Joy Morales
Up and Coming Artist When did you first get into music? I come from a family of musicians. My grandmother played the saxophone, harmonica and guitar. My great uncles were all a group of singers called Genesis and sang lots of gospel. And my father is a Latin singer who toured at a young age with the legends of salsa, Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz before going on his own. So, when I expressed that I’d like to learn to play the piano at age 6, my father didn’t object. I always had a love/hate relationship with music. Hated the instruction and instructors but was fascinated with the world your mind could create through the ears. A child loves to create fantastical worlds in their mind where they can dictate the color, texture, scenario of said world and what they are in it. I believe that part’s the most fun. Whether they can fly, run really fast or are incredibly acrobatically skilled, they are the masters and the “dime piece” of that world. That’s how I feel when I make music. What genre of music do you perform and why? Genre’s always been a complicated thing for me to feel totally set on, when I’m considering my music. I feel this is because when I’m creating, I’m - taking moods from scenes in films, melodic lines from my favorite rock/r&b singers, feels and rhythms from different cultures and sort of mixing it in a giant pot. Never really sure what’ll come out at times. Sometimes, I feel I make avant-pop music because I don’t follow a rigid A B A B format but my chord structures are very pop. Other times, I feel very heavy on the experimental electronic and ambient side. Many times, I think it’s movie music. And when I’ve gone totally crazy, I think it’s salsa. Not because of the style of that genre whatsoever, but because my grandparents Richie & Bobby (they took my father in as family, as he had no one in states when leaving his hometown in Puerto Rico) once said this, when asked what genre their music would be called: “oh I don’t know... we sort of pulled influences from here and there and mixed it all in a pot, like a salsa”. I’d be curious to hear your take on it. But if I had to be set on one, we can settle for experimental electronic... for now.
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