Interview by Carol Wright | Photographer: Alice Plati
Our Editor-In-Chief got to hop on the phone and chat with singer/songwriter Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez about growing up in a musical family and her debut album If They’re Mine.
When did you first discover your singing voice?
So both of my parents are musicians, and my brother as well, he produced the record, and we grew up making music all the time. Both of my parents were fortunate enough to figure out how to make their lives as artists, and we actually just digitized some old family videos and there’s a video from when I’m, like one and a half, and my mom is improvising singing and my dad’s playing guitar and we’re all just dancing in a circle in the living room making music together. So it really was more just always what was going on for me.
I think I tried a bunch of different instruments and singing was always just, it just was what I loved to do. I think I picked up and put down like five different instruments, and so I just always did it. And then, you know, as I got older, it just became clearer and clearer that that’s what I wanted to then move into the world doing. But it wasn’t necessarily one moment, you know, it’s really just an accumulation of context and then choice, but also context, in a big way.
Going along with that, because you grew up around music, did you discover a certain process when it came to your songwriting or creating songs?
So I mean, I think that because I grew up in this, not only musical but also sort of Avant-garde musical context and everyone was doing it and I’m the youngest in the family. So I think sort of a combination of factors that I’ve rebelled by needing to do my own thing, you know, and I’m also an Aquarius which I think plays into it, but I was like, cool, cool, cool, everybody plays piano, awesome, but I need to go and figure out a way to be in a relationship with this on my own.
So I think that’s a part of my songwriting and then my dad is also a poet so there’s also this marriage of verbal and lyrical expression and musical expression that combine in me. I think a part of it was, I was like I just need to, carve out a little corner inside of this musical world, that’s just mine. So at 12, or 13, I just was at the piano, writing my own little songs, and at that point, there was no process, you know what I mean, it was just, it was just a relationship, it was just, a joyful, safe space to be, and then as I’ve gotten older, now I have more of a process, but the process originates in this sort of therapeutic way of just expression and safety and catharsis and processing the world around, like my life experiences and my emotions and that’s still the core of my process.
You’re saying, as young as 12 you were already creating your own songs and it wasn’t a process, per se, but when you decided to pursue music professionally, and really say, okay, this is my choice, I’m going to make music. Did you ever use your family as a sounding board?
I don’t think it was so much like a what do you think, you know? I think that when I was living at home they would hear the songs all the time and we also all collab. I think that they’ve been a part of, and they’ve been close up to this part of my life forever, based on just at first its proximity, and someone was always playing the piano, and then my parents have both been, everyone’s been so supportive, which is so beautiful.
Then as I’ve gotten older, the collaborations deepen. So in making this album, for example, my brother’s a producer, so he was the main partner in terms of the sonic world, and my mom came in and she was the coach in the studio, really helping me get into the performance of the lead vocals, and, you know, listening to mixes and masters, we all, you know, listened together. So I definitely turn to them for their expertise, you know, at this stage of the game, I think more than I did, probably, when I was younger.
‘Better For You’ talks about objectification and being under the male gaze. When you were making the song were you pulling inspiration from current events or things you were hearing online when you wrote it?
I mean, I will say that I think it’s such a beautiful moment, I mean it’s such an intense moment to be alive, and to be witnessing all of this surfacing of things that have been true for so long. It’s such a powerful time, whether it be, you know, the Me Too movement, or BLM or any of these truths that have existed for so long, but the truth has just been denied. So in that way, I think it’s such, there is so much coming through with it all at all times, like, consciously or unconsciously in that way. But this song, you know, I wrote this song in the summer of 2017, at a residency, like, all in one night. I just sat down at the piano in the studio and wrote it.
I think as a songwriter, it’s really a combination of, it’s like collecting. I collect impressions, but mostly unconsciously, but I also collect impressions from my life, and I think there’s this magic, there’s this magic balance between the personal and the collective, right, and I think in a great song, we really feel that magic, and we feel this thing of like, Wow, that is so true to this person, clearly, but that’s also so true to me and these other people. There is this magic between the person and the collective, which I think comes from this collection of impressions like I’m saying, and I think I’ve come to feel like if I’m experiencing it, probably other people are, too, you know?
