For the last three years, I spent a lot of time maintaining contact with many aspects of the Hispanic culture. I watched almost one hundred movies per year and I believe this was a huge factor that inspired me to write in Spanish. The movies helped me to create the idea of what I wanted to do, but I still needed to know how I would do it. So this question led me to search for Latin music and artists that I could use as a base for my work. After a long research I found wonderful songwriters and musicians, I listened to the most famous as Shakira, Alejandro Sanz, Maná and Juanes till new and not-so-known singers as Bernabé and Calle 13. That was an amazing experience, learning about this new culture and bring its features to my pieces just enriched my work and helped to grow as a person. I think I finally could let an unknown part of me come to the surface and this felt so good.
Well guys, I decided to take some time to share with you a little bit of the creative process of my latest work: “Amor Y Otros Desastres”. Here I’ll tell you about the experience of writing these songs, the rhythms and influences that inspired me to create the whole concept for this new project and the expectations I had for this songbook.
Part One: The Concept
I always wanted to write something in Spanish, but I never felt it was the right time or I had the right theme to write about. I had some songs for sure, but I definitely never planned to release a songbook in Spanish, at least not at the moment. One day, I was sitting in my room and I started to scrawl some lines that came to my mind. I had one more song done and when I was saving the file I was surprised to note that I’ve already had almost 10, what it could be perfectly become a songbook. Therefore I decided I’ve had enough material to begin this “Spanish project”, but I still needed to find something to talk about, a subject that I could express the way I see and understand the Hispanic culture. I read again all the songs I’ve already written and I could realize they had something in common, but I couldn’t actually see what it was.
A few weeks later, I rent a movie called “Love and Other Disasters” (with Brittany Murphy) and when the movie ended, the answer hit me like a punch and I knew what I’d talk about: love. I’d already decided that I’d want to impress in my work some aspects of Latin culture and the way I found it was through love, or the way of feeling the many kinds of it. When people think about something related to the Spanish language they usually think about things that are tragic, passionate, intense… The songs I’d written until that moment had those features and all of them were about relationships. Love was seen and written for different angles where it could be good and sweet or painful and tragic. Because of this, the lyrics presented a wide range of emotions and each of them had a single characteristic that made them unique, even when they were about similar themes. Those singular features of each lyric made this songbook colorful and rich of different kinds of feelings. And that was the way I wanted to picture this work.
This month, It's finally available for download in Felipe Lima.com the promo pieces from "De Volta Ao Presente", released in 1999. You can find in the "Work" section all the five songs that were released to promote the first portuguese songbook of the author.
Yesterday, the site Dotlyrics.com published the review of "Amor Y Otros Desastres". The review was written by Sandra Wollopock and the songbook got a medium rate (2.5/5). You can check a part of it below and the full review is available for download in the Articles & Reviews section.
"I must confess I found Felipe Lima's new work - 'Amor Y Otros Desastres' (Love And Other Disasters) - very strange at first impression, neverthless I decided to read again with a different and open minded look. I'm glad that I've done that because I finally got the beauty of this work. First of all, if you want to enjoy this experience you must open your mind and dive in this cultural pool that Felipe presents to us."
Yeah guys, there's a new poll on the site. Now we wanna know if it'd be a third release for Amor Y Otros Desastres what track should be released. The poll starts today and it'll be opened for votes until july 11th.
[11/22/12] Play - Booksie
[11/27/12] Play - Recanto das Letras
[11/30/12] If U Told Me That - Latino Poemas
[11/30/12] Play - Latino Poemas
03/01/11 Step Insider All Poetry
03/18/11 What Do U Think ‘Bout Me? Mar de Poesia
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