I met up with Carol C at Esther & Carol’s on Broome Street, NYC over a drink. The disco song “I Want Your Love” by Chic played in the background. The last time we saw each other was right before I went away to college. We both went to Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. She was an opera/voice major and I did visual art. We would take the train together back home to the upper upper upper west side. All these years later we immediately picked up where we had left off. Back then we were dreaming big; she wanted to sing and spin records and I wanted to write. She is now the lead singer of Si*Sé; her music has been featured in numerous TV shows and films and she DJs all over the world. The Los Angeles Times described her musical style as “edgier than Sade, but more accessible than Everything But the Girl.” On July 12th she will release her solo album “Seven”..
Angie Cruz: How and when did you start singing?
Carol C: I’ve sang since I can remember. The first song I ever learned was Pio Pio Pio which is why I included the lullaby on my first album.
AC: I love Lullaby by the way. It’s so playful and unexpected.
CC: Awww. I was four when my mom taught it to me. She would make me perform it whenever friends and family would come over, and people would react strongly to my singing, so I thought, hey, I might be good at this. I think the more confident you feel about something you do, the more you enjoy doing it, and the better you get at it because you keep doing it. s I got older I sang in church, then I went to LaGuardia for opera.
AC: I didn’t know you were doing opera.
CC: Yes. Classical opera. And even though I loved opera, I was leaning more towards jazz at that time, but super standard jazz was not resonating with me. Then I discovered Sade and I was like, this is kind of jazzy. And then I discovered Portishead and trip hop. That changed my life. I would say Portishead’s first album, Dummy, changed my life.
AC: What was it about that particular album?
CC: There are a lot of hip hop influences on Portishead’s album, and a lot of electronic influences. She has a very sultry and rich voice. The combination of all those elements really, to me, felt like home. So I thought, what if I can incorporate the things I love about Depeche Mode and A Tribe Called Quest, Stevie Wonder and Sade, put it them all together, what would that sound like? And that’s how Si*Sé was born for me.
AC: So you’ve always written your own lyrics?
CC: Yes.
AC: How did you learn to write music? It must be similar to how we learn to write poetry.
CC: I have absolutely no training. I’ve always loved singing and when you’re a kid what you do, is that you imitate the artists that you admire. You sing covers. But then someone who heard my demo was like, I want to get you a record deal but you have to write your songs. I’ve always loved singing, but I didn’t know how to write songs. But we sat down and he asked me, “What’s important to you? What message do you want to put out into the world? What stories do you want to tell?”. I wrote five songs, and those five songs turned into a demo.
AC: And what were they about?
CC: When I write, I think about what stories I want to tell, what message do I want to give the world, and I definitely thought of empowering women. I have a very strong female following and that’s important to me.One song was about my mom and her journey from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. It was called Mita like mamita. One was about never falling in love, unrequited love. It was called Burbujas, like stuck in a bubble of love by yourself. Some of those songs actually made it onto my first album, but some of them didn’t. hat’s also when I wrote Bizcocho Amargo, which became this empowering anthem for women. So many women have written to me about it. A woman wrote to me from a safe house. She told me that my song inspired her to take her kids and leave her physically abusive husband. That brought me to tears. .
AC: I want to follow up on something you had said on our way here, how you try to write songs that are about your future.
CC: When I’m feeling sad or in a really dark place, I don’t write. It’s usually when I’m climbing out of the darkness that I feel inspired. I try to imagine the new great things that are coming to my life, that’s what inspires me—
AC: That’s when you can manifest the music?
CC: Exactly. It’s almost like that law of attraction thing, I’m gonna fake it ‘til I make it. I’m going to write about this great new love and it’s going to come into my life. It actually does work.
AC: Give me an example.
CC: When I wrote Bizcocho Amargo, I wasn’t actually going through what I wrote about. Someone else I knew was going through it. But after I wrote it I went through something very similar. And that song helped me break out of that situation that was not good for me. It’s almost like life imitating art. I also wrote a song called This Love that came out before my new album. And the stuff that I wrote there is still in the works, but I was imagining this great love—
AC: What does a great love look like to you?
CC: In that particular song, I imagined having full trust in someone, a strong bond and partnership. It actually did happen right after that song. I actually met someone, and it was a great love.
AC: Your influences are Depeche Mode, the Cure, which reminds me of when we were in high school. So do a lot of your influences come from that moment in your life?
CC: No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, Stevie Wonder is probably top top. I would say my influences are Stevie. Sade, Depeche Mode, The Cure and Marvin Gaye. If you put all of those together, that’s my music. That’s my style.
AC: They’re very different from each other. What is it about Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye that you love?
CC: I always say to people that Stevie was my first vocal teacher, because trying to imitate his singing as a little kid was like vocal aerobics for me.
AC: I don’t know much about the music industry, but I’d imagine it’s mostly male-run? I just saw that the singer Janelle Monae, tweeted how “ a total of 90.7 % of nominees between 2013 and 2018 were male, meaning just 9.3% were women.” I didn’t realize how bad it is in music.
CC: Absolutely, yeah.
AC: So to be a woman who’s taking control of her own project, producing her own project, is rare, right?
CC: I would say it is. I would love to meet more women who are completely in control of their projects. Most of the record executives are male, presidents of the labels male. It’s very male-dominated.
AC: So what influenced or inspired you to take it all into your own hands?