So, that’s a long answer for saying, like, no, I didn’t set out with saying, like, I really want to make a song about X, Y, and Z. It didn’t start from the top down in that way, I didn’t have a title before I had the song, you know, it really came from the bottom up, and then I was like, Oh, shit, like, this is surfacing. It’s really this process of writing and then saying, Oh, this is surfacing. And it wasn’t until I started to play the song out in the world that I really realized how it resonated. I didn’t really, I didn’t know until I started to play it for people. And I think that that process of recognition is so powerful for both of us, for everyone involved in that moment of like, yes, this is true, this is an experience I’ve had. Which is also what’s happening in movements, right, it’s like this affirming of experience and how powerful that is to make change and, you know, shift the conversation.
We’ve been living through these very weird times, of course, and luckily, now things are really looking up, but during the pandemic, have you had to rethink the way you interact with your listeners and your audience? And have you seen social media play a role in that?
Yeah, I mean, definitely. I think, you know, of course at the beginning, that was everything, you know, that was everything, that was like how we were staying connected with each other. I much prefer connection in real-time with another human body in space, and I think that most of us do, but I think that I grapple with my comfort level on social media in general and so I think that that’s a larger conversation about this time. Like, just internet persona, in general, is complicated, I think. For example, we’re doing a release concert, and we decided to do it as a Livestream. Even though the city is opening up. I wouldn’t have thought to have done that before the pandemic, but now I’m like, Oh, well, I can actually invite people from all over to come and I can make it available for two days and I can actually now offer this to a much wider group of people than doing a New York show, which I hope to do a bunch of. So I think in that way, and I know a lot of artists who are doing these pre-recorded shows out of safety, but also I think that they’re probably opening different doors. So yeah, I think that there are challenges and also great benefits in this tech and these advances in that way.
Did you find anything about the experience was a bit different because you spent so much more time being at home? Or did creating the album serve as a nice outlet for you during the pandemic?
When the pandemic hit, we had, I would say, we were like 75% done with the record, and I was really grateful for that, actually, because we still had a chunk of work to do. And, you know, we ended up making some on the fly adjustments, like we were going to go into the studio with this group of singers for “40 days,” that came out the second single, and we ended up having everyone send us recordings, and that, you know, that was a little bit of a different production process. So I was really grateful for that because we had a chunk of work to do but we also had done a lot too, you know. We weren’t starting from scratch when it hit, I think that that would have been more disorienting. I knew what my tasks were. And so in that way, I’m really grateful just for where we were at with the project.
I think that my brother and I, I think we might have done one more, we don’t live together, so I think we did one more in-person work session, maybe last summer for a couple of days, but really, we finished production remotely. And so, I mean, with everything this year, it’s like, our listening had to be that much more in-depth or, like, you know, we mixed the whole thing remotely, and mastered the whole thing remotely, and so it brought us into, I think, a relationship with our listening that was just even more in-depth because I’m listening to him produce, we’re sitting in the sessions together every time but really listening to different subtleties. And so I think in that way, that was just an interesting process to be doing such detailed work during this time. And I think, it was just little by little, it was like, who knows when we’re, you know, like, let’s just do our best, let’s just like, stay on it and keep doing our best and then we’ll figure out the rule that when we figure it out, you know, let’s not pressure ourselves with when this has to get done, but let’s do our best and stay committed every day and that’s what we did.
It has been really interesting to hear people say they have completed full albums not even in person.
Yeah I mean, what would happen is we would make a couple of changes, you know, that I thought I was like was getting a pretty good estimation on my good headphones, and then he would just export me, and then we would just do this. He would export me things, every couple edits, so that I could really listen. So it was really a decision that we could have made in person much more quickly, because we’re listening, we’re hearing the same exact thing. You know, it was more involved and slower, but I think, you know, we all have risen to the occasion of this time, and just slowing down in all ways.
What advice would you have for aspiring musicians?
For me, music is, like I said, it’s where I work things out, you know what I mean? It’s where I process, it’s where I organize chaos. So I think that the first thing I would say is to keep deepening your relationship to the music and that’s, you know, that’s really what I’m devoted to. So I would say, continue to deepen yourself in the craft, and to always stay in relationship with the music first, you know. I think it’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and like, what can music do for me? How can music move me forward in the world or something? But I think really, really, really staying in relationship with the music first and foremost, is the most important thing, because we see people quick to rise all the time. We live in a culture right now where it’s like, people are getting famous every other day. So, you know, it’s confusing and I think a part of where I’m coming from is that I’ve seen two parents who are in their mid-60s and are still just making music because they need to and they love to. So for me, I’m like, it’s the long game and I think that’s so important. Why are you doing this? And to stay in a relationship with the music first and foremost. I think that there’s business advice to give for sure, but I also think that that’s what I want to say.