Rebeca Vallejo: Next CD with a lot of help from her friends

Do Social Media like Facebook contribute to a growing individualization in society? The opposite seems to be true, at least in the case of New York-Singer Rebeca Vallejo. To finance her third album she started a pledge on Kickstarter to raise 6000 Dollar. And she did it! 24 hours before the end of the pledge she had convinced fans and friends to trust in her skills and donate the money she needed so urgently. A few days after the pledge was over, Repeca Vallejo posted this on her Facebook-Profile:

“Dear Facebookers: In an era where the individual often feels powerless, us, ‘the people’, come together to support each other and help each other grow...More than 60 Percent of the money raised came from FB postings, there you go! A great testimonial of community support and the power of social media put to use in an effort of solidarity! I cannot wait to enter that studio and I hope that the product that comes out of it, serves justice for all the love and support I have received from all of you... Throughout this kickstarter process I have learned lessons, made new friends, strengthen relationships, been offered great opportunities... this only goes to show that
A) it is about the journey and not only about the destination and B) UNITED, WE CAN!” Rebeca Vallejo spoke to INSIGHT Worldmusic Magazine about her music and what lies ahead.

In your video on Reverbnation, when you are talking about your style, you say you're a world music singer but you don't seem to be very happy with the term world music. Why is that?

Like most musicians, I'm not a big fan of "labeling" my artistic work like if it were a can of supermarket tomatoes... ha-ha-ha, but, unfortunately, it is part of the process and part of the music business so I guess that the best way of describing what I do under a musical genre would be "World Music".

Interestingly enough, I recently attended some of the discussion panels of the APAP music conference in New York, and to my great surprise, a lot of people involved into the American "World Music" scene are also not very fond of the term "World Music" - which only goes to show you that labels tend to go according to continents and fashion, and if the industry people can not even decide on what labels to use then how can the artist identify themselves with one label or another?

Why did you decide to go from Madrid to New York?

Since I was a little girl growing in a "less than privileged" neighborhood of southern Madrid I always had a strong sense that there was a "great big world out there" and I grew up with the certainty that I was going to explore the vastness of that world. When I was 19 years old, through an scholarship from the E.U. I migrated to Swansea, Wales to study at University. After my very first live performance -ever- at a local pub in Swansea, a good friend of mine gave me an Ella Fitzgerald CD and told me "You are going to like this". That was the day when my music senses exploded into a new concept of sound and singing; and so, I said to myself "If I want to become the best singer in the world I need to learn the most difficult style" and I began to listen to jazz, training myself to sing all the Jazz standards and listening to the great divas: Ella, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O'day, Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson, etc... The more I was immersing myself in this universe of peculiar sound approaches, the more I realized that my time in the UK was the preparation for "the big jump" to NY, where jazz was cooked and brewed.

After graduating from Swansea I spent some time back in Madrid working as a journalist but the "itch" of NY was still there and so, one day I bought a plane ticket and without a plan or living arrangements in place, I made "the big jump" and I landed here.

What advantages did it bring to your work and would you recommend other singers to do the same?

I very strongly believe that if you want to sing a particular genre of music you must go where this music developed. Music is not only "sounds" it is life experiences, smells, colors, and the culture of the people that surrounds the people who create the sounds. So, I very highly recommend to anybody who is interested in jazz to spend some time in NYC. After some time "soaking" myself into the NYC life experience I was lucky to be accepted at the City College of NY Jazz vocal program, at the time lead by its founder, the incredible Jazz legend Sheila Jordan. Studying Jazz in depth it literally "opened up my ears" and gave me a very solid music foundation that constitutes a strong pillar in my compositions.

I'm not sure if having moved to NY is an advantage or not (because it life would have, probably, been much easier if I had stayed in Madrid) but following my dream to learn is definitely something I am very proud of and the experiences of living in this wonderful and extremely challenging city, I would never trade for anything in the world.

Since New York caters to all styles of music, is there s strong latin-music (-jazz) scene and did it help you to find your feet in New York?

New York had a scene of every single possible style of music you could imagine! And not only that, within each genre-scene, there are many micro-scenes within. It is pretty crazy!!!

