We Speak Latin
Santiago Serna Named Recipient of the 2026 Latin Music Educator Award
The Latin Recording Academy has named Santiago Serna, choral director of the Coro de Niños Cantores de Córdoba in Argentina, the recipient of the 2026 Latin Music Educator Award. The Academy announced the honor on October 29 in partnership with the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, and Serna will be celebrated at the Special Awards Presentation on November 9, 2026, during the 27th Annual Latin GRAMMY Week in Las Vegas.
The award honors an educator who is making a significant impact by bringing Latin music into the curriculum. Serna has spent more than a decade training children and young people through choral singing at ISEAM Domingo Zipoli, a public school in Córdoba with more than 65 years of history. Along with the honor, his program receives a $10,000 instrument donation, and Serna receives an all-expense-paid trip to attend the presentation.
His method blends theory and practice: students analyze chords, harmony and composition, train the voice as an instrument, and travel Latin America through its folk rhythms, from Argentina’s chacarera and zamba to Colombia’s cumbia, Chile’s cueca, Brazil’s samba, Cuba’s son and the bolero. Earlier this year the choir made history in France, winning four international prizes at the Provence choral competition, where Serna was named the competition’s best director.
“We are honored to present the Latin Music Educator Award to Santiago Serna, who has devoted his career to training young singers in Argentina,” said Manuel Abud, CEO of The Latin Recording Academy. Serna called the award proof of a methodology that joins musical excellence with human development: through choral singing, he said, students learn to listen to one another and understand that the artistic result is the fruit of collaboration.
This year’s runners-up, Thais Bezerra of Brazil and Joseph Díaz of Colombia, will each receive a Special Certificate in recognition of their work. Serna was chosen from an international pool of applicants through a process led by the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, with the Academy’s Board of Trustees making the final selection. The Special Awards Presentation is part of Latin GRAMMY Week, which culminates with the 27th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards on November 12 in Las Vegas.
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Thirty years into his career, Jorge Drexler went home, and home answered. The Uruguayan singer-songwriter has earned seven nominations at the 27th Annual Latin Grammy Awards for Taracá, the album he recorded in Uruguay for the first time in two decades. He is also set to perform when the ceremony airs live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on November 12.
Taracá competes for Album of the Year and Best Singer-Songwriter Album, while “¿Cómo Se Ama?” is nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. “Las Palabras” is up for Best Singer-Songwriter Song, and “El Tambor Chico,” recorded with Rueda de Candombe, is in the Best Roots Song field, alongside a Best Alternative Song nomination that rounds out the seven.
The album, released March 13 on Sony Music Spain, is built on candombe, the Afro-Uruguayan drumming tradition carried by three drums: piano, chico and repique. Its title is the sound of the smallest of them, the tambor chico, and a play on “estar acá,” to be here. Drexler, who has lived in Spain for three decades, made the record after losing his parents, working with young producers and with Rueda de Candombe, who appear on three tracks. Young Miko sings with him on the ballad “Te Llevo Tatuada,” and the album closes with “Las Palabras,” a murga farewell featuring Murga Falta y Resto that Drexler dedicated to his father.
The Taracá tour has carried the experiment around the world this year, from Buenos Aires’ Movistar Arena in April to Costa Rica in September, with Drexler performing the candombe-rooted songs alongside the catalog that made him one of Latin music’s most decorated writers: an Academy Award winner for “Al Otro Lado del Río” and a thirteen-time Latin Grammy winner before this year’s nominations were even announced.
His last album, Tinta y Tiempo, won seven Latin Grammys. Taracá now has the chance to match it. Whatever happens on November 12, the homecoming already ranks as one of the year’s great stories: a master songwriter, a drum pattern from the streets of Montevideo, and seven nominations to show for listening to both.
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