Dona

DONA (Catalan for “woman”) is a deeply intimate and poetic journey through the emotional and spiritual landscape of a woman’s life—told through the voice, words, and soul of singer Nadia Basurto with musicians Clemens van der Feen from the Feenbrothers band, Jesse van Ruller and Niels Meliefste. Drawing on personal experience, improvisation, Catalan and Spanish poetry, and the rich traditions of Latin jazz, art song, and folk, this collection weaves together tales of love, resilience, dreams, and memory.

The album was Produced and Recorded by Jared Sacks and DSD Mastered by Tom Caulfield from the NativeDSD Team for Just Listen Records.

At its heart, DONA is about the inner lives we carry—about growing up while still longing to dream, about facing life’s weight with grace, and about keeping the door open to wonder, even when hope feels fragile. Basurto sings of emotional entrapment and transformation, insomnia and longing, nostalgia and quiet rebellion. These are songs of becoming, of remembering, of holding on and letting go.

Musically, the album resists categorization. Jazz, milonga, folk, free improvisation, and lullaby form a fluid continuum through which the voice leads with clarity and vulnerability. Acoustic textures frame the stories with sensitivity and restraint, giving space for breath, for silence, for the listener to lean in. The improvised moments are not interludes but essential gestures—fleeting truths caught in the act of being born.

Basurto’s lyrics and vocal delivery reflect a life lived in multiple emotional registers. There is pain here, and tenderness. There is sadness, but also celebration. The recurring theme is not resolution but presence: showing up to life as it is, without filters or masks. DONA doesn’t offer easy catharsis. Instead, it invites us to inhabit complexity, to feel deeply, and to find beauty in what is unresolved.

In a time that often demands perfection, speed, and surface, DONA is an act of quiet resistance—a meditation on softness, depth, and feminine strength. It is a voice that asks us to slow down, to listen closely, and to remember the simple, radical act of feeling.

Nadia Basurto, Vocals & Arrangements
Clemens van der Feen, Bass
Jesse van Ruller, Guitar
Niels Meliefste, Marimba & Percussion