A Career in Music
Based on an episode with Jasmine Ortiz 🇵🇷🇸🇻🇪🇸
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
Jasmine Ortiz (she/her), an independent artist that has gone viral. Jasmine was originally born without a voice but her parents knew early that she was destined for a career in music.
In this episode we talked more about Jasmine’s journey towards the music industry and also as an advocate for social change.
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What does it mean to be a Latina for you?
I would think the biggest thing is community. I have found such a large community, especially living here in Miami, just with Latinidad and the culture here. I’ve connected so much with my background as a Boricua and Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, and Spanish. I just have a lot of different cultural influences on my lifestyle and on my music. Especially being in Miami, there’s so much Caribbean culture here that I absolutely connect with. That community is super important to me. Also, a huge part of being a Latina to me is pride and my culture. I really love certain traditions that my family and I have, especially around the holidays. We celebrate Los Reyes, we celebrate a lot of things in a very specific way that might be different from how Americans celebrate certain things. I’m also an American, but I love having my Latina culture as the backbone of how I was raised.
I mean, specifically for Thanksgiving, we make arroz con gandules, we make yuca, we make plátanos maduros for Christmas, we make pasteles, always coquito from our local neighborhood friend that always makes it, and the Bacardi bottles. You always have some tradition like that. And also, we celebrate Noche Buena. We celebrate Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. That’s another one that’s very popular in Latin America. Growing up, I was the only person I knew that celebrated Día de Los Reyes because it’s so uncommon here. Obviously, certain religions in the States still celebrate it, but it’s such a Latino thing as well. Growing up very Puerto Rican in Salvador, and that was like, you can’t miss the other Día de Los Reyes. You have to leave out the straw for the camels and the water. It was a whole thing. I loved it. I even spent New Year’s Eve in the Día de Los Reyes in Puerto Rico with my grandparents one year, and that was amazing.
How did everything start?
I’ve always had a very deep and passionate relationship with music. I began playing piano and taking lessons when I was three, and the story behind that is actually really funny. I went out to dinner in Atlantic City, New Jersey with my parents and some of their colleagues. I was only around two years old. During dinner, my mom recounts this story every holiday because it’s hilarious. I apparently climbed out of my high chair and snuck onto the stage of this old Vaudeville theater that we were eating in, and they had a grand piano on the stage, which I then proceeded to play a little melody on, just messing around, playing with the piano. All of a sudden, my mom realizes she looks over, “Oh my gosh, where is Jasmine?” She freaks out. She’s like, “I’m a horrible mom. Where’s my daughter?” Just freaking out. Obviously, she’s a wonderful mom. She was just having a moment. She looks over to the stage, there I am, playing the piano.
She walks up to me and says, “Jasmine, it’s time to go. We have to go back to dinner.” I tell her, “No, I want to stay playing the piano.” People in the restaurant at this point are clapping and looking and saying, “Oh, don’t drag that little girl off the stage, that was cute.” I’m negotiating at this point with my mom. I’m saying, “Hey, can you get me a piano? I want a piano.” She’s like, “Yes, I’ll get you a piano, just to get me off the stage.” But after that conversation, I was persistent with her for several months, actually, and then eventually she took me to meet a teacher for piano lessons. After that point, I was around three or three and a half. I was with that teacher for 15 years.
I think I was always drawn to the stage in general just because I thought it looked fun. I loved watching the media where other people were on stage. I’ve always loved watching theater and watching movies. I think something about it always appealed to me, and I think it was the same with music.
How was your process getting to the music industry?
Getting into the music industry is definitely a long, intensive journey. I would say that after I started piano at three, then I started a few instruments. I started guitar, I did viola, saxophone, drums, just kind of everything through the years, picking up little things and trying them, seeing what I liked best. Once I got to high school, I went to a performing arts high school, and that’s when I really took it to the next level and became more serious professionally, because I figured if I’m devoting this much time, I’d already devoted past however many 10,12 years to it, now I can take it to a professional level. I began writing, recording, and releasing music at a professional level. That process basically began with using independent distributor companies that any artist can sign up for online, just subscription-based. That was kind of my intro into that world.
