NY Diary #4 - Music and the City
If, while you are drinking a Mojito at the Zinc Bar in West Village, you stop with your glass halfway to your mouth because, from the stage, a sweet and powerful voice captures you completely, it is probably Gina Gonzalez singing.
Gina is half Californian half Mexican. I think she took her radiance from both cultures.
When she speaks, air comes from her mouth aplenty, but she uses only a part of it to express words. And so every sound of her voice is accompanied by a soft breath, like the pipes of Pan. While we are having a drink in the show break, I take the opportunity of asking her some questions for the IMT Blog.
NL: What's the idea behind your music?
GG: The idea was to gather musicians whom I had worked around and I heard mostly play in jazz clubs, lounges, world and rock music venues like the Zinc Bar, Birdland, SOB’s, Pete’s Candy Store. I knew if I had the type of musicians who could interpret easily, it’d be a free-flowing ride. So here we are, some Jazz/World musicians playing Folk Rock Jazz: Gina and the HaHas.
NL: What do you think about the New York music scene?
GG: New York is great in that every music genre that you jump into seems to have it’s own world constantly fizzing. Whether it’s the Jazz cats or the Brazilians, the folky folks, the rock groups, or even the modern classical players. When I appear at any of the various venues that would hold such music varieties, there seems to be a rotation of musicians who all know each other and continue to form groups with the fellow musicians within their genre or even outside of their own, inevitably creating some pretty cool crossovers.
NL: Does the City inspire you?
GG: New York is inspirational. Sometimes I realize it has affected me in ways that I wasn’t aware of initially. For instance, the engineer who mastered our album at Capitol Records in CA made a note about the music sounding very “New York”. At first I wasn’t sure what he meant, but later I heard it was mostly referring to the eclectic sound opposed to the linear brighter sounds of many of the LA groups he had worked with. Ultimately, I suppose anywhere we reside clearly affects us whether we know it or not. I know that for me, I absorb things when I can find that space in NY like the undisturbed rooftop high up somewhere, or the quieter looping blocks way West in the village, or that favorite spot in central park that seems to be less populated, that holds the silence I crave for here and there. And yet, even as I search for these places, I can still hear and sense the energy that sits right behind them. And anytime you want to jump back in, it’s right there. That moment is when I can feel I’m moving along with NY and that NY type of solitude is usually when the music ripens. Gina’s words about NY feel very close to my relationship with the city and I would like to probe further into it, but the lights go out again and Gina has to continue her show. I’m about to finish my drink, but there’s nothing I can do, from the stage, a sweet and powerful voice paralyses me with the glass halfway.
Nick Landucci
