Welcome! Here you can read all about my songwriting quest. It follows my adventures in making and finding music that builds community and defies traditional music industry tenets. You can expect to find videos, photos, and musings about music that makes me smile, as well as insight about ways that musicians are skipping the middle men and singing right to the fans. Thanks for coming!

5.08.2010

Te Quiero, Julieta!

I need to say something unabashedly:

I LOVE JULIETA VENEGAS!

Truly.  She's a wonderfully talented singer/songwriter/musician from Tijuana who creates these songs that are fun and beautiful, and make you feel as though life is slightly less complicated than it sometimes seems: the good is never perfect and the bad is never insurmountable. Obviously, she sings in Spanish.  I understand about 3/4 of what she says, but I'm pretty sure I get the gist.  It's liberating stuff.

I saw her play this past Wednesday at the Fox in Oakland--hence the remembering that I love her--and she was just as amazing as ever. She's preggers this time around.  Adorable.  Anyway, it hit me while I was there that part of the reason I love her so much is the community she inspires around her music.  Her lyrics are really powerful to the hardcore fans, and they (we!) show it.  Throughout the entire show the crowd is smiling, saying excuse me when bumping into people; people are singing along and looking around to find new friends who are also singing their hearts out.  Pretty cute.  One amazing woman engendering so many smiles and so much good will.  Love it.

IMG_2616

And then I realized something bigger.  Look at this picture.  Do you see that?  Julieta is at the piano and there are 8(!) people on stage with her.  8!  That's kind of a lot for the music she makes.  She's got 4 women, and 4 men up there.  Gender balance, what?!?  Awesome. She's made a community of musicians who have worked with her for years and everyone shines in their own way.  It's beautiful.  All my other musical loves have great concerts, but there's just a touch of loneliness.  Regina Spektor's concert--also at The Fox a few months back--was like that.  She played with people for a few of her new songs, but you got the feeling that they were hired guns, there to fill up the space.  Then she did the rest of the show by herself on that massive stage.  Big ups, but a little sad.  Maybe Regina likes it like that, but I would want to do it the Venegas way: the more the merrier.

I think I'm going to start here with some covers.  Julieta's songs are so fun and I love trying to sing in Spanish.  Viva para-social relationships!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)