Snow Owl

Snow Owl (real name Juan Garcia-Herreros) was born in Bogotá, Colombia and had great ambitions to become a musician from an early age.

He learned to play the flute at the age of 9 and later taught himself to play the electric bass in Florida, where he appeared on stage with the Tampa Bay Simphony at the age of 17. In the further stations of his eventful life, New Orleans and Boston, he was able to learn from greats like Bruce Gertz and Rich Appleman and perfect his bass playing. Already at the age of 21 he moved to New York, where he pursued a professional music career. There, in the pulsating breeze of the metropolis, he managed to experiment with and learn numerous musical styles such as jazz, pop, funk, salsa, rock, classical, heavy metal and avant-garde. He later moved to Austria, where he still lives today. At 39, he won the triple gold medal at the Global Music Awards, the first Colombian artist to receive this honor. Then, at 40, he was chosen by Hans Zimmer to accompany him on his World of Hans Zimmer symphonic celebration tour as an electric bassist. Living spirituality and integrating it into everyday life is part of Snow Owl's life motto, as is taking the faith of his indigenous ancestors to the wider world and making it known.

Interview quotes:
“In reality my name, my real name is Snow Owl. And the name Juan Garcia is a legal name for the government. We have a very strong connection to the animal spirit, which brings us, it helps us to come from the non-physical world to the physical. This journey is very hard on the soul and therefore the spirit animal bonds with you to give you the strength to be able to make this journey.”

Well, to talk about magic with indigenous people is actually something we rely on, we don’t believe in it. The fact that this planet - we’re inside of a blue ball and we don’t fall out of it – that is magic. When the seasons change and the fruits come from the trees – that’s magic. I mean, there is science, which tries to explain it, but in a certain way science is a controlled explanation of magic, or some kind of physical or mathematical explanation of magic.”