ALICIA RODRIGUEZ

LOVE, LONGING AND MORE: WILL I SING AGAIN

This music is from the second part of my senior project from undergraduate school. Here is the artist statement written May 2020. 

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This semester, and past couple of months, we, as a society, have been pushed out of our comfort zones and systems, forced to abruptly adapt to a new “normal” without any room to move and grow. To be given so much responsibility without control, over our lives was more than we ever expected. I originally intended on doing a show titled Alicia: Live in Concert; I was going to attempt to explore myself as a performer, deepen my connection with my audience, my music and my body. I planned to give a show with some big band pieces, self accompaniment and to explore creating my own music, finally putting some melodies to the many poems I have written, and most importantly create something I love. Circumstances made it so I found myself re-working my creation almost entirely.

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In this work, I attempted to explore an independence in my music that I never needed to before. I very much have always been a creature of habit and where I found myself was more unknown than I was comfortable with. I was used to being a band’s singer, used to sharing the stage with other musicians, used to hiding behind jokes and the ease of putting off a solo project because there was so much else to explore. Because this project was created under times of social-distancing, I was forced to create music almost entirely on my own. 


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Love songs are my favorite. Ever since I was young I loved listening to songs about loving someone so much it hurt, irreversibly messing a relationship up, the magic of your loved one’s smile, the burning pain of the loss of a life, and so on. These songs all explore a different side of loving a person, an experience or a feeling. I found that my love for music and singing changed as I had to create alone and it became very draining to work and I knew that music needed to be shared. The songs in this project are all in dedication to something or someone I love or loved in the past. For example, “Rocket Man” is a song about a bittersweet journey, work ruining your life, but the draw of the stars is too great to resist. This described to me what making this project was like. I loved making the music and singing but it was hard to see and feel the joy at times. At the end of the day, luckily, I did not have to finish alone. About half of these songs have a beautiful piano accompaniment by a fellow classmate Kathrina Davila, who came by my room and helped me feel less alone in my music with her skill and diligence. Another one of these songs is an original piece I worked on with the help of my close friend Juan Carlos Cabrera last semester, and to my surprise, I was able to finish it on my own. The duet in the project is a song that I was able to piece together with my friend Mason Solomon. Thankfully my best friend, Tim Trumpet, was with me to help with sound mixing and editing, and just be there for me through the frustrations of working on music software alone, without much experience. I was able to sing songs about love and did it with the people I love, even during these interesting times where isolation reigns. 

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I dedicate the last song, Landslide, to my Tia Ada, my violet in the sky, always protecting me.

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