Radiolab - Juana Molina

Episode Date: May 5, 2009

Sometimes on the podcast, we like to talk about musicians and the music they make. Today we introduce you to Juana Molina. Last season we used some of her of music in the breaks for the Sperm show. We received an outpouring of email asking about her music, so this podcast is for those curious listeners who wrote in and for those who haven't heard about her ... until now.

I should quite. You're listening to Radio Lab, the podcast. From. Public Radio Radio, WNYC. And NPR. Hey, I'm Chad Aboumrod. I'm busy listening to this. Who is this?

I'm Robert Crowley, which, this is Radio Lab, the podcast. So this person that you're hearing right now? Mm-hmm. Testing, testing, testing. She's one of my favorite, favorite musicians. Can you introduce yourself? My name is, I am. My name's Juanamolina.

I'm Juano Molina, and I am a musician. I hope you enjoy what I do. Okay, so you know how sometimes on this podcast, instead of the science and the big ideas and the whatever, we present musicians? Yeah. Well, that's what I want to do for the next 10 or so minutes, mostly because I think she's amazing,

but also because when we used her music in the sperm show, I use it for some of the breaks. This song right here, in fact. We got a flood of email people asking about it. I wonder what she thought about being the brakes in the sperm shelf. She doesn't know. So this podcast is for the bunch and bunch and bunch of people who wrote in asking about Wanamolina. And also for the rest of you who maybe don't know her yet, but we'll hear her now.

And maybe, I hope, fall in love with her music, Zaya. So let me make space here. Okay, so I spoke with her recently as she was in town to play a gig. This club called The Poisson Rouge. The Red Fish. Yep. And she told me her backstory. She's kind of interesting.

She started out as a musician, taking piano lessons and guitar lessons, trying to be a performer. It wasn't really working out at that point. So she needed a job, and she wasn't really sure what to do, but she knew she was always good at an impression. It's something I could always do, and it was easy for me just to impersonate characters.

People that you knew are just... that you knew or just... People like stereotypes or... I don't know if it's stereotypes or architects, both, I mean... Oh, that's interesting, sound like. Yeah.

And then, and when I was desperate, looking for a job that gave me enough money to play music and I thought TV was the best option. You went to TV to help pay for music? Mm-hmm. What she did was she went over to the local TV station somehow convinced them to give her a

job reporting fake news, sort of like the Daily Show. And eventually she got her own show called Juana Issus Irmanus, which means Juana and her sisters. It was sort of a comedy show. It was just sketches. How long did that go for? Three years. At the beginning, it worked very well because I had money and I could pay my rent and my guitar lessons. But then I got big. She became a huge hit. Was it the kind of situation where you'd walk down the street and be recognized? Much to her dismay, oddly. Suddenly she was an actress, not a musician,

and as she puts it, her life kind of got out of hand. But then she got pregnant. I got pregnant and I needed to stay in bed. So I had time to think about my life and they realized that I had totally missed my goal. It was just that I didn't want to miss it. I didn't want to die and not having done what I wanted to do. So at the height of her popularity as an actress, she drops out.

Yeah. That's not what I wanted. I just wanted to be a musician. So she starts playing in these little clubs, just her and her guitar. How do people respond? Badly. Didn't go so old. Well, it was hell for several years.

She said she had terrible stage fright. You're an actress. Wouldn't you be fine to be on stage? It's not the same. You're acting. It's not you. I suppose that's true, but I mean, you're used to having... No, you don't suppose you know.

What I was doing is to impersonate people and I was making fun of people. It was never myself. And it was horror because it was, I don't know, I was just very scared. So what she ended up doing was kind of going solo. You know, like she tried to play with musicians. And I didn't like anyone. And they didn't like what I was offering them out. So essentially what she does now.

is she creates entire symphonies of just her. Just her, her guitar, some electronics, and this looping box, she'll play a line, and then it'll loop, and loop, and then another line, and then a loop, and then a loop, and they'll both be going, and then she'll add a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and somewhere all in the way, and this is what I love, as you're listening,

you slip into this universe of one. The thing by being on your own is that you can go deeper and deeper and deeper on your own universe and go further further away or deeper deeper, deeper inside. Now do you, when you loop yourself and you're in the middle of love, like let's say an avalanche of Juan Amalinas, are singing and harmonizing, are they the same person? Usually feel that the sounds tell me what to do with them. Every sound has its own behavior. At least for me, I'm just feeling like a driver of herself.

It's so interesting, like it feels like she's taking a bath in herself. Little by little, my ridiculously small universe, it becomes huge. I think that has a note or a rhythm you can make music with. Amitya, are you inspired more by a thought, like I want to say something? No. No. There's absolutely nothing that I really want to say. Really?

Really? I mean, you have lyrics sometimes. Most of the times. So when the song pops into your head and you develop it, you're not thinking of a story per se? No. Never. But you put the story on afterwards, why?

In order to be able to sing. One day... One day, the song. How did that... How did that happen? I was warming up for a show. And I started... I got bored.

started to play, and it sounded like one day, I wasn't saying one day, but it sounded like... You didn't even have the words just yet. No, but then when I was singing, that just came out. One day, I will be someone different. So from that sentence,

I could already have the whole song. One day I will be someone different. I'll do everything I never dared to do before. I will live in the middle of the country and I will dance, dance, dance, and only dance. One day I will fix the back door, and when they will write the songs with no lyrics,

so everybody just can imagine whatever they want. You wanted something crazy? I heard that song, and I got the sense immediately of what it was without knowing the words. Just a sense of like a chant to your better self. You once called it like the chorus of one, remember that? Yeah. The thing you say to yourself when you're feeling really crappy? Well, I had that feeling from this song.

So I got on her website, wantamulina.com. And the only fan launder I've ever written in my entire life, I wrote to her just then. I said, I love your music. I love this song. And can I remix it? And amazingly, her manager wrote me back. And he said, totally you can remix it. Really? So I remixed the song. Oh my God. Was this guy in Buenos Aires? Where was he? No, it turns out he's just down the street. He was in New York. Can we hear your version? Yeah. Hmm, how can I do that? Hold on. Okay, I've got it right here. Okay, so here it is. Here's a short excerpt from a remix that her manager was nice enough to let me do of her song, of Wanamalina's song, One Dia. Okay, I want to thank Paul Daylin and Wanamilina. You can also go to Wanamilena.com, check out her music. And I want to thank Michael Rayfield for some of the sounds used in that remix, as well as Stuart Dempsey, for some of the music. and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation for helping to make radio lab possible.

I'm Jed Aboumrod. And I'm Robert Krillowicz. We'll catch in two weeks.