My Zone

Shery

Shery is a talented singer / songwriter from Guatemala. Her debut album ‘ El amor es un fantasma’ has been received positively world wide:

“Mind-blowing love songs in Spanish, passionately performed with a voice that will forever steal your heart” (cdbaby)

How did you feel when you finished your first record?
It feels great! It’s a fantastic sensation having in my hands a record that has so much of myself, the fruit of a whole life of living, feeling and fighting (with myself and with the world), to be able to bring to tangible form all that music and all those feelings that live inside me, in a perennial battle that troubles my life and makes it worth living. I feel somewhat naked and vulnerable, because it’s a very sincere record, impregnated with my soul, where I share a lot of who I am as a human being, as a woman.

To what extend you think your cultural background has influenced your music?
I don’t really know, I love to explore diverse cultures, and I have written songs both in my country as outside. My music is based on feelings and melodies that come from deep inside, from my own shadows, as well as from the things I see and live everyday.
Although as an artist you are never immune to your cultural roots, I’ve been exposed since early childhood to a truly global variety of musical styles, from rock, pop and world, to the immortal music of the grandes maestros. At home my mother used to play, literally all day long, recordings from all over the world, from Brazil to China to the US, Spain, the UK, Mexico… I particularly enjoy Italian music and the 80’s rock in English…

Can you describe the process of writing a song ?
Let’s call this process “inspiration”. For me, it regularly happens when my mind is not busy with other stuff. For example, I typically “receive” songs when I’m driving or doing other repetitive tasks, such as home chores. Usually I start with a complete melody and a strong lead of the lyrics, with a clear feeling of what I like in the arrangement. It just “sounds” in my head. I use my mobile phone to record the idea, which I then develop.
Everyday you go through so many things, some memorable, some apparently not. But as a songwriter you are like a sponge, absorbing anything and everything. What you see, what you hear, smell and taste; what you live, do and think incubates feelings and emotions inside you. And then, at the right moment, it just “comes” to me, and it’s just a matter of mood to decide what kind of song I am going to write. I can also work systematically, though, and under pressure. My first single, for example, was written from start to end in just a few minutes, right before performing it in front of a group of friends. But a song like that must have been hidden inside you, incubating and maturing, for a long, long time.

Are your lyrics personal? like in ‘el amor es un fantasma…
“El amor es un fantasma” (which in English may be translated into something like “Love is a Ghost”), came to me in a moment where love for me was just a ghost. I totally believe in love. We come from love and, hopefully, walk through our lives towards Love. Love is beautiful, gigantesco. But sometimes it’s just impossible, and it hurts. Badly. Specially when you are in love, but in return all you get is a mirage. Probably it’s from the shadows of pain from where I’ve mined the inspiration to write some of my best songs.

Check out En la vida para siempre video by Shery