped trying to fit into the local pop machine. The arrangements got leaner, the playing got more essential, and he stopped caring if the label knew how to market him.
Influences
- Eduardo Mateo — Galemire played in the second iteration of El Kinto and studied Mateo's rhythmic approach to the acoustic guitar. You hear it in the way Galemire treats the guitar as a percussion instrument, a direct lineage from Mateo’s Candombe-beat innovations. It’s the foundation of everything he did.
- The Beatles — He spent his formative years obsessing over George Martin’s studio trickery and the vocal stacks on *Abbey Road*. Galemire’s obsession with multi-tracked vocal harmonies and non-obvious chord progressions is a straight lift from the Lennon-McCartney playbook. He basically tried to build a Uruguayan version of 'Penny Lane' every time he stepped into the booth.
- João Gilberto — The Bossa Nova influence is undeniable in his softer, more introspective tracks. He took Gilberto’s 'gaguejado' guitar style—that stuttering, syncopated thumb—and married it to the local Uruguyan rhythm. It’s why his jazz-inflected songs never feel heavy or over-played; they have that Brazilian airiness.
- Steely Dan — Galemire was a notorious perfectionist who worshipped the high-fidelity cynicism of Fagen and Becker. You hear it in the slick production of *Segundos Afuera*, where the session players are pushed to their limits for a clean, professional finish. He wanted that American studio sheen even when the budget didn't allow for it.
- The Byrds — He had a deep-seated love for the jangle and the twelve-string guitar textures that Roger McGuinn popularized. In his early eighties work, the way he layers electric and acoustic guitars creates a chiming, folk-rock wall of sound that owes everything to *Mr. Tambourine Man*. He just added more complicated chords to the mix.
Discography
Their records — most-collected first.
Around the web
Follow every record they touch.
Start your shelf and Gatefold tracks Jorge Galemire's new pressings, tour dates, and the whole discography — automatically.
Start your shelf →Free forever. Works with 10 records or 10,000.