Eventually, through just having some songs reach levels of success, I was able to meet more people and then get different connections. That’s just how it happened. I would say looking back, there are a lot of things that you have experienced that you do that maybe I could have done better. I feel every single time that I’ve learned from mistakes, I’ve just gotten better at moving forward. I can safely say that over the course of my career, I don’t regret a single release, I don’t regret a single video. I really feel I’ve put my heart and soul into it. Even if I’ve grown from the point that I was making music in the past, I still feel it was an important part of my journey.
We haven’t touched upon this yet, but I just graduated college this past May, so I think throughout that experience being in college, there was a lot of self-doubt because you’re constantly being exposed to new influences, you’re constantly being taught different things, and it’s really easy to get distracted along the way. As much as education is invaluable and I absolutely adore the education that I received, I think it was honestly pivotal in my career. In addition to that, it can also be a little difficult to discern amongst everything that you’re learning. What is it that I can do to stay true to myself? Where is my voice in all this? How can I stand out from the crowd and also feel authentic? These are all questions that I had been asking myself for the past four years, and I genuinely feel that over the past six months, I have come to the point where I’ve accepted things that happened in the past and I’ve just said, “Hey, I really like that thing that I did four years ago, there’s no point in not liking it.”
I really love what I’m doing today, I love what I’m doing tomorrow, and I really just want to keep getting better and better and better at my craft because this is my passion. I feel I’ve come to that point more recently and it’s been really healing, honestly, to come to that point and go into this new year super excited just to make and release music, just whatever types of music that I feel would be best.
You are an avid advocate for social justice, social change as well. I read about the Guitars Over Guns initiative that you are part of, if you can share more about it.
I actually volunteered with Guitars Over Guns while I was in college, and I learned so much about their programming before, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to continue because of the COVID pandemic, but they have recently started picking things up again, which is amazing. Their motto, basically their mission is to provide mentorship through music. This program is in different public schools throughout the city of Miami and Chicago and possibly other locations as well. Its main goal is to allow students to stay after school for free, no cost to them, provide them with academic and musical mentorship as well as snacks if that’s something that they can’t access at home, adult supervision, which is a lot of times something they can’t access at home. Also, someone who can really help guide them. Whether or not these students follow a career path in music professionally, or whether it’s an outlet for them artistically, that is really the core of their mission because they want these kids to have an outlet and they want these kids to have a guiding force.
A lot of the time, if they’re living in a situation where they have a lot of stress or anxiety at home, it can be impossible to even focus on school. This allows them to be a little more far removed from the situation, at least for several hours after school every day, because it’s a consistent program, let’s say they have an exam coming up, maybe they’ll spend some time after school with a mentor working through how they can do best on that exam instead of just focusing on the music part. It’s definitely a multifaceted approach to a very serious issue, especially in big cities like this.
You’d be surprised by how much kids are motivated by music because when they don’t feel seen or heard either at home or at school by their other teachers, music can be the only way they feel they can express themselves. When you have someone coming in, a lot of the teachers for this program are volunteers, like I was at one point. I just think it’s really beautiful to see young people devoting their time and energy to a cause that is so deeply important.
How can the music industry focus their efforts on making concerts more eco-friendly, in your opinion?
I mean, just thinking about the amount of food waste and single-use plastic waste that goes into every single concert at every single venue and there’s not even a particular person or entity to blame. It’s really just how we’ve set up these spaces more than anything. I think first and foremost powering these venues with something like solar or wind or geothermal energy would automatically take a lot of the stress away from the environment. It would lessen their carbon footprint immediately. Even making a switch from nonbiodegradable plastic into reusable plastic or biodegradable plastics that have been developed by different companies. I know that I personally have seen straws that look like plastic and feel like plastic but they are biodegradable. I think those options may be a little bit more expensive. Those costs are already covered and how much ticket prices have risen. In my mind, it’s like you’re paying more to see these shows.
The artists are sometimes being paid less and then the venues are still having the same impact on the environment. I think just shifting around a little bit of weight would help the situation immensely. Another thing because you can’t reduce the amount of electricity if you’re using green energy. That would help but just reducing the overconsumption that is so prevalent at these spaces and trying to find a middle ground. Everyone loves live entertainment, everyone loves having food and drinks at these spaces but it could be little changes by big companies that run these spaces that could make all the difference in the world because so many of the major concerts and the major venues are all channeled through the same companies. It would really just take a few decision-makers to make a worldwide impact.
