Music Lake had the pleasure to interview Analia Lentini, a Guitarist and Music Composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. To learn more about this artist, watch her Interview with Dani Tadmori.
Complete Interview Q&As with Analia Lentini
Hi everyone and welcome, here at Music Lake Radio we are Interviewing artists from around the world. Today we have a special artist from Argentina, she is a young music composer and a guitar player. Allow me to introduce Analia Lentini. Thank you for being with us today on Skype, our viewers and listeners are excited to know and be with you today in this special interview. Analia’s native language is Spanish, so she will be answering my questions in Spanish and we shall have captions for our viewers to understand the translation. Hi Analia, Thanks for being with me today.
Can you please introduce yourself and let us more about you?
My name is Analia Lentini I am an Argentinian composer and guitarist since past few years ago and I am currently working on a project called Nebuloso. At this moment we are five members of the group working on experiments related to the sounds of the environment. We use music to express what we carry inside us.
Can you tell us more about your passion for Music?
The music always came with me. Since I was little I always felt very close to it, always very influenced by sounds while searching from anything musical. In my house there was an old keyboard that my mother used as a child because she had studied a little, she never dedicated herself professionally to the music but the instrument was there. After a while I asked my father to buy me a guitar around the age of eight or nine years. Since then I started playing the guitar, learning in a self-taught way until I finished my studies at school. Then I decided that music had to be my profession and I had to be dedicated to it because I really could not think of anything else to do with my life. That’s the truth.
You play the guitar, you also play with as part of a band with our musicians playing other instruments. Can you tell us more about your work as part of the band?
At this moment or really always, I compose music using the guitar . I compose everything that I can using the guitar. In the group we are now two classical guitarists, playing classical guitar. We also have an electric guitar that mostly performs effects, sounds like atmosphere very little melodic line and also now we have a pianist who brings something different and also percussion, and drums. The percussionist performs environment effects with instruments that produce sounds of rain, of thunder, all these instruments made in bamboo cane. At the moment we are a group of five people.
How do you create music? What process do you use and do you use the guitar to compose?
I always say that my music, the songs that I compose are but a long improvisation that at some point take a structure and then become songs. Generally I begin to create the music from the harmonic then I add the melodies. It can happen that there is a melody that plays in my head that is born and arises perhaps from nothing or from something that I listened to previously and that perhaps it harmonizes but mostly is the reverse, the harmony first, then the melody and then all arrangements that may arise based on that.
When I listen to your music, I could tell the origin of it as being Argentinian, but I could also tell it was modern. How to do maintain this originality while staying within your roots.
No, going back to what I said a moment ago everything starts from an improvisation so it’s not all very thoughtful, obviously that one always speaks based on the language one manages and I think that music is a language and that is why one uses his own tools. You either have what you’ve heard, what you play in your instrument, what you like, what you do not like many times too. I think that what you say that you hear a lot of the Argentine sound is because I was born here, I grew up here and it is inevitable that this is because it is part of my language. I do not do it in a conscious way. It simply arises and the classics also come up I believe because I had an academic formation of almost ten years.
I don’t know much about the origin of your music, can you tell us more about some of the legendary and classic musicians that influenced you and made you who you are today?
Yes, I can name several, probably the first ones that come to my head are Astor Piazzolla who is a tango (Tango to say it somehow) Argentine and Paco de Lucia these would be the two references of mine maybe, the first ones that come to my head.
Being a young artist, you must be exposed to commercial pop music, tell us what kind of music Analia listens to other than guitar?
I’m always inclined to look musically backwards, for example if I have to name a rock band I name Led Zeppelin. Perhaps more current Gorilaz do not know, perhaps truly present nothing at all. But well those would be maybe two examples I can give you.
Who are your favorite singer and songs from the International scene?
This is more complicated for me because I usually lean more musically towards the instrumental. Having to think about a singer I can think of Johnny Cash that is not current either. Yes, at this moment I can not think of another.
Your Album “Nebuloso” has so many good tracks, which one you connect with and like the most?
I would tell you now, one of the last songs I recorded that is called Chip. That would be one of the songs that I like the most as it also remains and how it sounds and also one of the songs that most represents me. That would be my “favorite” theme.
Your track “El Chino” from your Album sounds like Traditional Japanese/Chinese Music. You have substituted the traditional instruments with the guitar in a creative way, tell us more about this track?
That piece was actually created for a work of harmony that I was doing for my Conservatory. After starting to compose it I started to like what was left and the composing tools that were used were all Asian scales to call them in some way. In reality here in America the original people also used similar type of scales that were created from there. It sounds like that and therefore the name also refers to those sounds.
Your Music is so good and almost perfect for a movie soundtrack, have your music ever been used in movies/films?
Not yet. At first after recording was my first idea because I also perceive that what arises musically has a lot to do with the visual. It is still my idea that at some point there is something like this. In fact, I always send my recorded music material to audiovisual producers, in a way I’m always in search of that. I consider that my music serves to musicalize images. It is a search that I always do and at some point I hope something like this happens.
What are you working on right now, and what are your future projects?
Actually we are playing a lot live here in Buenos Aires. There is perhaps, as we are now beginning to work a stipulated work agenda, we are taking advantage of the opportunities that are emerging and everything that appears we will try to use it. The idea is to grow in the musical realm and to dedicate ourselves fully to it.
What are you working on right now, and what are your future projects?
The greatest achievement is to record new albums, Also listen to what has been recorded and try to always find things I would like to do differently. I also like to work on what has already been recorded and try to improve it. The goals are the same as listed a moment ago. That would be to grow and whatever emerges with projects related to music. Honestly, there is perhaps something very structured that I say: I want to get this. It’s just that you have to come up with work and take advantage of it.
What special message do you send to your fans out there?
Well, it would be nice to enjoy our music. They listen to us and nothing else.
Time for the Bonus question, what did we forget to ask you? Feel free to ask yourself a question and answer it?
Actually I do not have much more to say. I’m certainly not a person who talks a lot, so I can not think much of the words or questions. I just appreciate your questions, they seemed very good to me, just that.
Analia Lentini thank you very much for this wonderful interview. I am sure your fans, our viewers and listeners are excited about this interview as much as we are. We hope you keep creating wonderful guitar music for all of us to enjoy. Have a great day!