When I first arrived here and wanted to begin performing, I realized that, singing Jazz with my very strong "Spanish" accent was not going to get me hired! The first couple of concerts I gave I included a few bossa-novas and boleros and I realized that the response from the audience was much stronger and that I, myself, was getting in touch with something deeper: a) it took me back to growing up listening to my mother, professional singer too, singing all those classic latin songs b)I discovered an interest for brazilian music that soon enough turned into a passionate love affair.

It is interesting how you chase one thing in life and life takes you to a different place! But yes, I guess that Latin music was a great tool to get myself settled into the performing scene of NY.

After Euro Latin Jazz and EuroLatinFunk your next album will centered around Flamenco. In comparison to your previous works you seem to be shifting into different directions. You came from Madrid (Flamenco) and moved to New York (Jazz); now you live in NY and are working on a Flamenco influenced album. Is this a coincidence, or is this part of your personal/musical development?

I guess I will have to say that this is both a coincidence and also part of my musical development. As I was mentioning before life plays very ironic tricks on you, like they say "life is what happens to you while you are making other plans". My grandfather and all his family were Flamenco singers and I grew up listening to my grandfather sing while sitting on our front porch on the summer evenings and listening to the Flamenco radio stations. All my life I thought and felt that Flamenco was a very "intense" type of music (scary, almost!) and I never thought myself capable of being able to sing Flamenco, even though I had a huge amount of respect for this genre of music. So I "kind of" ran away from Flamenco.

Then about 6 years into living in NY, I once encounter an incredible Greek bass player who was very enthusiastic about Flamenco and was telling us all about the rhythms and the clapping patterns. If I could pinpoint the moment where Flamenco came back into my life I would say it was the very evening, while I was listening to a non-Spaniard speak so passionately about Flamenco, something inside of me shifted, I felt the most homesick I ever felt in my life, and I felt a strong urge to get in touch with my musical family roots. And so, I stared listening to Flamenco, began to sing with a small Flamenco dance company and eventually I was given a scholarship to study an intensive Flamenco singing course in Sevilla.

When I came back from that trip, something had radically mutated inside of me and I felt complete, like I had found the final ingredient to a recipe of sound I had been looking for a long time. I started experimenting with this concept in my EuroLatinJazz Album by giving a "Flamenco flavor" to Jazz Standards but this next album is a much more balanced combination of sounds through original compositions built on a base of Jazz and adding Flamenco and Brazilian music "sprinkles".

You have been to several countries and this year you'll be on tour in Europe. What do you think the reception of your music will be e.g. do you think that Americans see your music as being Spanish an Spaniards see your music as being American?

Believe it or not, I have never performed my music in my own country!!! So, I'm very curious to see what the reaction to this album will be since at this time, if the "national budget" allows, we are including Spain among our touring countries. I have performed my music in Belgium and Germany before and the reception of my musical concepts has always been very good. I find that this mixture of "Spaniard-living-in-NY" attracts a lot of attention and so, I hope that this next project is well received too.

When you're on stage are your supporting musicians always the same or do you select different musicians according to the project?

Having a steady band in "Jazz" is quite a challenge! Because of the "improvisational nature" of the music and giving the fact most Jazz musicians read music well, the emphasis tends to be on the "performer" and "the skill" rather than on a "group sound". Although my other two albums were recorded by the same core of musicians that I had known for a long time, when it came to live performances I have worked with a million different players which is, at the same time challenging, extremely enriching and has allowed me to perform with amazing musicians from around the world.

For this next album I'm going more for a "Sound Concept" choosing the trio form: voice, piano and percussion. This trio concept was born out of mere necessity to keep small formations in order to get more work, but as one of those wonderful accidents of life, I found out that my original compositions sounded really pure, honest, and even more powerful with such minimal instrumentation. During most of last year I have been working solidly with two musicians (George Dulin-piano and David Silliman- percussion/drums) and we have developed a "band sound" that I would like to carry onto the recording of the new album although, we will also have some special guest soloists too.

Rebeca, thank you very much! Andreas Nöthen