{"id":1580,"date":"2020-12-09T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=135950"},"modified":"2020-12-09T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T08:00:00","slug":"musician-and-producer-camilo-lara-on-not-being-afraid-to-say-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/09\/musician-and-producer-camilo-lara-on-not-being-afraid-to-say-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Musician and producer Camilo Lara on not being afraid to say \u201cyes\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Musician and producer Camilo Lara on dealing with everyday setbacks, reframing success, what makes for a good collaboration, and approaching your work from a positive place.
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Do you remember the first time that you sang for any of your music projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, it was with my first punk band and I didn\u2019t feel comfortable at all. It was not a cool experience. I was terrible, I mean, I\u2019m still terrible, but at that time I was worse and I think it took me a lot of time to get better. Years later, I started using my voice with effects and not as a song\u2019s central thing, and I guess when I started playing live, I realized it was very important for me to sing because it was kind of something that happened naturally on a live show, I know when I like to use my vocals and I\u2019m not afraid to do some instrumental stuff as well.<\/p>\n

You launched an independent record label and it eventually had to close. How did you first feel at that time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My life was over. I was done.<\/span> Do you remember this character Webster<\/a> from the tv show with the same name? It\u2019s about this little kid on a sitcom and suddenly the sitcom got canceled and your life, your career ends when you\u2019re 12. So I felt like that. I felt nothing more important can come bigger than the label and the failure of having a label.<\/span> I got really depressed and I had to find another day job, so I started working at Warner Music Group for a year and it was horrible. I felt miserable. I feel that I did not succeed in my mission in life. So I became part of the system again. I remember that as a very bitter moment of my life.<\/span><\/p>\n

We almost never talk about that part. The failures and overcoming them, that success is not linear or a path to the top. How were you able to overcome that phase in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With therapy [laughs<\/em>]. Most of the time we experience failure. The success stories happen every once in a while. So I guess you get used to failure all the time. That\u2019s a normal thing. There are few careers in music history that only went up and up and up, but real life is more painful than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

How would you define success?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Success for me would be a body of work that you can proudly show to people you care about. That\u2019s probably the only thing. You can have some projects that are more successful or make more money or less money, but in the long-run success is to have these records that you don\u2019t feel ashamed of. Sometimes when I look back to my career I see some records I\u2019m not proud of at all, and I hope in a few years I\u2019m not ashamed of them anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you said that this is something that you realized only looking back, does this mean that you were not ashamed of the work you did when you released it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I release something it is always because I believe it is worthy.<\/span> I mean you release music because you think it\u2019s the coolest, then you realize it\u2019s not the coolest.<\/p>\n

How do you realize when something that you\u2019re working on is good or bad? Is it intuition or experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s pure intuition. And later when I do mixing on songs that are not necessarily mine, I leave a couple of days to listen to them again and see if they still sound good and interesting. Sometimes as time passes, I listen to music I released and I say to myself \u201cWhat was I thinking?\u201d I guess your taste changes. And that\u2019s a fact. What I was passionate about four years ago might not be interesting to me anymore. You get old, but that\u2019s okay.<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been in the music and entertainment industries for many years, and of course, things change\u2014as you mentioned your taste changes, and people come and go. Are you someone that embraces change easily and adapts to the circumstances?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do change, but I don\u2019t want to change because of the times.<\/span> I hate the idea of being a big team of the times\u2014like just using a certain drumbeat because everyone is using it. When trap music started, I never felt the urge to be a trap artist. I refused to because it\u2019s me and I don\u2019t like it, but I do think it\u2019s good to understand the times and to try to get something out of new ideas. If you live on what turns you on when you were growing up it\u2019s kind of boring, but at the same time, I don\u2019t want to be the grandpa doing Tiktok.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your projects are extremely collaborative on different levels. What do you usually look for in your collaborates or in the people that participate in your projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Either I admire them, or I\u2019m curious about them and about what they do, or I think they have something I don\u2019t have. Those are my three ideas of a perfect collaboration.<\/span> Sometimes when I work with people\u2014like with Graham Cox\u2014I thought he had something I didn\u2019t have, and he\u2019s my idol. So our collaboration was fantastic. And some other people like Cuco, it was great to discover his music; I listened to him and he blew my mind, so we did a song together. Those three things are important for me when I work with collaborators. If I don\u2019t have one of those, I won\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

How do you know when a project you\u2019re working on or a song or an album is done? Are you able to let things go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some people just spend days and weeks and months and years on something until it\u2019s perfect. I have learned to let it go because I produce a lot in my studio. If I don\u2019t stop the next thing will be delayed. I\u2019m practical when I\u2019m producing. It\u2019s hard, but that\u2019s what a producer does. That\u2019s the main responsibility for a producer to do, to stop, to be the curator, and say, \u201cThis is ready.\u201d So I\u2019m good at that and I should do it more often, but I like to keep stuff simple.<\/span><\/p>\n

