By: Estefanía Romero
Photo: Salvador Bonilla
I love how this interview turned out, because these artists don’t only allow us to know more about their sensibilities, but they are also constantly inviting us to feel fascinated and devoted to life as much as them.
Thana Alexa is a vocalist, composer, arranger and music producer, a Grammy nominated artist who’s caught the attention of the prestigious jazz magazine Down Beat many times because of her innovative compositions. Antonio Sánchez is also a wild creative, considered now one of the top jazz drummers worldwide, and he’s Mexican! He has played in the band of Pat Metheny for a long time, and he composed the music for the movie Birdman (de Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014), among other great achievements as being a four-time Grammy Award winner…
You may read “A Dignified Soundtrack for the New Feminism: ONA” [Album critique]
This couple of intellectual and creative artists is married to one another, and they are always growing together. As Thana Alexa expressed it:
“It’s very inspiring being with someone who is so much in love with music and creativity, as I am. We share the love for music and for finding the parts of ourselves that are still undiscovered and we find support in each other, in our own individual journey that we are both trying to explore, our artistry and we are trying to say all the time. It’s not easy being with an artist in general, but it’s always easy with him. And I think it’s most important, because we have so much respect for each other as artists and as individuals and we are each other’s inspiration. When he’s in the audience, he’s my target audience; and when I’m in the audience I’m his target audience. We inspire each other, but we also challenge each other because we want to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be”.
They study apart and then get together to create…
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s the beautiful thing of the collaboration. We can collaborate together, but we are very individualistic as well. He has his own projects; I have my projects and we both have a very specific vision”, Thana Alexa acknowledges.
They both have strong political statements, which they hold up through their speeches and arts:
“A lot of my work is related around women’s rights, and around trying to lift up women in the industry, in music; and a lot of what he’s doing is around migration, rights for Mexicans and putting Mexico in a better light, especially in the United States. So, we have two very different agendas, but through the music we are always trying to learn of each other and see how we can best express the thing that we want to express”, she added.
Thana Alexa has a unique music style, which is shown in her last album ONA. She is also very young. She explained what led her to sound so particularly:
“I’m Croatian, I’m an American, I have this cultural background, but it’s very different from the regular cultural background from Croatia because I also grew up in the United States. My parents are immigrants, so I didn’t grow in Croatia all the way, half-way, it’s a complicated situation. My music is a product of who I am, it’s a combination of all my experiences, but that also means that my music is not neatly put in a little box, which is difficult in the eyes of the industry and for marketing and branding, it’s difficult because you can’t really pin point what I’m doing. That makes it difficult to sell as a commodity, let’s say”.
“The message of the last album, ONA, really resonated with a lot of people, men and women. It’s the story that makes people connect with you, the music will follow, but it’s the story that is really important, and how you present the story. But it’s hard for artists who have a little bit of everything, a little bit of world music, a little bit of electronics, pop, jazz… you know? It’s a big soup with a lot of ingredients and the world doesn’t like a lot of ingredients because it’s difficult for them to label, so I’m constantly fighting to be who I am”.
“That’s what makes being a true artist the most rewarding, but also the most complicated because you can’t follow a pattern, you can’t follow a recipe, you can’t follow anybody, you just have to go with the thing that you feel inside. Sometimes the way that you feel is the hardest way, but if that’s what you feel inside, you follow it and you go a longer way to get to the final destination, which hopefully will be a positive thing”.
Antonio, besides all his artistry, is also holding the mission to come back to his country to promote education on jazz:
“I used to take every chance I got to come to Mexico and do something educational: workshops, master classes… I’ve always been up to that. Making residencias (music camps) is always intense because it takes a lot of work with the students, but in the end you get great satisfaction of having done something important, knowing that you changed someone’s life is of the nicest things.
“Now I’m doing my own residencia (Residencia Antonio Sánchez). We’ve done two. We’re doing it again next year, in August, which is like moving on with the education train, it shouldn’t be stopped; we must try to raise up the jazz level in every generation, to make people feel less afraid of jazz, to make people less afraid of making a living as jazz musicians. There is always a lot to do, it’s always difficult, but there’s no such a thing as careers that are more difficult than others, you may think “okay, if you are a lawyer or an accountant…”, but nothing guarantees that you’re going to do okay in life. Why not doing something you really like? Vesus risking it doing something you dislike, maybe you’re also not going to make it there. That’s why is so important to preach love on doing something, to give it all: blood, sweat, and tears; soul, body and mind.
I asked Thana Alexa and Antonio to recall their inner child, when this one told them that music was going to be their path. Their answers were of incredible value. Thana Alexa started:
“I found my love for music when I was 4 years old. I started to play the violin and I played for many years. Music was always a part of my life, I was playing the guitar, and singing and writing songs, and playing the violin, but no one in my family was ever a professional artist, nobody. Everybody had this, sort to speak, “a real job”. We have great doctors, lawyers, bankers, we have a lot of people that have done incredible things, but nothing related to art. My mom is really the only one who is related to the arts, because she loves art, mostly performance art, very avant-garde, and she has a small family foundation that gives grants to emerging artists. When I was younger, she had a program, she still has the program that does an exchange between creation artists and arts in New York”.
