San Cha is a Los Angeles–based Mexican American composer and performer whose work bridges opera, popular song, and ritual performance. Drawing from rancheras, banda, cumbia, electronic music, and experimental vocal practice, her work explores grief, power, devotion, and queer liberation.

Most recently, she composed, wrote the libretto for, and starred in her first opera, Inebria Me, which premiered at Performance Space New York in 2025. A bold and visually striking contemporary opera, Inebria Me blends heightened drama, Catholic mysticism, and incisive social commentary.

The work went on to tour the West Coast, with performances at the TBA Festival hosted by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in partnership with BOOM Arts; On the Boards in Seattle; Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana in San José; KQED in San Francisco; and later its Los Angeles premiere at REDCAT.

San Cha starred in the documentary ASCO: Without Permission, directed by Travis Gutiérrez Senger, which premiered at the 2025 edition of SXSW. The film examines the radical legacy of the Chicano art collective ASCO.

Earlier, in 2019, Red Bull Music Festival invited San Cha to present an original work, La Luz De La Esperanza, in Los Angeles—a song cycle that subverted the classic telenovela narrative. She later released the album La Luz De La Esperanza, which received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork, calling her voice “a revelation, immensely powerful.” The Advocate named her one of its Women of the Year in 2020, recognizing the album’s exploration of cultural oppression, domestic violence, and the journey toward freedom.

Before relocating to Los Angeles, San Cha lived in the Bay Area, where drag nightlife provided a formative and affirming space for her artistic development as a young queer performer. This period also marked a deeper reconnection to her familial and ancestral roots, leading her back to Jalisco, Mexico, where she reimagined herself as a queer ranchera singer—subverting traditional genres and cultural hierarchies—before ultimately settling in Los Angeles.

San Cha has received support from numerous arts organizations including the 2025 New Music Creator Fund, the 2025 Creative Capital Shortlist, the 2024 National Performance Network Fall Development Fund, the 2024 Los Angeles Performance Practice Research + Development Program, the 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and the 2023 National Performance Network Creation Fund.

San Cha’s music has appeared in Vida on STARZ, and she starred in Star-Crossed, the visual album by Kacey Musgraves.