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Peña: 'Bella'

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Photo collage including three copies of the same image of Nico Peña dancing with his mouth open.
Musician Nico Peña.  (Courtesy Holiday Hagan/Collage by Annelise Finney of KQED)

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

Singer-songwriter and guitarist Nico Peña studied music in college, but credits most of his skills to time spent at “YouTube University.”

The San Francisco-based musician’s latest project, Peña, began as a solo endeavor that later blossomed with a full band. En Vivo, the project’s live EP, mingles jazz and bossa nova influences, creating what Peña calls “Latin lo-fi.” But he considers the song “Bella” a straight bossa nova song.

Peña, who’s originally from New Jersey, said he started out in rock ‘n’ roll and punk bands. “I was told in my earlier bands that I was a part of, that I didn’t sing loud enough or passionately enough,” he told KQED. “Then I heard these bossa nova artists singing so quietly and gently, and it felt like maybe this is for me.”

The musical transition has also reconnected him to his roots. “It got me closer to my culture in a sense that it’s Latin jazz technically, and I started singing Spanish,” he said.

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Bossa nova is a Brazilian music form traditionally sung in Portuguese. Peña says singing in Spanish to predominantly monolingual English speakers has inverted what he experiences when he listens to bossa nova songs.

“I don’t know Portuguese,” he said. “Other people don’t either, and they can still feel everything that’s going on … Classic love songs don’t need lyrics to be understood for it to feel impactful.”

Still, Peña hopes to build a following that does understand Spanish, and says that’s slowly beginning to happen. “It’s been great to like, put my hand out with this candy and they come and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah! This is exactly what I’m looking for,’” he said of Spanish-speaking audience members. “That’s my other goal with this project, just to represent [Spanish speakers] in the community and be like, ‘We’re here and we’re loud.’”

Accompanying Peña on “Bella” and En Vivo are Karina Alterman on saxophone, Max Bramer on drums, Lewis Gallardo (Sweet Lew) on guitar, Saam Khanzadeh on percussion and Sina Khanzadeh on bass.

Peña is working on an album of all new music, and hopes to have singles out later this year. He will be performing at ATA Gallery in San Francisco on June 30.

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