INTERVIEW: Venezuelan singer Nella is Best New Artist at the Latin Grammys
Photo: Nella’s new album is called Voy. Photo courtesy of Sanne Gault / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
At last night’s Latin Grammy Awards, the Best New Artist trophy went to Nella, an accomplished Venezuelan singer whose new album is called Voy. The win for Nella is the capstone to a long journey she has made from her upbringing on Isla Margarita in Venezuela to now being based in the United States.
“It’s been very exciting, a lot to work on, but very exciting,” Nella said in a recent phone interview a couple days ago.
Voy, which was released in May on Casalimón America Records, has 13 songs, most of them written by Nella’s collaborator, Javier Limón, and featuring the singer’s unique interpretive skills. The album has done well on the marketplace and led to Nella’s current tour of the United States, but when the recording was released, she could never have imagined a Latin Grammy Award nomination, let alone a win, was also on the horizon.
The morning of the nominations, Nella had an interesting experience.
“I was actually waking up from a dream that I was nominated for a category that doesn’t exist,” said Nella, who was born Marianella Rojas. “Nominations were released I think at 9 a.m. in the morning, so when I woke up, that’s when I checked my cellphone. And I saw that one of my friends had told me that Juanes, who is the Person of the Year, had announced the Best New Artist nominees. I just released my album three months ago, so it was a big surprise to know that I was recognized by the Academy to be honest.”
Nella’s work on Voy took up her creative energy for nearly two years. The process started with Limón’s lyrics and the sharing of files back and forth via WhatsApp. It may be one of the first albums ever that was conceptually conceived via a smartphone app.
“Javier Limón would send me lyrics, or suddenly he would say, ‘Nella, I just got inspired, and I read about Venezuela and Venezuela’s news. And I came up with these words,'” she remembers. “And I will be answering back, and he would send me the song. So the whole process was just like that through voice notes, and then with these notes, I will just start working on the songs and adding of course my influences and everything you can hear on the album. So it was a process of two years, and then we recorded in Madrid, New York and Boston.”
On the road, Nella performs roughly a dozen of the new songs for the audience — an audience that no doubt will grow in size after her Latin Grammy win. Future dates include concerts in St. Louis; Athens, Ohio; Chicago; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Cutler Bay, Florida.
“I think I’m doing 12 of them in every concert, plus what I call my Venezuelan jewels, which is these three or four songs that I choose from the Venezuelan repertoire that has in some way marked my life or have been part of my life,” Nella said. “Composers like Simón Díaz are always in my repertoire, for example.”
Living in Venezuela — first on Isla Margarita and then the capital of Caracas — gave Nella a firm footing in the unique musical styles of her country. She has fond memories of her time in Venezuela, which makes the recent news of the political and economic turmoil in her home country that much more difficult to process and understand.
“Venezuela, before all of this mess that we’re going through, was always a big house to welcome artists from all around the world,” she said. “Artists from Venezuela wouldn’t leave Venezuela because the scene was so big. Now, of course, things have changed. Almost every artist has left. It’s actually difficult to go to concerts there because almost nobody goes there.”
She added: “I wasn’t known in Venezuela when I left my country. It’s very difficult to make it out of your country, I think, and for me it has been the opposite since we are all around the world now. So everywhere I go I have a big group of people following since I think I’ve tried to represent the positive things that my country has. Not everything can be negative. I think we have to have light, and I try through my voice and through my concerts to remind people that we also have beautiful things.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Nella’s new album is called Voy, and she is currently touring the United States. Click here for more information and tickets.
