* 2021 Stock* It was—and is—almost impossible to categorize Vera Sienra’s musical style, but we’ll try: wistful songs with the world-weariness of Fado, and the pulsating sadness of the bossa nova. Her powerful and unique tone of voice, plus the softness of her guitar, have always been an unmistakable trademark. Listening to the songs of Vera’s debut album (from 1969), few people believed that those mature melodies were created by the beautiful and timid blonde who could be seen on their black & white TV at the end of the Sixties.

Vera’s cousin helped her release that first LP, “Nuestra Soledad” (Our Solitude) on the RCA Victor “Vik” label. At that time, iconoclastic genius Eduardo Mateo was working for the label as an arranger and studio musician. Mateo added his music knowledge and guitar skills to Vera’s songs. In 1972, Vera crossed to the other side of the River Plate (Rio de la Plata) to record her second album, “Vera,” in Buenos Aires, with the help of Argentinian musicians, the direction and arrangements of Roberto Lar, and the valuable help of recording engineer/guru, Carlos Piriz. Both legendary albums are included on this release. “In Uruguay, in the south, where sleeps or sways a river as wide as the sea, there is a small country. There is a neighborhood for anyone who has lived in it, and take its mirage forever as the way of seeing the world. Punta Carretas and Punta Brava, the southernmost point of Montevideo—it knows Vera Sienra from her first breath. The songs were born from her, or the landscape, the solitude that is always inhabited by metaphors, which have to do with this country which measures changes in sadness, as the seasons pass. Hence the authenticity of all of them, a striking sensuality that brings something of the sea to the voice of a little girl, sometimes tired as if extracted out of a very dark interior. Vera is her song, a perpetual unity."