Cecilia Noël

By Alex Teitz

Cecilia Noël is the leader of Cecilia Noël and the Wild Clams. This big band is a dominant force in Latin music in Los Angeles and on MP3. Cecilia plays hard and has a dedication to her audience that comes through in the album, Delivery. Cecilia used to be signed by Epic/Sony but has done far better without them. Her songs are in movies and she has helped many successful acts songwriting. Cecilia Noël and the Wild Clams are regulars at LA’s Key Club. In July they will be playing on Friday the 7th and Friday, July 28th. If you miss them there, visit their MP3 site and the Official website at http://www.wildclam.com

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

CN: I prefer to start with an idea for a theme like a title. From there develop a melody and a lyric before I even go the piano. That’s what I personally do when I write by myself. And then I sing to my tape recorder melody ideas and horn parts and parts of the arrangement like the intro and stuff like that. It starts from a very melodic point and then, I don’t like the chord changes to limit me to the roots of the chords…I work on melody and then I go to the piano once I have an idea of what the verses or the choruses are going to sound like and I know in my head what I want the chord to be. So I go the piano and I find those chords and that’s how I write.

I try to follow a form like intros and my verses and my B sections, my choruses maybe a little bridge. When I’m writing a salsa I leave room for a mambo section which is where the percussion comes up much stronger and then horns join in, and breakdowns and stuff like that. I always think, not only about the song, but the arrangement of the song cause I like to think work on as much of it as I can.

Then I bring it to the band or Eric Jorgensen, my trombone player, and then we work the voicings and we put it on paper and then we bring it to the band. It’s usually like that. That’s the process. And then I polish the lyrics and it is done!

There’s other ways. When I work with co-writer’s, when I work with other people where they bring me a track like Greg Matthewson used to bring me tracks and then I would write on top of the track the melody and the lyric and contribute with the horns for example. I would tell him, “This is an idea for the rhythm. Let’s write a meringue. Let’s write this kind of a groove.” Then he would put it on a tape where he would put the chord structure. He would give it to me and I would finish it. It’s not my favorite way to work because, like I said, I’m more limited to what I’m hearing chord form and progression. Then my ear just stays there. I have to really have to try to get away when I want to try to get away and do something that is a little more…interesting.

FEMMUSIC: Describe to me what Salsoul is?

CN: Well you know that the term existed in the 70’s with the Salsoul orchestra. There was more of a salsa meets disco kind of thing. I listened to a few things that they did, but I never had an album of the Salsoul orchestra, and I have been promised one by a friend of mine. They used a lot of strings.

I like the term because I grew up listening to the Funny All Stars, and it’s the same era and the Funny All Stars used that kind of mixture of funk, and little bit of disco, and of course, the Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean roots. So for me I grew up listening to Fania and to James Brown and Jimi Hendrix and Sly and The Family Stone and Earth, Wind & Fire, and Celia Cruz. It really synthesizes what I feel what my music is which is a mixture of salsa and soul music. That’s why I brought back that name, Salsoul.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Delivery?

CN: Producing it myself, the way I always thought my music should be produced. I had a few attempts before at getting that incredible energy that everybody loves so much and everybody missed so much on the other productions that we did of my music. I worked before with other producers and it never quite came out the way I wanted and I couldn’t release something that couldn’t do justice to what the band really was like on stage. It was an enormous responsibility to sit down on the producer’s chair and work just with my engineer and of course, I did a little bit of pre-production with Bernie Dresel where we worked on the tempos and where the click track was going to go, and everything. It was a big thrill for me to actually direct the whole thing. The whole band at once in the studio with the partitions, we were like about sixteen people. We were in a big studio in Entourage Studios in North Hollywood, and we used two studios and their control rooms so I could have my background singers in the control room of “B,” the horns on the actual studio of “B”, the rhythm section on studio “A” , and in the partition, the percussion separated, and in the control room of Studio “A” it was me and the guitar player going direct and me directing the whole thing through the microphone, and through headphones for everybody. I could see basically everyone because we were connected through windows. The big challenge was, because we recorded to analog tape like in the old days, cause I wanted a very warm sound. And then there came a time where everyone went home and I had to cut the tape. Actually cut it and edit. It was amazing. It was a bit scary but with my engineer, Geoff Gillette, who is one of the most amazing engineers in the world,  it was incredible. He never missed one cut and I knew exactly where I wanted to cut, and I tightened up all the songs. That’s how the album became so wonderful. It captured that energy that I missed before. So it was a big challenge for me to produce, and I’m happy I did.

FEMMUSIC: Controlling a band, that many people, in the studio, must take an immense amount of work.

