Artist
CV

JER first picked up a microphone at thirteen, at a cousin’s birthday party in Bahia. The guitarist that night was a local trovador who also sold chord magazines from a newsstand in town. She had spent years passing that stand and looking through the window, thinking: one day. That night became one day.

Now based in Toronto, JER is a Brazilian-Canadian artist and producer whose work brings the rhythms and percussion of Bahia into contact with electronics, 808s, guitar pedals and experimental production. Her debut album, It’s Not a Joke, is out October 16, 2026, on her independent label, INFR Records, following the title-track single on September 18, 2026.

The record is grounded in movement between places rather than in a fixed idea of tradition. “Angu” draws on Portuguese learned through daily life in Bahia - the feira, Cidade Baixa, dendê, buses and atabaques - treating words such as angu, batuque, fubá and urucubaca as rhythmic and sonic material as much as language. Elsewhere, the album moves through grief, psychedelic tension, displacement and irony. “Rosa Sônica,” co-written with Bruno Capinan in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods, places samba inside that distance instead of trying to erase it.

The album includes Chibatinha of ÀTTØØXXÁ on “Jia Má” and “MDMA” and closes with a saxophone performance by May Akanuma. It was mixed by Mark Lawson and mastered by Justin Gray.

JER has performed at Calgary Folk Music Festival, TD Toronto Jazz Festival and TD Music Hall, where she opened for Luedji Luna. It’s Not a Joke is her first full-length statement: a record built from Bahia and Toronto without reducing either place to background or explanation.