The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and Chilean vocalist, guitarist, and composer Camila Meza. Her new album, Portal, released 30 May via GroundUp Music, features the core band of pianist and co-producer Shai Maestro, drummer Ofri Nehemya, and harpist Margaret Davis. Guests include vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens, drummer Caleb Vangelder, pianist Gadi Lehavi, and spoken word artist Faumelisa Manquepillán. Links to purchase the album, and to Meza’s website, can be found at the end of this article.
Coming off a decade in New York, when Camila Meza speaks of her current home on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala – a volcanic caldera lake, the deepest in Central America, ringed by volcanoes and traditional Maya villages – it seems less like a change of pace than another dimension.
In a quieter but no less meaningful way, Meza has crossed a threshold in her creative life, crafting her first album of all-original material through an electroacoustic, guest-rich, long-distance collaboration.
“I really took my time. I’ve never done it like this,” Meza reveals. “It’s always been: going to the studio for a couple of days, everybody playing at the same time, and there you go. That’s the album. It was very different, and I really enjoyed the process.”
The aptly named Portal carries meaning beyond geography and process. It’s also shaped by Meza’s experience of motherhood, her embrace of feminine energy, and her vivid, visual way of hearing music. Read on for the full interview.
UK Jazz News: How’s Guatemala? I haven’t been since I was a kid.
Camila Meza: I feel like more and more people are becoming more aware of this place. Every time I say I live here, people are like, “What? Guatemala? How come?” Long story short, it was some sort of gut feeling of wanting to have a more natural space. A little bit before the pandemic, it felt like a parallel reality from New York to be closer to nature. So, we got this place in an area called Lake Atitlán. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, pretty much.
UKJN: One of my primary memories of Guatemala was crazy rain. Like golf balls.
CM: Yeah, literally. There’s a whole six months, more or less, of the rainy season, and that’s why it’s so lush and beautiful. That’s why they call it the land of eternal spring.
UKJN: Have you ever made a record with this kind of production and aesthetic?
CM: No, it’s completely new territory. I guess part of it was circumstantial, but when I envisioned recording this music, I always imagined the partly electronic and partly acoustic aspect of it. I was hearing so many layers of harmony, including all the voices that you hear, but I was also hearing a lot of detail from the electronic world that would give it a cinematic aspect.
Nine of the eleven songs came as this complete piece that I called Portal, back in 2019 when I wrote it. The idea was that it would be almost like a movie, a very visual kind of music. Then the pandemic hit, and everyone was very isolated. I got pregnant, and I got this urge to really start working on this music, because it became more and more relevant to me to share it.
That’s how I decided to do it the way I did: long distance, layered, a very slow process.
UKJN: Say more about that visual element.
CM: It’s kind of a side note, and I don’t know if it’s related, but I do see a lot of colours when I work with music. It’s not synesthesia, because I know people who actually have it, and it’s very different. But I really love to see things when I’m listening to music. I lean a lot toward music that evokes images. When I’m playing, I see textures – a colour palette.
[On the album], there are musical moments in the story that are about standing there and witnessing motion and emotion. On ‘Nieno La (La Eterna)’, I don’t sing or play. It’s very incidental, and it’s meant to put you in a zone where you’re crossing that portal, envisioning these things that I’m talking about. That’s [far afield] from my songwriting world. I wanted it to be cinematic. I wanted it to be a moment of reckoning.
UKJN: A “moment of reckoning” implies stakes. What are the stakes with this record, as far as your career and creative life?
CM: At this point, this music is becoming such an important part of my life because of the way it came to me, and how it brings meaning to my life.
When I wrote the music, the first thing that came to my mind was that I wanted it to have a trance-like rhythm. It was written as a commission for the Jazz Gallery [in New York City], so there was a deadline. I was in a very strong and focused creative spirit throughout the seven or eight months that I had to come up with an hour of music, which, by the way, I’d never done before. I’d always taken so much longer to write an album.
So, the first ideas or concepts that came were [what I would] put into the music. It could be a vibration or a story. I felt I needed to go from darkness to light. At that moment in 2019, there were a lot of things going on in the world, and unfortunately after six years that’s still relevant.
It felt to me that we needed to collectively start imagining and manifesting the world that we want to live in. What did we want to leave our children with? What are those visions?
I wrote this before my son was born, and now I have my son, so it’s even more relevant to me. Every song talks about that: how to transmute this dark negativity into a world that we actually want. I feel we can all agree that there’s a lot to work on.
UKJN: How has motherhood influenced your creative life?
CM: Experiencing completely selfless love has revolutionised my life. Interestingly, there’s a song on the record called ‘The Nurturer’, where I hint at that kind of love as a clue to what we’re in need of as a society. We are in need of a non-transactional, complete devotion to life, and to nurturing others and our environment.
Being able to experience that as a mother has influenced not only my music, but my daily life and way of seeing the world. On a more practical level, I feel way more focused right now, because there’s no time for anything.
UKJN: I’m a fan of both Gretchen Parlato and Becca Stevens. Can you speak to your association with them and what they brought to ‘Uncovered Ground’?
CM: On that particular song, which I really wanted to share, I always heard more than just my voice. I’ve been a fan of Gretchen and Becca for so many years, and have been lucky to work with both of them. I played with Gretchen’s band for a Jazz Gallery commission, and Becca and I have shared space working with the Metropole Orkest.
These are singers who make magic with everything they touch. I needed that very sensible, vulnerable, beautiful, and strong feminine energy. I didn’t give them much direction. I just showed them the track, and was like, “Do your magic.” So they did.
UKJN: Then there’s the spoken word element, courtesy of Faumelisa Manquepillán.
CM: That’s another beautiful encounter. I had dreams of the [Jungian] archetype of the wise woman. The native people from Chile, the Mapuche, are so connected with nature, like a lot of native people of the Americas.
That particular image of the wise woman is connected with how to heal, and it started to be really relevant. ‘Nieno La’ was a way to invoke her wisdom [through recitation]. Faumelisa brings so much depth. I’m so grateful for her presence on the album.