“She was a banker, she was a real estate agent, but her dream was to be an actress, and she never was an actress because she had to make money and she had to decide to have a job that she could survive with. But she has always loved art and she always loved supporting art. When she already had my brother and me, and she had the time and the space to create this foundation, she started to give more attention to the arts. I think through her I saw a lot of very interesting avant-garde things, but nothing related to music, it was mostly avant-garde performance art, dance, and visual arts”.
“When I first went to college, I was studying psychology, and I had one year of college without music and I was so depressed and I was so miserable, something was really missing in my life. I had one class where I was able to sing. It was a jazz improvisation class. Because I had some music classes that I wanted to take as part of my college, and I was so happy in these two hours that I had this class, every time I had this class, and it started to dawn on me that there’s something that I’m missing, very important, in my life, so obviously I have to go with the feeling that I feel in the space when I’m improvising, where I’m using my voice, which is my emotional expression. So, I made a big life change and I admitted to my parents that I wanted to be a musician, which is of course difficult for any parents, they were supportive, but it was scary. You tell them you want to be a jazz musician and it sounds awful, you know?”.
“I took a leap of faith, and I went to New York. I still finished my psychology degree, this was the deal I had with my parents, I had to finish my psychology degree and I could do music at the same time. I went to a college where I could finish both at the same time. It was the best decision I’ve ever made, then I met Antonio”.
“And then my life changed forever! Everything from the moment I made that decision, when I listened to my inner voice, my inner child, that voice that always speaks the truth to you, everybody has it; and a lot of times the truthful voice that is inside is the one that is telling you to go the harder way, and a lot of times we don’t choose to go that way because it’s hard because the world doesn’t fit or because you don’t fit into the world. But since I took that decision, I’ve tried more and more in my life; since I’ve gotten older, I tell my emotional self to listen to that voice because the voice is not wrong, it might be difficult, but it’s not wrong”.
“That voice led me to ONA, led me to my stories, led me to express things in a truthful way that even though it’s the most difficult way for me to do things, is the correct way”, explained this incredible singer.
Then Antonio started telling us about his beginnings:
“Before I was born, my mom was already listening to really good music, rock and roll, mainly. Since I can remember, there was always music at home. My grandfather used to listen to classical music at lunch, generally; there was always Frank Sinatra, a little bit of boleros, salsa, danzones, and everything that you get to listen when you’re in Mexico, it was everywhere. But it happened really mostly thanks to my mother that I started loving rock and roll”.
“I had the sound in my mind. When I saw the drums for the first time, it happened because of my uncle Nacho’s girlfriend back then, her name was Ana. Ana’s sister was Fito. Fito was a drummer. Since I saw Fito’s drums it was like an immediate crush with the instrument because Fito had every reference to what could be done with; then I listened to her playing and I thought “this is where I belong, let’s do it”. I never looked back. I wanted to play the drums. I had my romances with the piano, with gymnastics, etcetera; but I would always come back to the drums, this is the instrument that gives me all the possibilities to express myself, it’s my way to see things”, he included.
These two talents listen to all kinds of music, “everything aside from reggaeton”, they said while laughing. Antonio doesn’t listen to much jazz lately though:
“We play so much jazz, that sometimes I get away a little and listen to rock, pop, Latin music, electronic, Afro Cuban, African, things that allow me to be inspired to continue do different music”, he commented.
Apart from music itself, these guys are also inspired by many other things. Antonio has mentioned his grandfather, Ignacio López Tarso, in plenty of occasions, since this was not only his grandpa, but also a legend in Mexico, as an actor, starting from his big days at the Golden Era of Mexican cinema. As such, Thana Alexa and Antonio kept on letting us know about their biggest inspirational sources:
“Stories, a good story is everything, it’s the truth, it’s heart and soul…”, she said.
“Yeah, lately documentaries and seeing interesting people. For example, I just saw Coda, a documentary about Ryuichi Sakamoto. It truly inspired me. I had the opportunity to spend some time with him, because when he was making the music for The Revenant (2015), he invited me to record a few things and it was a huge honor being next to him, at the studio. He would give me instructions on what he wanted me to do. I went to his home, and he showed me images of the movie before it was even edited. I saw the documentary and it inspired me to keep experimenting with sound; you can see how he loved sound and how he found ways to do music with sounds; there is a scene where he has cymbals, he goes to the Antarctica and he makes a move in front of an ice wall, and it goes pshhhh, and the sound explodes and you see such a pleasure in his face, just to feel that sound. That happens to me too when I find a sound that I like”, Antonio held.
“And to record something new, something that didn’t exist an hour ago, half an hour ago, and to materialize it, and listen to it is one of those things that fascinate me the most, because I’m very intrigued by them: creation. The creative process is mysterious”, he added.
“Always different”, Thana included.
Finally, Antonio thought about the process of being inspired:
“The interesting fact is that you can be at home, you may be watching TV; or instead, you can go to the piano for 30 minutes and something is going to happen. Sometimes you can feel bad about not being doing it all the time, because you’re wasting opportunities of making things happen; but it’s also important to let it rest and find inspiration in other ways, as Thana said: “stories”, books, novels, movies, documentaries, other music… everything is an inspiration source. As simple as being here, talking to people, other people can be really inspiring, to walk on the beach, to see animals, anything can bring inspiration to you”.