You worked on the film Coco<\/a> as a music supervisor and you even had a cameo. How did you got involved with this project? Did you have any concerns about how the film was going to portray Mexican culture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The director found me by Googling my music, and then he messaged me on Facebook. He said \u201cHi, I\u2019m Lee Unkrich<\/a>. It\u2019s not a prank. I\u2019m the film director of Monsters Inc<\/a><\/em> and Toy Story 2<\/a><\/em>. I\u2019m writing this script. You should come.\u201d And he sent me an invitation to go to the Pixar offices in San Francisco. So I took a flight and when I landed at San Francisco\u2019s airport, my phone rang. The first call was Money Mark<\/a> and he told me that Adam from the Beastie Boys died. I was like, \u201cOh shit, this is so sad.\u201d So I hung up. I was super sad walking through customs. And the second call was someone from Pixar saying, \u201cThere\u2019s a gas leak in all the Pixar area. Your meeting\u2019s canceled and we have to reschedule probably in a few months.\u201d So I just turned back and I took the next flight back to Mexico.<\/p>\n

I thought it was a joke. I felt like shit. And many months passed I thought it was not going to happen. And so I was like, \u201cWell, destiny is very cruel.<\/span> And then many months passed and we had a meeting and it all happened. And in our first meeting with Lee, I told him that I hate movies with Mexican characters that are mice with a big sombrero. And they sleep outside of a bullfight Plaza and all the clich\u00e9s of Mexican animation.<\/span> He swore to me that it was going to be a portrait of Mexico as it is. So I got totally confident because Lee is not only a great animation director, he\u2019s a great director. He\u2019s a really, really, really solid director. So we started building something and it was beautiful.<\/span> When we were recording the last piece of Coco<\/em> was the day that Trump won. So I thought it was meant to be; it was a love letter to the moment.<\/span> I have deep, deep gratitude for Pixar because they were so brave to do that in those hard moments.<\/p>\n

You have years of experience. From working at a radio station to building your own label, working at EMI and Warner, releasing your own music, and even working with Pixar. Is there something that you have learned throughout the years that you consider essential or a mantra that helps you back to your center whenever you\u2019re in doubt, or when things are not working the way you were expecting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, they are two. When I don\u2019t know what to do, I consult Brian Eno\u2019s <\/a>Oblique Strategies<\/a><\/em>.<\/a> That helps you unblock your creativity. And it\u2019s fantastic. The other one is I always try to approach things in a positive way. I think if you\u2019re going to sing a song, try to sing from a positive, not a negative place. And if you are trying to approach a project, always try to approach it with positivity. I always get blocked if I don\u2019t start on that point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can you elaborate on what you mean by approaching it with positivity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a positive message, instead of saying \u201cno,\u201d I try to say always say, \u201cyes.\u201d That\u2019s important for me.<\/span> If you\u2019re going to do lyrics instead of building on a lyric that uses the \u201cno\u201d\u2019s, try the lyric that uses the \u201cyes.\u201d I always look for brightness and not darkness, and strength and not weakness. It\u2019s probably very abstract, but it helps and it\u2019s not that you end up doing happy music, it\u2019s that your creative beginning starts from a different point. It can be an obscure song or sad or whatever, but you have to start from light. Otherwise, you go to the other side very quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

And how were you able to learn all these things? Was it experienced or is it by practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely. That\u2019s years of starting with \u201cno,\u201d then one day I was like , \u201cI should start with \u2018yes,\u2019\u201d and I started with \u201cyes\u201d and it went way better. Once I was in Jamaica with a group of musicians and they took all this positivity very seriously, and they took it as a religion, and I thought that was very radical\u2014but I think the initial ideas were amazing and great. The music always started from that area and that angle, and it\u2019s constructive not only in music, but in all art. I do think art needs to be constructive, even if the outcome of it\u2019s not happy, it needs to born from that.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do you overcome doubting your talent or facing impostor syndrome?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019m a guy that was never great at guitar or bass. My instrument is sampling. My mom never believed that I was a musician, so I was an impostor. I mean I\u2019m still an impostor. People don\u2019t think what I do is being a musician. But a few years ago I decided to focus on ideas, and that is more important and valuable to me, and I\u2019m at peace with that. I\u2019m more of a guy that goes for the ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

And where do ideas come from for you usually? Where do you look for inspiration?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s an exercise. That\u2019s not inspiration. There are people who do paintings, and the more they paint, the more they do. Being creative is that: Every single day you have to do it and something will come. A bunch of what you do is not going to be good, but from time to time, you will have something that will be interesting to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musician and producer Camilo Lara on dealing with everyday setbacks, reframing success, what makes for a good collaboration, and approaching your work from a positive place. Do you\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,554,346,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}