Ilana Armida – Music Comes Alive Through Movement (Interview)

Life goes on and Time, free as a bird, flies by so fast, you cannot catch the present moment

Everything is on a movement, mindset, living, love, and you can’t take anything for granted

Excepted maybe the Freedom you feel, when you let yourself go along some sweet music

Dancing making you feel alive again.

Sweet Freedom is the latest single from Ilana Armida‘s EP, “Iridescent Flower Child” out now, and available here.

For this occasion we’ve had the pleasure to chat with her along the following interview!

INTERVIEW

Before going down to the interview, I’ll start off by saying that we have a point in common: we both stress on tackling the music industry on multiple aspects in order to gain a fuller understanding of things:

Thanks so much and yes, that is awesome. I love the blog thanks again for the interview!

1) You’re a full performer, skilled for dancing and singing. Sounds So Beautiful has been involved in the music scene and being close to the dancing scene too, so we know great things can be created when dancers and musicians gather. According to you, what would be the greatest collaborations you could envision between professional dancers and musicians?

Yes, I love to see music come alive through movement.

I think the greatest collaboration ever would be an Nsync reunion featuring me and my dancers along with Bruno Mars and his dancers performing an uptempo song while Pink swings from above singing harmonies and a hologram of Micheal Jackson moonwalks across the stage.

2) How are you picturing your next shows in Los Angeles in your eyes and your mind? For instance, a beautiful song, such as Sweet Freedom, how would you play it or rearrange it live?

I am in the process of putting a band together out here in LA as well as working with some amazing dancers. The show will be very theatrical and colorful.

I am excited to showcase this work!

3) The colors and the imagery is quite important in your universe. What do you wish to communicate your audience with your image? What do you want people to catch and remember from you?

I am simply trying to express what I think and feel through my music, style, and visuals.

I want people to be able to relate and feel like it is okay to be different.

4) You went to Florida Atlantic University’s Commercial Music Business program, recorded your EP in your closet, before a professional engineering and mastering.
How much do you feel you’ve grown as a musician since Florida’s program?

I have definitely improved as a singer but also since college I have been able to hone in on who I am as an artist and really create music that is genuinely me.

5) Running an ambitious project such as the recording of an EP, then moving to LA can be stressful. How do you handle it?

It is stressful but being able to do what I love everyday and the project being received so positively makes it all worth it.

I make sure I take time out of my day to relax and unwind…usually something involving food…specifically nachos.

6) Your clip for Pretend recalled some feel-good vibes from King of Pop’s sister, Janet Jackson. Has she been an inspiration for you? If not who then?

Janet was a huge influence on “Pretend“while I was working on production I had her early 2000s stuff in mind.

I am also inspired by other singer/performers like TLC, Aaliyah, Brun and Justin Timberlake.

7) Tell us about your songwriting process, the ideas for your harmonies and rhythms, the writing of your lyrics.

My song writing process is always different.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to write a song and sometimes it takes me 3 years.

I’ve written to already produced beats before but I also pull melodies out of thin air and work with producers to build around my ideas.

It all depends on how I feel and what inspires me.

8) Finally, what can you tell us about the making of the video for Sweet Freedom and the vision for its creation?

The making of Sweet Freedom was so much fun.

I worked closely with the videographer Ben Johnson to come up with the concept.

Like my video for “Pretend“, we wanted to create colorful visuals that were aesthetically pleasing and created something entertaining to go along with the music.