Carla Morrison: Studying All The Time

It is no secret that Mexico is the most important music market in Spanish and also one of the largest. Wherever you look, there will always be an artist drawing attention to your region and genre. However, something that shares the entire Aztec territory is his predilection for the new divas of the Mexican song.

For more than 15 years, everyone has seen artists such as Ely Guerra , Julieta Venegas , Natalia Lafourcade or Ximena Sariñana , but the relay generation also has something to say and who leads the movement is a Baja California girl with a Clear vision of the music industry and with Do It Yourself as a working motto.

We speak of Carla Morrison, an original composer from Tecate who already has 3 EPs and 2 LPs, with a positive attention from world music critics. His album Amor Supremo (2015) received a rating of 8.0 in the specialized portal Pitchfork . The Grammy Awards Academy, both in the United States and Latin America, has nominated her on several occasions, winning 3 statuettes.

Today we prepare a profile on the Mexican singer exploring her beginnings, her style, her albums and her collaborations with other artists, which have earned her the worldwide recognition of being one of the most important voices of alternative music in her country and throughout Latin America .

Carla Morrison has always been tied to the arts, even though she has always been very shy. She has revealed that although she practiced dance, crafts, drawing and reading poetry, she was always very passionate about singing.

Despite having a prodigious voice, Morrison says he used to sing secretly, because he was too shy to show his gift in public. Then he was losing his fear of practice and his participation in high school concerts.

At age 17 he moved to Phoenix to finish high school and music was already a fundamental part of his life. Although he wanted to study music at the University of Arizona College of Music , Morrison chose to return to his native Tecate, Baja California, where he formed two bands: Revolver and Zombras .

With the latter they had a much wider tour but there was a problem: they were a cover band. The members of the band wanted to go on tour around Mexico playing covers, something Morrison did not feel good and decided again to return to Phoenix, because he needed his musical preparation was more polished. There he began to study music at Mesa Community College , where he wanted to learn to play guitar and keyboard, as well as debug his vocal techniques.

This trip lasted very little. Morrison left school after failing several classes. It turns out that these qualities had been learned by ear, something that was inconceivable to his strict teachers, who said that if he did not learn theory and solf, he could not succeed in the world of music. Three Latin Grammys afterwards and multiple nominations in both the Latin and Anglo, little seems to matter that Carla does not know anything about theory and solfeo.

Also it is necessary to mention that during its return to Arizona it appeared in different local of the city and was receiving some attention by the premises. There he met Nick Kizer and Nichole Petta , two musicians with whom he joined the Babaluca project, which not only won the Best Indie Bands award in Arizona in 2008, but shared a stage with artists such as Kinky and Babasónicos . With Babaluca , he published an album of acoustic sessions and was about to present an LP but decided to resume his solo career.

In 2009 she debuted with Aprendiendo a Aprende EP , a material she produced, which was reissued the following year and began to set the stage for the success of Tú Tú Dormías ... (2010), EP produced by Natalia Lafourcade with which she received her First Latin Grammy nomination.

Influential Mexican musicians Juan Manuel Torreblanca and Andres Landón were in charge of the production of Déjenme Llorar , their melancholy first long-lasting work, that made it triumph in the musical panorama and in the Latin Grammys. Disc number 1 in sales in Mexico in its launch year and certified as Platinum disc after exceeding 60,000 sales in Mexico and the same amount worldwide.

In 2013 he premiered Playing in Serio , a 5-track EP that includes best-quality re-recorded versions of his first EP tracks, such as " Pan Dulce" or " Yo Sigo Aquí" .

After a break of several years, the singer rented a house in Playas de Tijuana, to the north of Mexico, where she spent eight months brewing her successful album Amor Supremo with the same team from her previous musical work. Thus was born his first work in arriving at number 1 in the list of Latin Pop Albums of Billboard , although it did not pass of the position 15 in Mexico.

When it has touched her to describe her own music, Carla has said that she does pop concrete alternative minimalist rock . In Let Me Cry , his music is transmitted through the melancholy of the acoustic guitar and the string arrangements, with small appearances of rather simple and mostly lofted percussions, while Supreme Love is a more worked album (he spent 8 months recording ), Where the guitar goes to the background and the sound of synthesizers, drum machines and electronic pads reign, created a musical framework closer to the music of artists like Björk , Lykke Li or Florence + The Machine but with their personality.

Part of the great success that Carla has had is due to the content of her lyrics. The nickname "Mexican Adele" has won him not only for his great voice, but by the way it portrays their heartbreaks through their issues. This was a theme on his album Let Me Cry , but for Supreme Love he also wanted to explore and go beyond the happy and sour relationships, singing to his mistakes, flirting and good times.