I mean even just transporting equipment between venues when you’re on a domestic tour, you’re putting thousands upon thousands of miles on each of those 18-wheeler trucks. Let’s say a big artist might have ten or twelve of those trucks full of equipment per show, leaving and going to each venue. So, that’s another thing to consider. Can those giant trucks be equipped with solar panels? Or if that’s not going to work, can they be equipped with biofuel? Can they be equipped with electric chargers? It’s those larger-scale changes that could also make a difference.
You graduated from the University of Miami, and received an academic scholarship. You also play five instruments and speak three different languages, all while you’re pursuing your career in music. How do you manage so many things? Do you have any insights or any things to share with us?
Honestly, I think that taking it one step at a time is really, really important. I mean, I didn’t learn the five instruments at the same time. That would be really, really difficult. I spaced it out quite a bit. I started piano when I was three. I started guitar and viola around eight or nine. Viola was more so in school and orchestra, and then guitar was something I just personally wanted to pursue. I learned a bit of saxophone when I was around 12 or 13, and then into high school, I picked up drums. Those are just kind of how I separated the spacing between them. I would say that my favorite instruments to play are still the guitar and piano because that’s kind of how I started out. One of the reasons I got into music is the piano. So that’s really, really fun for me.
As far as everything else goes, my time at the University of Miami was absolutely incredible. I learned so many things. I developed a love for social justice issues, especially because I minored in political science. I debated foreign policy on different issues from the perspective of various countries. We competed at schools like Harvard, Columbia, UChicago, University of Florida. Just all over the country. That taught me the value of time management. It’s something that I struggle with every single day.
I’m not going to say that it’s easy. I just have been able to put my foot down with certain things and say, “Okay, this is my top priority for today. Even if that’s all I get done today, I will feel accomplished.” I have learned to also try to not bite off more than I can chew because originally, I was doing that, I was involved in every little thing every single day. I realized there’s different seasons for different things in your life.
I learned to really prioritize the things that genuinely made me happy, and that’s how I’ve been able to do it because when you really like something and it really interests you or makes you happy, it doesn’t feel as hard to get there and it’s hard to do those things. I think that has been my biggest key, just doing what makes me happy.
I feel that there is a different season for almost everything. It just depends on what you have to or want to prioritize. That’s going to keep changing every single year of your life, basically. I’ve realized that while I was in college, that season was very focused on my personal development, my artistic development. Definitely focusing still on my career, but also on my academic career. And that was really important to me. I’m so grateful to have had that time and that opportunity to fully finish that out. Now that chapter is closed, now I’m just full steam ahead, 100% devoted to my artistic career, and to my artistic self. A large part of me feels that I wouldn’t be in the same place I am if I hadn’t had that experience at the University of Miami because they gave me so many tools to take into my career that I would have been clueless without.
Which resource helped you in your journey?
Honestly, I want to say there’s so many things that come to mind, but really just different artists’ individual stories have helped me a lot. I can’t really point to an article or a book or a movie, but just kind of follow along and listen and learn. For example, how Beyonce came up through Destiny’s Child. How her family was such a huge part of the beginning of her career developing. Just everything that she went through, every single little change, every setback, every downfall as an early, early artist that just kind of pushed her and pushed her to try harder and to just keep going. I think her story is really inspiring to me just because leaving a girl group that was already so massively popular and coming out as an independent artist of your own, I mean, that’s bound to create some animosity. That’s bound to be a really difficult decision when those are your best friends. That was really intriguing and interesting to me.
Another story is Lady Gaga because she came out as such an original, original act and a lot of people said no. A lot of people told her, “You need to be more commercial,” or, “You need to be more generic,” or, “You need to change this, you need to change that.” She said, “No, I’m going to wait for the right person to see me for who I am.” That inspires me greatly because she stuck to her own personality, she stuck to her own artistic vision until today, honestly, and through every single one of her eras, she has changed so much. I mean, from her early paparazzi days, into art pop, into Joanne. I mean, there’s just so much variety there. I mean, even her acting career also is another inspiration to me because I absolutely adore acting. I started out as a child actor at five years old, so I also really respect that journey of hers. It’s something that I would like to mimic in my own career because it’s something that I absolutely do want to get back into. Just to round it all out, I feel like their journeys as independent, powerful women who are successful in this industry without compromising who they are and what they stand for, that is something that I strive to emulate.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
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