© Illustration Pao Pestana
Influenced by her Venezuelan roots, Pao’s music builds a picture of this artist’s unique personal relationship with art.
Submitted by Pao Pestana, London
As an artist, singer, and producer based in London for a while now, I make music that honors my Venezuelan roots while mixing in electronic sounds and organic elements to make a more fully formed type of experimental pop.
For me, music was always there. It’s not something that happened consciously; it happened naturally that I wanted to express myself, that I wanted to write, and that melodies came to me. I guess that the natural course of it was that it was going to become my career, or I was going to find a way to make it part of my life because it was a natural journey for me. Art, in general, has always been very present in my life. My family is quite artistic, so arts were just a way to communicate and a natural thing in my house.
I think everyone is an artist, to be honest. This is what I believe. We are all creators; it’s just a
matter of deciding to follow your creativity and let it take you away. I guess that’s the way it happened to me. I also did drama back in Venezuela, and I studied mass communications. I’ve been in love with acting since a very young age; it was just a part of the expression of being an artist or being who I was. What I loved about music is that it’s something that depends on you. You can do it all by yourself; you have the freedom to express yourself.
When you perform in front of an audience, there’s definitely a rush. I’ve never jumped from a plane, but I think that maybe the feeling can be similar. Just before going on stage, you feel all of this energy contained and then you find moments when you really connect to your higher self or your creative self on stage, and you feel free, like you’re really connecting with people, which is what we all want at the end of the day. For me, it feels like you connect to people without having to have a conversation. It’s almost like energy is being exchanged. It’s very ‘retroalimentar’ (it feeds something back). I think in a performance, you have those moments where you’re really disconnected from who you were, which is what you look for. You want to disconnect from what your identity is and give.
© Illustration Pao Pestana
The EP I’m releasing right now, I co-produced it, so I was there from the beginning, choosing absolutely every sound, every beat. Sometimes I already have an idea of what I want to talk about, an idea of a melody that came to me when I was walking or when I was feeling a specific emotion, and then I bring it to the studio and develop it further. For example, there is a song, ‘La Perla,’ that I wrote when it was very rainy and cold and a bit miserable in London, and I was thinking ‘I really miss my country, I miss my Caribbean,’ and I went to the studio and spoke with my producer Sour Sync about this feeling, and we decided to write about it because I thought, ‘I want to be there, let’s transport there.’
I started this EP without expectations. I told myself, ‘just have fun! Dig deep, but the truth that is coming out, just let it be, don’t embellish it. Be more vulnerable. When I’m in the studio (I don’t want this to sound wrong), I’m not thinking about the audience in that moment, I’m thinking about what I’m saying and what I’m feeling, and I hope that I can serve almost as a companion in someone’s life. And that’s what I would like; to be a companion through music. Someone that can make you feel a sense of happiness, or even reflection maybe.
© Illustration Pao Pestana
I don’t know if I feel like I should be the one to give advice, but something I live by is: you have to do something you love because you’re going to spend most of your life doing that. When you do art sometimes, it can be hard, but this is the natural thing for me, and I might as well do what I love and enjoy the process. Because if not, it’s hard, life can become intense.
I’m looking forward to people listening to the EP, seeing what they think, which song they connected with and why, and having an open conversation because, at the end of the day, I want to know, what do you feel? How do you feel?
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