Quito artist Emi Valencia: “It’s hard work to get ahead with your music, it’s quite a challenge”

Emi Valencia confesses that she started studying music and psychology at the University of San Francisco de Quito at the same time in 2018. But she didn’t really know the artistic world. got a project, i had no songs, but it was life that told me to go there, that’s your way.

The 25-year-old singer lives in Tumbacoexplains that he wanted to devote himself completely to music when the pandemic hit of COVID-19. It was at that time of confinement, when he had time to devote himself to activities that he could not do before. Suddenly he realized that he loved to compose and create songs, so he took the opportunity to take a break from his studies in psychology, which he eventually dropped, to devote himself to music. He feels that he experienced very beautiful moments in the process of making unpublished music, such as to find itself through composition. It hasn’t stopped since then.

The genre he personally argues with the most is jazz, so artists like the British alpha fog, they “move” it. It has three great referents when it comes to seeing and feeling music: Argentinians Luis Alberto Spinettaa very important figure to her because of the scope of her work, Mercedes Sosa, a woman who resonates with him throughout; and the Australian band Hiatus Kaiyotewhich I love to listen to. His music does not yet have a well-defined genre. “There they tell me, it’s kind of soul, it’s R&B, it’s folk.” She always uses her guitar when composing, “if I were to delve into genres like electronica, I would show a completely different side of myself and the way I make music”.

The concert he offered with Camila Pérez at Casa Cino Fabiani Last Friday, June 16, he set his time for the first time on the stages of Guayaquil. “We encourage ourselves with Julián Velasco, who is my manager and my drummer. He suggested I play in Guayaquil and we were looking at possibilities for spaces and especially alliances. It was very nice to meet Cami, that she received us in such a warm way and opened the doors for us”. Valencia claims to be very grateful to Pérez for providing him with a space and his audience, and You want to continue reaching more cities in the country.

His work team is growing little by little, the band he has been playing with for a year now consists of Andrés Araúz (keyboards), Ganesha Córdova (bass) and Velasco (drums). Behind the scenes, he works with producers Raúl Molina and Felipe Andino, with whom He is currently recording his first EP (no name yet), which will be released in the coming months.

The first single which he officially released in 2022 with the title Three Manuelashas more than 2000 reproductions on Spotify. With this single he won a contest in Pichincha prefecture, which called for female composers and consisted of creating a song about the battle of Pichincha. Valencia says he did extensive research before creating the song and later composed it with Martín Balseca.

It has a theme titled Mountain range which is available on YouTube, that is one collaboration with Radio Cocoa. She says that the content director, Juan Sebastián Jaramillo, attended her first concert as a soloist and loved her presentation so much that the next day contacted her to give her a spot in the section on solid ground, who proposes to give emerging female musicians a place in the country.

In the future, he would like to experiment with rapping and continue to incorporate jazz elements into his songs. He has given concerts in Ibarra, he has performed at the festival against current in the capital, and plans to sing in the city of Cuenca in the coming months.