Isabel Vazquez

photo of Isabel Vazquez
Isabel Vazquez

Concentration(s):

  • Music

Music Award(s):

  • Marion Hassenfeld Premium – 2021
  • Margery MacColl Award – 2019

Honors in Music Project:

  • Nashne: AMNA

This album is a multifaceted experiment in music as a source of resilience. AMNA (the title of this record) is the word in Cahuilla (my tribal language) for “spirit” or “a quality of expansiveness”. “Nashne” (the title of the “project”- also my artist name- pronounced “nash-nay”) is a word ending in Cahuilla, which gives actions indefinite continuation. This project is an expression and an expansion of my experiences/dreams/reality as a displaced Cahuilla/Italian woman in a post-apocalyptic world. It is also an experiment in sonic decolonization, personal healing, as well as a love letter to all Indigenous people who have been displaced/dispossessed of land/culture/community. My music is an extension of my spirituality, it is also a practice of storytelling and language preservation, of documentation and of the creation of something new. This project became a way of “expanding” this healing beyond myself, a way of sharing my stories and visions of the past, present, and future in a way that might resonate with others.

 


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