Singer, composer and producer Sofía Rei grew up in Buenos Aires, where her musical education began in the classical world. As a child, she sang in the children’s choir at the Teatro Colón and imagined she might become an opera singer.
But somewhere along the way, she discovered jazz.
She told me, “I wanted to be an opera singer. I followed that path for quite a while, then realized, ‘Okay, that’s not me.’ I discovered jazz along the way and improvisation, became really, really interested in developing those skills, and that’s the reason why I moved to the US.”
Rei came to study at the New England Conservatory and eventually settled in New York, where she became an accomplished singer, composer and educator, and an in-demand collaborator.
But something else happened after she left Argentina. From a distance, she began to hear the music she had grown up around differently.
“Along the way, I reconnected with traditional music from Argentina that I grew up listening to,” she said. “South American music in particular became something that was very important to the music that I was creating. I really feel the soul of my music is there.”
For years, Rei found ways to bring together her classical training, the freedom and improvisation she had absorbed from jazz, and the traditional music of South America. Then she started craving another set of sounds.
“I grew up listening to both acoustic music but also electronic music, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait. I’m craving for these other sounds that are just not present,’” she explained.
She started experimenting with delay pedals, loopers and effects processors. Eventually, those tools became an increasingly important part of her musical language, an approach she calls Folk and Futurism.
“This folk and futurism concept started to be the easiest way I found to sort of describe the connection between electronic music, because a lot of what we are doing is electronic music. Even though we are also using traditional instruments, the core of the production is electronic,” she explained.
Her 2021 album Umbral pushed decisively into that territory. And on her new album, Antónima, the technology moves even closer to the center of the music.
But this time, Rei also wanted to bring other voices into the process: women from across Latin America who, she realized, were conducting similar musical experiments of their own.
Interestingly, that realization began in the classroom. Rei teaches at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, where she created a course on contemporary Latin American music.
“I started building playlists for my students and one of them was, like, contemporary voices of Latin America… and one day I looked, and they were all women,” she recalled
“Everybody was navigating these waters and I’m like, ‘Wow, I should do something with them, because we are searching in different ways. We’re searching in a similar direction.’”
Antónima features Gaby Moreno, Daymé Arocena, Mireya Ramos, Xenia Rubinos, Las Áñez, Mariana Baraj, Charo Bogarín and Juana Luna.
And the exchange between Rei and her students goes both ways.
Teaching young songwriters has forced her to listen to music she might not otherwise have encountered and reconsider some of the priorities she absorbed during her own conservatory education.
“I really had to open my ears and pay attention and find what was appealing to them so that I could help them create the best music they could,” she said.
“It was an eye-opener for me. And I think it influenced quite a lot also my own music… I think it influenced my own records.”
Her new album, Antónima, is out now on GroundUP Music.
Listen to the full conversation here on The Third Story podcast.
Sofia will perform at Instituto Cervantes on September 17, and as part of Vocal Gumbo — hosted by Janis Siegel and Lauren Kinhan — at Drom on September 27.
You can find all of Sofía’s upcoming shows at www.sofiamusic.com
