Shery: Love Is a Ghost

Family legend says she learned to sing before being able to speak, repeating for hours what she heard in the albums her mom played relentlessly night and day.

Shery is a new, passionate singer and songwriter, gifted with a voice that captivates the senses and go deep inside the heart. She writes and performs inspired, organic songs distilled right from the soul, transcending the barriers of language.

Through her very own brand of melodic, sincere pop, Shery celebrates the shadows, ecstasies and, above all, the agonies of love.

Her journey as an artist began very early in life, with a mop handle as a microphone, a broom as the guitar, an army of kitchen pots turned into drum set, and her face hidden behind layers of chalk powder, as she and her brothers transmuted into the mega band Kiss.

After two and a half years of relentless work, scoring in the process four #1 hits on the radio charts nationwide in her country, this up and coming Guatemala-born star has just released her debut album, “El Amor es un Fantasma” (“Love Is a Ghost”), a spectacular selection of 13 songs, each alive with an aura of melodic genius.

The album, available worldwide through retailers such as Amazon.com, the iTunes Store and CDBaby.com, is titled after the first song Shery ever wrote, a delicious ballad that won her a medal in the World Championships of the Performing Arts, in Hollywood, and remained for 26 straight weeks in the Guatemalan Top 40, climbing to the #1 position as the most requested pop song nationwide -- first time ever for a local female vocalist.

Her career was officially launched on June 11, 2005, when what was intended to be an intimate night for just a small circle of friends, became a totally sold-out venue, inundated by raving fans mesmerized with the passion of a young soul, brave enough to climb on stage and sing her heart out, performing in public for the first time songs she had not originally written to share with others, but to exorcize her own shadows.

When after the concert one out of every two persons walked out the show with a copy of her first single CD on hand, a quality home-made, two-songs CD which eventually sold more than 5,000 copies, people started to pay attention.

Since that fist night three years ago, Shery has performed in more than 90 live concerts, and has shared stage with Latin idols the likes of Christian Castro, Manuel Mijares, Chayanne, Miguel Bose and Enrique Iglesias. She did her first US appearance in Washington D.C., in September 2005, invited by the Guatemalan Embassy. She has been a guest artist in every single national T.V. and radio show in her country, and has been featured a massive number of times in magazines, newspapers and online publications in Guatemala and all over Latin America.

Shery, who has been often referred to as the “Best Kept Secret In Latin Music”, has been a two-time finalist in the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest, selected among 15,000 entries from all over the world, as well as in the Unisong International Songwriting Competition, in Los Angeles. Her compositions have been used for ringtones in Japan, and for a Spanish songbook used in Spanish courses in high schools and colleges across the US and Canada.

Directed and produced by Daniel Rene, a former member of teen sensation band Menudo/MDO, the videoclip of "Me Converti en Roca", her second single, was shot entirely in Miami and Coral Gables, Florida. An English version of the song is currently cooking.

Her new single, sang in duet with Daniel Rene (and the only cover song on the album), is a fresh, lively remake of the 80’s mega hit “El Amor”, written by Spanish Maestro of romance Jose Luis Perales.

The album also features a song in Italian written for Shery by Francesco Sondelli, with whom she also co-wrote “El suspiro se me va”. Both tracks were mixed in Los Angeles by legendary producer Eddie Kramer (The Rolling Stones, Lead Zepellin, Kiss, Jimmy Hendrix).

Before being able to start her career as a recording artist, Shery, who fled home at age 15 to pursue the unavoidable call of music, had to kept up a variety of jobs in order to make ends meet, from selling CDs at a record store, being a sales clerk at a hardware store, and administrative assistant in a training firm, to tourist guide in the colonial city of Antigua Guatemala.

Today, while keeping a busy promotional, travel and performing schedule, Shery spends hours every day personally replying to the hordes of fans who contact her from all corners of the world (including countries as unusual for Latin Pop such as Japan, Germany, Angola, Indonesia, Rumania, the US and the UK) through her official website www.shery.net as well as her MySpace page www.myspace.com/shery1 and Hi5 profile http://shery1.hi5.com, which has become the most popular in the entire portal. She also keeps an active YouTube Channel, www.youtube.com/shery1, with video clips, live gigs, TV shows, interviews and slideshows.

A confess fan of Italian music, Mexican food and Guatemalan landscapes, Shery, who is also the co-producer of her album, currently has English and Italian versions of her songs on the drawing board.

When she is not on-stage performing, Shery is writing, producing, arranging or recording. She lives in Guatemala City with Ponkis, her beloved, fierce Australian Silky Terrier. Had she not become a musician, Shery would have been a “mochila” world traveler.