Half Gringa

Emerging from Chicago’s flourishing indie music scene, Half Gringa creates music informed by contemporary indie-rock and Latin American and Midwestern folk. “When you grew up in the Midwest really into alternative rock, but heard a lot of country music in the supermarket,” offers Isabel Olive, the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist at the core of Half Gringa, when asked to place her music in a specific genre. “Or when your mom loved Bruce Springsteen and Maná and sometimes your brain starts playing them at the same time.” The name Half Gringa is both a tribute to and study of her legacy, stemming from a childhood term of endearment as “la Gringa” in her Venezuelan family and her bicultural experience growing up in the United States. Olive's work seeks to narrate her tireless pursuit as a pupil of both her origins and her experiences.