Jazz Vocalist Eva Cortés to Release New Project “La Malinche” on June 5th, 2026
Jazz Vocalist, Composer and Songwriter Eva Cortés
Releases Her Ninth Album, La Malinche
Cortés Calls La Malinche “Protest Meets Rhythm,”
An Album Born from Urgency, From ICE Raids and
Systemic Racism to Abuse of Power and Erased Histories
Featuring Pepe Rivero, Roman Filiú, Zaccai Curtis,
Christian McBride, Antonio Sánchez
Available June 5, 2026 via Truth Revolution Records
On her ninth album, La Malinche, jazz vocalist, composer and songwriter Eva Cortés sings back—loudly, rhythmically, and without apology. The album is a record born from urgency, from ICE raids and systemic racism to abuse of power and erased histories. She calls it “Protest meets Rhythm”: music as vindication, memory, and collective dance floor.
La Malinche, which focuses on identity, history, and cultural memory, features collaborations with Pepe Rivero, Roman Filiú, Zaccai Curtis, Christian McBride, Antonio Sánchez, and other leading musicians. Additionally Cortés has recorded with Jon Cowherd, Elio Villafranca, Luques Curtis,, Kendrick Scott, Eric Garland, Luisito Quintero, Doug Beavers, Marvin Sewell, Lou Soloff, Romero Lubambo, Mark Whitfield, among others.
Recorded in Madrid and New York, the album brings together musicians Cortés has admired and collaborated with throughout her life, creating what she describes as a deeply joyful, high-energy studio experience—part recording session, part collective ritual. Cortés says the album was initially inspired by an Indigenous girl from San Carlos, Arizona, who disappeared from her group home in Mesa In January 2025.
“The following month, her body was found,” Cortés says. “This tragedy shook me to my core in a way I couldn’t even articulate. Shortly after, I wrote the lyrics for ‘Letters to Heaven.’ The following summer, I traveled to the San Carlos Apache Nation to honor her life and visit her people. While there, beneath a white cross, I was inspired to write ‘Letters to Heaven.’”
“Later, I found a stunning song by Randy Wood, performed by his niece, Fawn Wood, a Cree and Salish musician from St. Paul, Alberta, Canada. ‘Remember Me’ has been a beacon in the movement for missing and murdered Indigenous women.” Cortés says those two songs anchor La Malinche at a critical point, adding, “ I plan to donate a percentage of the album’s earnings to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR).”
La Malinche references the indigenous woman enslaved during the Spanish conquest who became translator, survivor, and mother of the first mestizo child recorded in colonial chronicles. Cortés reclaims her not as a traitor, but as a symbol of resilience, forced hybridity, and indigenous endurance. From Ushuaia (Argentina) to Utqiagvik (Alaska), the album reinforces a radical truth: despite borders, colonization, and attempts at erasure, the indigenous peoples of the Americas are one continuum—alive, strong, and still reclaiming their destiny.
“A Tribo do Vento” was inspired by an accident Cortés had in December 2023 that resulted in third-degree burns, and three fingers on her right hand had to be amputated. Cortés spent two months in the ICU burn unit. “Thank God for my family and close friends, who carried what I could not during those difficult months,” she says. “That time became a turning point in my life. I was given long hours to sit with my grief and my sorrows. After my fifth skin graft, the problems that once felt overwhelming no longer seemed so important. Pain rearranges perspective.”
Cortés says she has always been deeply moved by indigenous activists like Berta Cáceres in Honduras — women who risk and often lose their lives demanding dignity and protection for their people. “Indigenous women disappear at higher rates than any other group across the continent. The red handprint has become a symbol of awareness — a call to see what too many choose to ignore.”
Musically, La Malinche blends jazz with flamenco, Afro-Latin and Indigenous influences. The result is music that invites you to dance, think, and stand up at the same time.
Songs like “Abuelita Malinche” summon ancestral feminine wisdom; “Hij@s del Maíz” affirms indigenous kinship across Turtle Island; “Sur Global” reframes the Global South as a movement, not a map. “Letters from Heaven” responds to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women after Cortés visited the San Carlos Apache Reservation, while “Indians of All Tribes” draws inspiration from the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation and its call for unity across nations.
At its core, La Malinche isn’t about nostalgia or victimhood. It’s about joy as resistance, rhythm as survival, and music as a place where history, protest, and hope move together.
About Eva Cortés
Eva Cortés is a jazz vocalist, composer and songwriter born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras raised in Seville, Spain who resides in NYC. She released an album on CBS at age seven, studied Philology in Seville, and has since developed a body of work blending jazz with flamenco, blues, and Latin traditions. Previous albums include Todas la Voces, (2019, Truth Revolution Records), Crossing Borders (2017, Origin Records), In Bloom (2015, Universal Music Spain and Truth Revolution U.S.), Jazz One Night with Eva Cortés in Madrid (2012, Universal Music Spain), Back 2 the Source (2011, Universal Music Spain), El Mar De Mi Vida (2010, Universal Music Spain), Como Agua Entre Los Dedos (2009, Universal Music Spain) and Sola Contigo (2007, EMI).
Photo Credit: Noah Shaye
For more information on Eva Cortés, please visit:
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