Irene Ferrera

By Alex Teitz

Irene Ferrera sings with a low voice and passion about the world. Her latest CD Soy De Ti  is on Indigena Records and is a beautiful collection of eleven songs in English and Spanish. Ferrera can play a guitar as well as a cuatro, a Venezuelan four-stringed guitar. For more information on Irene Ferrera visit her website at http://www.Ferrera.com

FEMMUSIC: You have a degree in Architecture. How did you get started in music?

IF: Well I moved to the United States and I was going to school and I knew that I need to make some money on the side as part-time student so I brought my guitar with me, and I’ve always been a natural performer. Growing up I always was playing music for people at parties and at family reunions. My voice teacher suggested that I go to this club to play my music for them. I guess I always thought that I could pursue it I didn’t see a way to do it in Venezuela, but when I moved here and they said, “Just go to this club. They’ll listen to you.” Sure enough. I went over there and they liked it. They hired me for a weekend. I got very busy putting together my repertoire. I was on tour musically.

I guess I’ve always wanted to do that. I always enjoy the opportunity to perform and to play music. Circumstances of being at the right time at the right place. I guess it’s something that you’re born with inside of you this yearning to play and then when you get an audience, that’s when you say, “Okay! Great!”

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique.

IF: My songwriting technique, oh boy. It really varies. Sometimes I dream of a melody. That’s my favorite. (laugh)

Usually it’s a combination of things. I’m always writing lyrics and ideas and making them work in poetry. Later on the melody might come up or a place to plug that in (pause) then I make it happen. I don’t really have a method. A pure method. “This is what I do for writing music.”

I guess for me being open to whatever comes. I really think that I’m just a channel for the music. And it just comes to me, and I have to be ready. I have to be prepared. I have to be there to receive that, and sometimes it’s just a very clear situation where I am moved by a story and feel like I have to talk about it, and do a song about it. I make myself work very hard until something comes up.

Definitely, the most concerted effort is really on the lyrics. To be that’s the intellectual part. They have to work. They have to say a certain thing. When I actually sit down to write a song then the melody sometimes comes very spontaneously. Just playing with my guitar. I call it jamming. Just experimenting with different things and then something, once it a while something pops up and I say, “Okay. Well that’s it. Sounds pretty good. Works good.”

FEMMUSIC: Who have been your musical influences?

IF: There have been so many. Venezuelan music has always been my love. We have different styles of music we play in Venezuela. Growing up there, of course,  I got to hear a lot of it. I got to learn and play.

For me, music it’s a lot about listening, but it’s also about how can I say it myself… I was always imitating people when I was a kid. That’s the way I would sing be by imitating somebody singing. A lot of people in Venezuela, a lot of different artists in Venezuela.

FEMMUSIC: What was your best experience making Soy De Ti ?

IF: (Laughing)I think it was probably…well most of them are original songs. To me the most fun was when I brought in all the musicians to play on the songs.

I think the best part of making the CD when you first hear it. You actually go in the studio and you start putting all these pieces together.  Soy De Ti  was actually put together in pieces. We had a very small studio and I just called in one musician at a time to lay their parts and to interpret the music and see, “This is what you can do with this…” Everything was in parts so I think the most exciting moment was when I heard it for the first time really together the way that I….sometimes the way I wanted it, sometimes not , or the way I’d imagined it, or sometimes the way I didn’t imagine it. ‘Cause you just never know until it’s all completely done. That first time that you listen to it is the most fantastic, and you could never reproduce it again (laughing).

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Soy De Ti ?

IF: I think the biggest challenge, and a lot of singers would agree, is recording the vocals. (pause) What is it? It’s really excruciating to record vocals. You want it to be the best, the best, the best that it can possibly be. I really get caught up on some of the songs were in English, and think that was difficult for me because I speak English, and I don’t have any problems speaking English but sometimes when you put it on tape and you start taking it apart (laugh) and it’s supposed to be an “it” and it’s a “iiit.” It’s okay, “Let me try that again. Let me try that again. Let me try that again.” Just to get the right pronunciation, to get the right sound. There’s so many variables when you’re dealing with the human voice. Not to mention the emotion that you want to put into it. “Is this what I want to say? It sounds a little too soft. I want to say it a little stronger.” I guess in the old days you didn’t have a problem with that because you did one take and that’s what it was. Actually everything was done live with everyone in the studio, the band playing and now you can actually really take things apart. So that makes it a little more difficult.

