Gina Chavez is a bilingual Latin-pop artist, blending the sounds of the Americas with tension and grace. Her latest independent release, Up.Rooted (2014), won the praise of National Public Radio (NPR), USA Today, and The Boston Globe, and topped the iTunes and Amazon Latin charts after a feature on NPR’s All Things Considered. She is the 2014 John Lennon Songwriting Contest (JLSC) Grand Prize Winner for her song “Siete-D,” a rock-cumbia-rap mix that explores the delights and dangers of El Salvador from a window on the 7-D, the bus route she rode as a volunteer there in 2010.

One of Austin’s beloved world music/indie artists, Chavez is known for an inimitable sound that balances North American and Latin influences. She and her band took home three 2013-14 Austin Music Awards, including Best Female Vocals, Best Latin Traditional and Best Latin Rock, while placing in six other categories. This followed a 2012-13 Austin Music Award for Best Latin Traditional, and praise from NPR’s All Songs Considered and Alt. Latino as one of eight “New Latin Artists at SXSW.”

Southern Living and Olay named Chavez one of 11 “southern iconic women who have left a beautiful footprint across the South," for her volunteer work in El Salvador, which continues through Nina Arriba, a college fund she co-founded for young women she taught in a gang-dominated suburb of San Salvador.