Venezuelan singer/songwriter Mariana Vega has received a double nomination of this year’s Latin Grammys. Mariana was nominated for best new artist and also for best pop album for her album Mi Burbuja (My Bubble).
Born in Venezuela, Marian was close to music from an early age, as she attended the Emil Friedman, school where she studied music, at the age of 15, her family moved to Toronto, Canada, where she went to college and studied psychology and after finishing school she decided to go back to music and within a relatively short time, Mariana’s career has taken off and we had the opportunity to talk to Mariana and would like to share a little bit of what we talked about:
Al Borde – Tell us how you feel about your Latin Grammy nominations?
Mariana – I really did not expect it, my husband woke me up with the news and it was such a happy and emotional moment and it is very gratifying to think that the music industry is actually paying attention to what you are doing.
Tell us about the album, Mi Burbuja.
The album was produced by Argentine producer Cachorro López, who is multiple Latin Grammy and Billboard award winner and has worked with people like Julieta Venegas, Natalia Lafourcade, Andrés Calamaro and others, so I always wanted to work with him because he seems to have a knack for working with singer songwriters. I sent him some of the songs I was working on and he liked them and told me to go down to Argentina. Being the Cachorro López is a product of Argentine rock, which uses a lot of folk influences, it worked perfectly with what I had in mind and here we are now with two Latin Grammy nominations.
Tell us about musical upbringing.
In Caracas, Venezuela I attended the Emil Friedman music school where I learned musical theory, flute and I sang in the choir and when we moved to Canada, I picked up the guitar and began to use it as a sort of therapy where I would start writing about the things that were going on in my life and I got hooked on writing songs and it became a necessity began playing some festivals and local clubs. I went back to Venezuela for cousin’s wedding and she asked me to sing a song and it turned out that one of the wedding guests was someone from the music industry and he liked what he heard so I recorded a demo that was only released in Venezuela, then I went to Mexico where I signed up for a record label and launched my first album in 2010.
Although Mi Burbuja is nominated under the contemporary pop category for the Latin Grammy, the sound on the album is much more folk than pop, and it reminds me of some of the great folk artist that Canada has produced like Joni Mitchell or even Neil Young, what can you tell us about the sound of the album?
Thank you for recognizing that, because I also believe this is more of a “folk pop” album and I understand the negative connotations that go with the label “pop”, because it often makes the music sound over produced and I did not want that for my music, I wanted a more organic sound, more acoustic and more real. As far as the musical influences, Jewel, Alanis Morrisette and Sarah McLachlan were a big influence and although they may be were considered pop artists, they also had the acoustic, organic, folksy feel and they were also influenced by some of the artists you mentioned.
What inspires you when you sit down to write?
As music writing became a necessity for me in order to get through the rough times, I relied on some of the influences I mentioned before, but just recently I realized that it also came from the music that my parents used to play around the house and that my mother used to sing to me when I was a child, which was traditional Venezuela music, like much of Latin American traditional music, these songs are about lost love and things that happen in life. On the pop side, I really admire Franco de Vita, especially live, I love the way he handles the audience and I have learned a lot about being on a stage from him, so he is a very big influence on me.
Mi Burbuja is an album that deserves to be listened and Mariana Vega is definitely an artist to be followed as this is only the beginning of the makings of a new great musical artist. Mi Burbuja is available in all the digital stores like I-tunes and Amazon and it can also be streamed on Spotify.