FEMMUSIC: Tell me about the song, “In My Bones”?

IF: That was a story I read about in the newspaper about some Haitians that arrived in a leaky boat into Florida. Those stories are really, for me, they always get me. Those stories are most heartbreaking, and some of the most, for me some of the most moving, when people get out of their countries and leave everything behind to come to a new place…I guess because I did that myself. My circumstances were not as dangerous. The story of one of the people on the boat who was a fifteen year old orphan and when they asked him why he came… They really risk their lives when they come in those boats. A lot of those boats don’t make it and these people feel so strongly that, “Even if I don’t make it, it’s still worth the trip. It’s worth taking that risk, making that jump, getting in that boat” to escape this terrible hunger that is in Haiti that they have in Haiti where people don’t have anything. The environment is depleted, and there’s just a lot of suffering and I wanted to talk about the story because I think we need to be more compassionate, and help more other people that don’t have the opportunities or privileges that we have. Just to be more compassionate. To somehow bring some light and attention to that plight of that human spirit that wants to survive that….wants to enjoy this beautiful planet and just be part of it. Survive and have a full life and have children, and have grow food and just be here…What I really wanted to celebrate was the spirit of survival.

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

IF: I like the quality of what’s out there. My biggest disappoint with the music industry is that a lot of the stuff that you get to hear on radio is so mediocre. A lot of songs that don’t say anything, don’t sound like anything and I think it’s really a shame. I think there’s so much ego pushing that a lot of the really good stuff has been left behind. Somehow it becomes more important to have THIS person or THIS artist be out there because this is the one that makes me money and when I think the focus should be, “Let’s bring out the best.” Let’s bring music that maybe isn’t going to bring me any benefit financially but is beautiful and deserves to be out there that’s deep. It’s a very selfish industry. Only the ones with most money and the most power are the ones that are going to be heard, and I don’t think that’s fair. In a way, I’m glad that the web is taking over and there’s so much access to many different things because there’s so many different things. There’s so many beautiful things that are not even getting a chance to be heard. I don’t even listen to the radio anymore.

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

IF: As a woman….I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think music has a way of cutting through a lot of stuff. I think music is a language of the soul….I feel appreciated. I feel that I’ve gotten the attention that I wanted to get. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not paying attention. I can not tell you that people have not discriminated against me because I’m a woman, all I can tell you is my experience, and I never, and I never really go there. I never think “They didn’t pick me because they picked somebody else.” If that’s what people are doing than I don’t really want to buy into that game. I don’t want to feel that way. There is room for everybody, and that women have been discriminated against in history, and maybe it does happen in  music too but I don’t take it personally. (laugh) On my day to day basis and my work too I don’t think about it. I don’t think if I’d been a man I’d be more successful than I am. I guess that people appreciate me as an artist and as a woman. It really transcends genders. I hope that my music just carries it’s own value. I am a unique human being, just like we all are. I guess that’s what comes through with the music.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

IF: Work very, very hard. Work at your trade very hard. Try to be the best that you can be because there is a lot of music out there. There’s not a lot of space to put it. More and more people are turning on there TV’s and tuning out of real life, and music. It’s funny the the population is growing, the mediums are growing but the attention spans are actually shrinking, and the audiences are shrinking because there’s too much of other stuff going on.

I think ultimately your talent and your…whatever gift you have been given…It’s really a responsibility to develop that. To make it be the best that it can be, and to work very, very hard, and to make a commitment. I think that’s the biggest advice and the most important part is to make a commitment to your art, and do it. Stay open and do everything that you want to do…