PAULA:
Believe it or not but I have spent the last 2 years without almost completely listening to music. I used to listen to music all the time, while I was driving, studying, cleaning… But it suddenly stopped when our mother died. I didn’t want to listen to music at all. Occasionally I did but it felt like forcing myself to eat something I really disliked. Grief can be really weird, I guess…
The good news is that ever since I arrived to Paris and more specifically since I started working on the project again for STL I have started to enjoy music again little by little and it has been a very touching experience.
I don’t have a particular style inspiring me right now, I’m just rediscovering music in general. What I can tell you is I’ve always had a very wide musical taste.
Trip hop is a genre I used to enjoy a lot in the last years. I used to listen to it a lot while doing my PhD (I liked bands like Morcheeba, Hooverphonic, Massive Attack…). Rock music, heavy metal (and many of its subgenres) and punk have always had a place in my heart since I was a teenager (I love very different styles and bands, from Sum 41 to Dream Theater, or Children of Bodom to Bruce Springsteen, just to name only a few and to illustrate their differences). But I also used to listen to all kinds of pop music, jazz, blues, folk music from around the world, disco, funk, bossa nova, reaggae, classical music, film soundtracks (this is the best of all times!) and even some rap and hip hop sometimes.
I tried to learn how to play the piano, the electric guitar and the harmonica… but I failed. I don’t have enough patience for doing music unfortunately. I think my favourite instrument is the blues harmonica.
Some little random and also very different recommendations I love and you reading this might not know:
Le Trio Joubran (Palestine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoiyWTtinbk
Antía Muíño (Galiza): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIX6Ayb8ELc
Rasha (Sudan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdcgc9ot3k&list=PL0-RIuqz2pQFZFy_EXKXgDHaa1DWKdyjj&index=5
Carmen Consoli (Italy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuJjOzGIsv0
Carlos Nuñez (Galiza): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia5Hfp2_EK8
Mariya Takeuchi (Japan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gj47G2e1Jc
Ayax y Prok (Spain): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCe7VFfrh6E
CLARA:
I loooove music, I listen to music all the time: while driving, while drawing, while cooking... I've never had a particular music style that I like above all others. I know I love dancing as well, so any dancy-i sort of song is gonna make its way into my Spotify playlists, but to be honest, a whole different range of other songs make it as well.
If you've been following the project diaries, you'll know that I work in many different things ( I'm an actor, but I work at a cinema as a front of house part time, but I'm also illustrating a children's book... ) So wherever I'm learning lines or filming a selftape I'm not listening to music, but I sure am when I'm preparing to act. I follow some very weird looking exercises (at least to the untrained eye), to warm up my body and voice and I use very different music in every stage of the process (calmer songs at the start and then some real movers and shakers towards the end). When I'm drawing, I listen to pretty much the same music that I listen to when I'm driving, which is a very eclectic mix of pretty much everything.
I was talking to my sister about it the other day, and I think we owe our really broad musical taste to our parents, specially to our mum, who loved music, but not just one style in particular.
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here goes a little taste of some of my favourite songs/styles:
I use this playlist whenever I'm working with words, because it's instrumental, so it helps with not getting distracted by the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qap5aO4i9A
This one is one of those that I have to sing at the top of my lungs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmxSxKxBbQE
Same as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsFnf__JUOw
Some of them are just GOOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJzr1Wcy_s
And these are some of the classics that show up on all of my playlists:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_EVU84Cpx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Ae-LhMIG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlow3LFMdT4
https://youtu.be/4qAzO8FbHn4
https://youtu.be/wDjeBNv6ip0
https://youtu.be/iWOyfLBYtuU
https://youtu.be/2q9_ZEtuTR8
https://youtu.be/vw9pIQCMQfM
Some funkier ones...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHVKb2j6rfc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=01CM8jHzQpI
Some weird ones:
https://youtu.be/bHMYMvgNAZE
And finally, a bit of music that's directly related to me. This was one of the happiest periods in my life, when I used to busk as a day job in Madrid: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUCI4pfq8ZM
All in all, I'm a huge fan of good music, so here's a little bit of an insight... Hope you enjoyed it!