CN: I have experience on stage for at least nine years now really conducting the band, and in the last really, four years has become much more obvious that I do direct the band. The band is the great people that I have. We are about maybe eighteen, but then I have another 36, 45 people that rotate cause my guys have to go away sometimes. I have to keep the band really tight and I have to conduct at every show cause I usually have one or two subs per show. Once in a while it’s a magic evening and I have all the main guys playing with me, but sometimes I have subs so I have to always be directing. Just doing the job of a director.

FEMMUSIC: Do you see any differences between American versus Peruvian audiences?

CN: You are never king in your own land, you know. I had to leave Peru and my mom was the one who sent me away as a child even because she saw that I was a very fiery character and was not made to be in Peru, and become an artist in Peru, and develop my career there. There were a lot of limitations not only on the musical sense, but also on the morals and society, and all that crap! It’s a very contrived country. It’s full of prejudgism, and if you want to be kind to people, and you want be to sympathical and cordial and charming they think you are a crazy person. They don’t even know about manners and charm. They misinterpret charm, and I was a very charming little girl, and my mom thought, “This poor girl is going to have so much trouble.”

Artists were not seen as normal people. Which we’re not, by the way. We try to act normal sometimes. There are seen as very eccentric and not quite trustworthy. The audiences are like that as well. I think now with the new generation it’s much more open, and I get some e-mails from my country saying, “Oh my god Cecilia. We’re so proud that you’re from Peru, and that you are doing so much….” I’ve always considered myself to be an international person because I grew up in Argentina, Germany, and New York City and then I moved to LA. I was fortunate to travel. I would love to go and do a concert one day in my country, but NO ONE has made the effort of bringing me there….

Here in America my audiences are just a mixture, the most magical mixture of people. There are Peruvians that come that are really cool, and their Hip-Hop people. Dr. Dre has come to see the show. All kinds of people. A lot of Hip-Hop. A lot of Latinos. A lot of American. A lot of very white people. Sixty year old people and fourteen year old kids. EVERYBODY comes to see our shows and it’s amazing. It’s just so wonderful. I feel very much at home here.

FEMMUSIC: What would you like to see changed most about the music industry?

CN: (Laugh) (Pause) It’s never gonna happen the way I would want it to happen because I think the music industry doesn’t take any risks. They are a bunch of people who are not artists. In the majority they do not feel like an artist, they just think non-risky business, and once someone by God’s magic, and the alignment of the planets in the universe, gets a break then the rest of the of the music business people want to bring out a lot of other similar artists so that they can cash in on whatever is hip at the moment.

I think that right now what I hear on the radio is pretty pathetic. I really am not happy. I listen to the radio because I always want to listen to what’s good and I always want to be surprised by something interesting.

I don’t even think that much about the music business anymore because I am becoming successful as an independent artist with the help of MP3 and other internet venues and my live shows. Once I was signed to Epic/Sony and this was in 94/95 before the big Latin craze happened and they didn’t know what to do with me. Even when Gloria Estafan was signed to the same label, and lucky for her she had someone like Emilo that could see that a lot of things were going to happen with the Latinos, and the music. But at Epic no one knew what to do with me. They had no clue. They just signed me. They gave me a good amount of money which I left with and I basically had to ask them to let me go because after a year of being signed, nothing was happening. I had recorded a live album, and I was working on my studio album and I could see that there was no future there. It gave me a lot of experience and it made me stronger as to where and how I wanted to continue my life as an artist…

I’m always hoping to be surprised by some great deal, but in the meantime I’m very happy by what is continuing to happen because of the internet and with my live shows.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

CN: No I’ve never felt that way. I have never felt discrimination. I don’t allow that to come into my life. I’ve never felt discriminated. I’ve felt so empowered as a woman. I feel so secure in my position as being one of the few female conductors of a big band, that is hopefully going to be mainstream one day.

I’ve been screamed at, and been treated horribly by some clubs in LA. Some clubs have not wanted to pay me my money and I fought for it, but I fought for it like a man with big balls. I’ve never felt like they were treating me like that because I was a chick, and I never let them know that I was a chick on what they think they could do to a woman. I’ve never felt discrimination for being a woman or a Latin person. I’ve always felt very empowered by both things.

I think most people like my charms as a woman and as a Latina or they are threatened by them. (laughing) But I think that I’ve gone through what any other man has gone through in the music business. No difference.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an emerging artist?

CN: I say always follow your instinct, and work very, very hard because if you sit on your ass nothing is going to happen. Learn about what you can do through the new means like the internet, like MP3, like venues like that if you can not get a record deal. Be as well as you are as an artist, inform yourself. Don’t sign any contracts without reading them and without the advice of a lawyer. That’s something that I did always very well. Don’t let anyone exploit you because there’s no need for that.