Gabriel Garzon-Montano

Biography

Gabriel Garzón-Montano is a Brooklyn-born singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist whose work fuses soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop, Latin styles, and art song into a distinctive, genre-defying sound.[1][6][8] A first-generation American with a French mother and Colombian father, he grew up immersed in music through his mother, a musician and former member of the Philip Glass Ensemble in the 1990s, and began on violin before moving to guitar, drums, and songwriting in his early teens.[1][3][7] While attending SUNY Purchase, he played in the funk band Mokaad, and after the group independently released the EP Booty, he recorded solo material with engineer Henry Hirsch, initially shelving it before sharing the songs on SoundCloud.[1] These tracks became his 2014 debut EP Bishouné: Alma del Huila, released by Styles Upon Styles, which introduced his warm, intricately layered approach to soul and set the stage for his later work.[1]

Garzón-Montano’s career accelerated when Mayer Hawthorne discovered Bishouné in a record store, leading to shared management and touring opportunities, including a European tour opening for Lenny Kravitz.[1] His song “6 8” from Bishouné was sampled by Drake on “Jungle,” raising his profile within contemporary R&B and hip-hop circles.[1] He signed with Stones Throw Records for his full-length debut Jardín (2017), a meticulous, groove-rich album that highlighted his skills as a producer, arranger, and vocalist, and he toured with artists such as Rosalia and Kali Uchis while expanding his international audience.[2][4] In 2020 he released Agüita through a joint arrangement with Jagjaguwar and Stones Throw, a bold, multi-lingual project that deliberately spans tender art-pop ballads, heady experimental soul, and hard-edged Spanish-language reggaeton and trap, reflecting his bicultural identity and desire to present a “tasting menu” of different musical worlds.[1][2][5][8]

Across these releases, Garzón-Montano has developed a reputation for intricate arrangements, dense vocal harmonies, and a willingness to blur boundaries between analog warmth and digital experimentation, often playing most of the instruments himself.[1][5][8] His work is deeply rooted in soul and funk while drawing on cumbia, nueva canción, reggaeton, and contemporary hip-hop production, and he has been cited as part of a new generation of Afro-Latin and multi-heritage artists foregrounding the African roots of Latin and popular music.[1][2][5] While still in the early stages of his career, his records have been noted by critics for their ambition and detail, and his cross-genre, bilingual approach has positioned him as an influential figure in conversations about identity, hybridity, and futurism in 21st-century R&B and Latin-influenced music.[4][5][8]

Fun Facts

• Garzón-Montano’s mother was a mezzo-soprano in the Philip Glass Ensemble in the 1990s and also played cello, guitar, and piano, giving him an unusually close childhood view of avant-garde and contemporary classical performance.[1][7]
• His first instrument was the violin, which he later put aside in favor of guitar and drums, but the ear for melody and counterpoint from those early studies can still be heard in his layered arrangements.[1]
• Drake’s song “Jungle” samples Garzón-Montano’s track “6 8” from his debut EP Bishouné: Alma del Huila, a serendipitous connection that began when Zoë Kravitz (Lenny Kravitz’s daughter and Garzón-Montano’s former classmate) played his music for Drake.[1]
• For the visual world of Agüita, Garzón-Montano traveled to Colombia and shot roughly 80–85 rolls of film in five days, using those images to construct the album’s nature-heavy, dreamlike imagery.[2]

Musical Connections

Mentors/Influences

• Marta Garzón (mother, former Philip Glass Ensemble member) - Primary early musical influence; introduced him to professional musicianship and a wide range of classical and contemporary repertoire, modeling a life in music. (Influence heard broadly across Bishouné: Alma del Huila, Jardín, and Agüita in his focus on arrangement, vocal nuance, and art-song textures.) [Childhood through early adulthood[1][7]]
• Philip Glass (indirect influence) - His mother’s role in the Philip Glass Ensemble exposed him to minimalist and contemporary classical aesthetics, informing his sense of repetition, texture, and structure, though not as a direct teacher. (Reflected abstractly in the layered, cyclical patterns on Jardín and certain ambient passages of Agüita.) [Indirect influence beginning in his youth via his mother’s work in the 1990s and beyond[1][7]]
• Soul, funk, and Latin traditions (e.g., cumbia, nueva canción, reggaeton) - He consistently cites soul and funk as foundational, with Colombian and broader Latin genres shaping his rhythmic and linguistic palette. (Soul/funk orientation on Bishouné and Jardín; reggaeton and Latin trap elements on tracks from Agüita.) [Ongoing, from early listening through his 2010s–2020s releases[1][2][5][8]]

Key Collaborators

• Henry Hirsch - Longtime friend, engineer, and recording collaborator who helped shape the sound of his early solo work and subsequent full-lengths. (Bishouné: Alma del Huila (recording and production collaboration), completion of Jardín.[1]) [Early 2010s–late 2010s[1]]
• Lenny Kravitz - Touring collaborator; Garzón-Montano opened for Kravitz on European dates, significantly expanding his live audience. (European tour support following the release of Bishouné: Alma del Huila.[1]) [Mid-2010s[1]]
• Mayer Hawthorne - Early champion and touring partner; discovering Garzón-Montano’s EP in a record store led to shared management and tour support. (Touring in support of Hawthorne following Bishouné: Alma del Huila.[1]) [Mid-2010s[1]]
• Drake (and producer Noah “40” Shebib) - High-profile sampling collaborator; Drake’s track “Jungle” samples Garzón-Montano’s “6 8,” bringing his songwriting and production to a mainstream audience. (“6 8” (from Bishouné: Alma del Huila) sampled on Drake’s “Jungle.”[1]) [Sample released 2015 (with Garzón-Montano’s EP in 2014)[1]]
• Rosalía - Touring collaborator; he opened shows on her tours, aligning him with experimental, globally minded pop and flamenco fusion scenes. (Opening tour dates mentioned in coverage of his career around Agüita.[2]) [Late 2010s–early 2020s[2]]
• Kali Uchis - Touring collaborator; he supported her on tour, connecting with audiences of forward-looking R&B and Latin pop. (Opening tour dates noted in profiles surrounding his Stones Throw and Agüita era.[2]) [Late 2010s–early 2020s[2]]

Artists Influenced

• Emerging Afro-Latin and genre-blurring R&B/Latin artists (general cohort) - Critics frame him within a wave of Afro-Latin and bicultural artists foregrounding hybridity, bilingualism, and African roots in Latin and popular music; while specific protégés are not named, his work is cited as part of a blueprint for mixing reggaeton, art song, and experimental soul within a single artist’s catalog. (Agüita (its mix of reggaeton, trap, and art-pop), along with earlier soul-driven releases Bishouné and Jardín, are referenced in discussions of this movement.[2][4][5][8]) [Influence emerging from mid-2010s onward, especially post-2020 with Agüita.[2][4][5][8]]

Discography

Albums

Top Tracks

1. 6 8
2. Everything Is Everything
3. Keep On Running
4. Golden Wings
5. Fruitflies (Jardín)
6. Someone - Armando Young Remix
7. Crawl (Jardín)
8. Someone (Agüita)
9. El Paraguas (Boleros Psicodélicos)
10. The Game (Remix)

External Links

• Spotify
• Wikipedia