Martin Strang. Buenos Aires 2019
I didn’t grow up in a musical household. My grandfather was a classical singer with a soft spot for opera as a baritone. His voice was like a thunder.
He used to sit me around the piano for vocal warm up and later put some old opera tapes for me to watch. It was extremely boring for a small kid. Luckily for me music started to catch my attention when I was seven. But it was contemporary music. Soda Stereo with Gustavo Cerati shredding that “Jackson” guitar on fire set the bar for me. I wanted to be just like him.
Since that day music was everything for me. My passion, my strategy, my way of connecting with other kids, my island to set my mood free.
While I was growing up I experimented with different instruments: Guitar, Bass and Keyboards mainly. Like any kid I enjoyed playing popular music from different artists for acceptance but I understood very quickly that my creative personality wanted to flow with these new tools I was acquiring so I begun to compose around 16. My dream: Releasing my own album.
With my first band, in our first show ever (1996)
When high school was over and it was time to decide my future, based on my environment, opportunities in a small Latin American country, and the advice of friends and family I decided not to pursuit my dream to avoid starving perhaps or maybe I was only afraid. In that moment I parted away with music.
It lasted only a couple years tho and I came back stronger than ever to perform and compose. Always seriously enough, studying more and more while playing with different bands.
Time flies. That is a FACT! and for one reason or the other I could never passed the recording of singles and demos so I decided to learn about music production as well to do it all by myself when the time is right and when I’m feeling confident enough. Music at a profesional level is very complex, specially if you have an obsessive personality like mine and share my mantra “It’s all or nothing”.
Took me many years, and I’m still learning.
With Joe’s Cafe Band ( 2007)
On 2018 I decided I was going to record an album all by myself and cross it from my bucket list for one and for all.
At the beginning the idea was going for profesional grade recordings and release an album for my own pleasure. Later I thought: I’m putting so much effort, took me more than two decades to learn what I know today and I’m an “all or nothing kind of person” so I should expand the idea and launch my career as an artists, composer and producer with my debut album as well. Why the fuck not?
Nowadays I treat music just like any other regular job. The third one actually because I already have a startup and I teach Digital Marketing to post grad students at an Argentinian university.
With The Funk Affair (2018)
I’m still managing to balance my life and my day to day obligations between all my activities. But something has changed…
My first single “Back in time” will be released the day I turn 40. I’m definitely not letting life pass me by!
I’m not getting any younger, none of us is, I had an injury in my hands three years ago and my mobility is not the same as it used to be. But is enough to play in my album and show anyone who wants to hear, what I’m capable off.
You see, life is letting me understand that postponing is not a good idea anymore and when my time comes, hopefully in many many years, I wont have regrets and like Sinatra, I’ll have the comfort to say, I did it my way…
It has been very hard, exhausting, consuming in every aspect but there is a certain “Je ne sais quoi” in doing all of this with the mental strength of an experienced grown up.
Attitude is everything. Above all I’m focused in enjoying my new musical life, every composition or video shooting, the people I have met.
Life is and should be about enjoying the ride…