Often Carla has been compared to Natalia Lafourcade and Ximena Sariñana , two Mexican singer-songwriters who have also given much to talk about. This does not seem to bother Morrison in the least, because in an interview he said: " To compare me with Natalia [ Lafourcade ] seems more a compliment than an offense because he is a person who has always guided and inspired me. That makes me laugh more. On the other hand I feel that we live in a very macho country where no one would think to compare two men but two or more women. It's very low, we feed that macho monster that lives in the country . "

An independent artist

In interviews, Morrison has always made it clear why he prefers to work as an independent artist. For her, this new generation of artists responds to their own concerns. "It's a community that makes us stand up for our message [...] there are a lot of bands that have a lot to offer but do not fit with what society or industry says they have to be. We are a generation that we do not want bosses. We want to put things on the table and propose and say ' These are us, this is what we are talking about, we are different, but we are' and I believe that we are as tough, very rebellious and from there many have been influenced. At the end of the day, there is no perfect formula for being an artist. Art has a thousand forms and it is always special to share it for any other rare "commented a few months ago in an interview .

This passion for running her own project led her to take a management course to run her own businesses, as well as read a bunch of Music Business books. On this he commented in another interview that " It is difficult, but at the end of the day I like to know that I have the helm of my project, and I can decide with which graphic designer I work, with what person who makes typography, or what message I want to send . It makes me smarter and I like it because it's like studying, I'm studying it all the time . "

Although he says he has been tempted to sign with a big label, and then offers should not be missed, he has resisted after listening to several " horror stories" of other artists who have gone through the worst experiences. However, with his latest album he did have an important distribution contract to get his music a little further than before.

True to its style, Morrison can boast of being a freelance artist nominated several times to the Grammys, using mainly his own knowledge and the internet, an important part to make his music known.

Since early in his career, Morrison has been no stranger to being near the gold of the most important awards in the music industry.

His Latin Grammy run began in 2011 with the EP While You Sleeps ..., which received a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album . His success in the ceremony soon arrived, the following year with his breakthrough LP Déjenme Llorar , Baja California would take the awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Alternative Music Song , as well as being nominated in the categories of Best Album of the Year and Best Song of the Year .

In 2016 he would return to the ceremony with his second LP, Amor Supremo , receiving nominations in the category of Best Alternative Music Album and Best Alternative Music Song , in which he triumphed for the song " Vez Primera" .

In the Anglo-Grammys edition, he accumulated a couple of nominations for Déjenme Llorar (2013) and Amor Supremo (2017) in the category Best album of rock, alternative music or Latin urban music, but did not pick up the gramophone in any of the two.

Around 2009, she added a great voice to sing with her in her first EP Learning to Learn , from where the song " Pajarillo del Amor" is sung, with a duet with Natalia Lafourcade.

For the following year, she lent her voice to the theme " Beneath my tongue" , extracted from the album Otra Cosa by Julieta Venegas , with whom she would collaborate again in 2012 on the theme " A birthright" , theme inspired by the student movement -citizen # YoSoy132, who actively protested against, at that time presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto . There, he added his voice to that of artists like Juan Manuel Torreblanca , Alan Ortíz of the band Vicente Gayo , Madame Récamier , among others, in addition to repeat credits with Lafourcade .

2012 was a significant year for Carla , not only was she consecrated with her first material of long duration, but also collaborated with established artists like Leon Larregui , Enrique Bunbury , Gepe or the great Juan Gabriel , with whom she sang a duet with the theme " Yo se That is in your heart, " of the album Los Dúo 2 , in addition to emerging artists such as Nina Diaz or Teri Gender Bender ( Les Butcherettes ).

Already in 2013, with the look of the industry turned towards her, she played on two of the most important bands in Mexican history: La Sonora Santanera and Los Ángeles Azules . He also returned the favor to Leonel Garcia ( Sin Bandera ), with whom he sang his hit "Déjenme Llorar", collaborating in his reversion of one of the most important songs of Sin Bandera , " Qué Lloro" , included in the album All Mias .

In 2014 he sang at the MTV Unplugged of Kinky the theme " Where are the Dead? " And returned to collaborate with Enrique Bunbury (" Sea of ​​Dudas" ) in a remembered concert in the city of Madrid. With him he would return to work to record his third collaboration, this time in the MTV Unplugged of the singer from Zaragoza, where they reversed the song " Because Las Cosas Cambian" from the album Hellville de Luxe (2008) from Bunbury . Also intervened in the subject " Adelante ", of the acclaimed album Caotic Beauty of the Colombian Esteman .

In 2016 he made his first two featurings with Anglo artists. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis used it on the track " The Train" from their album This Unruly Mess I've Made (2016), while the band Calexico invited her to participate in their album Edge of the Sun.

His most recent collaboration is in the theme " Que Se Mueran de Envidia" by Dani Martín for the plate La Montaña Rusa , edited this year by the lead singer of El Canto del Loco as soloist, as well as the song " Anonymous" with Los Pericos .

This is the name of the executive producer created by Morrison in 2013, which helps the development of new independent artists in Mexico. The project is only growing, but has already supported the release of artists who are slowly making their way in the Mexican music scene as Jandro and the band Ramona , both from Tijuana, in addition to the Chilean Mariel Mariel .

Their help consists of promotion plans and even project financing, all under the Do It Yourself philosophy. Carla has also taken some of these artists to open their tour. Basically it consists of lending money to develop their musical career, and to return it without limit of time through what they collect on tours and royalties.

Her decision to create this producer is because she believes that there is a lot of talent without attention out there and, just as Leonel Garcia and Natalia Lafourcade gave her support in the beginning, she needs to reciprocate this help with other artists.