SINGER MILENA PARIS
INTERVIEW WITH MILENA PARIS
“If only you were ready to join me on the bridge”
Milena Paris is from Bergamo (Italy) and studied Jazz at the Conservatory G. Verdi in Milan, where she currently resides. Her final project Revisiting Kurt Weill, combines sounds from electric instruments, reharmonization and literary research, combined with her love for different genres she grew up listening and her single Intuition debuts this month.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
I am inspired by many musical genres. I love those who bring experimentation to their music, and who create a personal language. Nai Palm from Hiatus Kaiyote is my my greatest inspiration. I am also strongly influenced by jazz, which I studied at the Conservatory.
Tell us about your single Intuition
Intuition is inspired by a concept expressed by the poet Nayyirah Waheed that I can sum up in this way: two can be in love but they may not be both ready to do a deeper step, and so the feeling remains on the surface. She talks about a bridge and she says that someone can love you but may not be ready to join you on the bridge. In this expression, the bridge represents the encounter, the deep encounter between a person and another. This concept inspired me to write Intuition, in fact I was in a sort of relationship similar to the one described by Waheed.
How has the pandemic affected the music industry and you as a musician and how do you see things changing next year?
The situation we are living is devastating. This year I had the chance to do less than 5 concerts. For me, the only way to psychologically survive is not to lose the focus on my goal. I want to be receptive with my feelings, that's why I decided to promote my first single in this period. I need a motivation. I begun to write long time ago but I never decided to release my songs, because I always had the occasion to play live. Now I need a motivation to keep on playing, and I'm looking for it in writing. I hope that things will change next year but I don't think it will happen in the blink of an eye, that's the reason why I will release other tracks: to feel alive while I'm waiting to play live again.
Anything else you would like to share?
I want to invite people involved in arts like me not to give up, despite the moment we are living. Human beings need to express and need contact and communication with other people to express what is going on in the world through art.
