*This is a guest post from Aly Talaea, who is featured on today's edition of the podcast. You can find Aly on the web at amadeusrockband.com.
I am an Egyptian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and music producer from the town of Alexandria. A Mediterranean coastal city of inspiration and ambition.
My music journey is full of leaps of faith, as it should be, but looking at this recent one, in Los Angeles, I realize that this is the biggest transition that I encountered as an artist. I have been documenting my experience ever since I came to the states, part of it for my coming book, and big part of it is a reaction to the depth of the adventure.
It is quite hard to convey the magnitude of the experience in this article, so I would like to share this journey through some concepts. Concepts that I didn’t find online when I was planning to take my music to this scene but lived through and helped shape the music of the band and my process.
I am thinking of fellow Egyptian musicians who would be reading this, wondering what it can be like to hit a big music scene like Los Angeles. I am thinking of aspiring musicians flocking in from Europe, Asia and even musicians who take an aim at it from America.
SCALE
I don’t think there is any way of describing to any musician how big a scene is in LA – or other big scenes like NY for example - until they see it. This was the first thing that I realized more crystal clear maybe than tons of online information about the city.
I started my rock band in Egypt in the late 90’s within a very loyal and passionate yet a small rock scene. With the diversity of nationalities and cultural backgrounds in that scene I came to know the power of rock music as an art form. The super tune, the hit vocal line, the raw message and the technique mastery.
When we started playing abroad we felt the same vibration of music scenes getting bigger and evolving on the business side. The scale of the music business in LA however is almost tenfold the perceived business size I had in mind and I think this is the case for almost all aspiring musicians who made this transition.
In the first couple of weeks I realized that approach and strategy is extremely important within an industry hub of this scale. Almost as important as the passion that brought you to the place. It took me some time to absorb this and do things differently.
I always saw lack of an industry infrastructure as a disruption to artists. And in bigger art hubs, artists have both the chance of no disruption and the challenge to stand out and make a mark. So given there is no disruption and field is open, what would you build out of a big scene like this? This is a corner stone question. This is where your approach and your steps need to be much more focused.
PEOPLE
When I am on stage one of my favorite moments is the snapshot view of listening faces, reflecting on the music, I almost take a trance thinking about their stories, dreams and ambitions. The stage is the utmost collective experience to know people. One thing to be sure of is that people are the same, everywhere. Receptive to an honest connection.
This is almost the main question people ask me, how are the people like? What is the culture? Well, definitely it is a big transition from the culture in Egypt in many aspects yet in art it is really not that different.
Something to really pay attention to, is that this is a place for dreamers. Big dreamers. It is not the ultimately merriest place in the world, an unbelievable weather yes, but to be honest I have seen happier communities. The amazing side of LA, is about the mass of ambitious artists, capable talents and breakthrough ideas which is so beautiful and unparalleled. This is the basic difference, artistically I find here.