CC: I think it comes from having a brother who constantly challenged me as a kid. I didn’t even think of it so much as a gender thing when I was little, I thought of it as an age difference thing. He’s six years older. He would dare me to do things and would say, you can’t do this, or you can’t do that, you’re too little. I guess sometimes it was like, you’re a girl. I always felt like I needed to prove myself to him and that has stayed with me. When someone tells me I can’t do something, that’s more motivation for me to do it.
AC: What sign are you?
CC: Capricorn.
AC: That explains it.
CC: I want people to tell me I can’t so I can prove to them that I can. When I was first starting out, a well-intentioned friend said to me, you should really think about doing more latin music, because I don’t think as a latina, female, you’re gonna make it in the industry unless you do something that people can relate you to. I’m into PJ Harvey and I’m into Depeche Mode and all these other artists. I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself. And I stuck to it. This was 2001, my first record. It’s so different now than when I started.
AC: In what way?
CC: Well there are so many latina and latino groups that are doing things that are not traditionally latino. But in 2001, it wasn’t that way.
AC: Do you have any latino/a influences?
CC: Yeah! Definitely. My mom, whenever we were cleaning the house on Saturdays, she would play Camilo Sesto, El Puma, Juan Luis Guerra. All these things seep in. Even if you pretend to reject them, there’s a part of you that connects with them because it’s in your roots. It may not be super obvious but when I write, but I was deeply influenced by Juan Luis Guerra. I think he’s one of the most talented songwriters, in Spanish at least. I love his songs.
AC: What’s a song that you love by him?
CC: There’s the one, Ojalá Que Llueva Café.
AC: My book is named after that: Let it Rain Coffee.
CC: That song is gorgeous. And Bachata Rosa. I could listen to that song all day.
AC: What’s a Depeche Mode song you love?
CC: God, what song don’t I love? There are certain groups that I’ve really connected with because of their political messages. I actually wrote a song in Spanish. It’s on my last EP. I was listening to People Are People for whatever reason at that time and I wrote Buscaré inspired by that. It’s speaks to how people are afraid of what they don’t understand, I’ll have to send it to you…But it comes from me loving that song, and Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Tears for Fears. Anything that has a political message in it.
AC: I love that song too.
CC: And Woman in Chains. But the Cure, for me, was less about politics and more about how he put his heart out there, you know? I Will Always Love You is one. I could listen to that all day. Pictures of You, a beautiful song.
AC: And what about Sade? Tell me a song you love by her.
CC: The whole album, Love Deluxe. .
AC: And what’s a Marvin Gaye song that you love?
CC: I Want You. Beautiful. Sexual Healing of course. That’s a good one.
AC: And Stevie Wonder?
CC: As.
AC: I don’t remember that song, what is it? How does it go?
CC: ::sings the melody:: “Always. Always.”
AC: Oh yeah. I know this song! What do you think is one of the biggest challenges for women artists, or latina artists right now in the music field? What do you wish would happen, that doesn’t often happen?
CC: I feel like there aren’t enough of us working collectively. A lot of us in New York, for whatever reason, don’t necessarily come together to do things, and I’m trying to change that. Even with collaborating on writing songs or doing shows together. I always try to get artists to do shows with female artists. I actually know—I’m not going to name names—but famous women that you would think are secure, but they have a rule that they won’t allow other female artists open shows for them. That’s terrible. For me, the more female artists the better. If you’re amazing, it makes me want to be more amazing. I want to step it up and say let’s do this, let’s both be strong. I think there’s a lack of collaboration in the industry. Maybe not just latinas but women in general. We should try to uplift each other. That’s so necessary. I’m all about it. I have a female drummer—I want everything female. And I want them to be badasses and shine. I want everyone around me to shine.
AC: That’s true for me too. When I am reading with an amazing writer, I just get inspired to try harder, be my best.
CC: Yes! It’s not a competitive thing. It’s a really inspiring thing.
AC: So do you think about your identity or a need to represent as a latina in your work or when you perform?
CC: I think I’m reminded every day that I’m latina.
AC: In what way?
CC: Well, my first album had nothing to do with Latino Rock, Rock en Español, but I was thrown into every Rock en Español festival, event. Which is fine because I’ll take the love wherever it comes from, but at the same time there was nothing rock or traditionally Latino about my music. I just happen to sing in English and Spanish. But the industry needed to categorize my music at the time and Rock en Español seemed the closest. There came a point when I was like, it’s not about me being latina, it’s about just the music and whoever connects with it. Depending on what city you go to, the audiences are very different. In L.A., a lot of latinos come to my shows. But not necessarily in Arizona. We sold out in Singapore. You just never know. And they were singing along in Spanish, English, everything. Like phonetically, they were singing along to everything.
AC: So you’ve always DJ’ed. How is that different?
CC: It’s very different. I mean I might throw in one or two of my songs, no one knows it’s my stuff anyway, but it’s not as personal. I’m not up there singing songs that I wrote about experiences that I’ve had. It’s setting a tone, a mood, and making people dance and have a great time. When I DJ, I have a different relationship to the audience. When you’re performing songs that you wrote, that people are connecting with, sometimes people are making out, sometimes people are crying, it’s way more personal. I have some fans that have tattooed my lyrics on their arm. I love DJing but it’s completely different.
AC: So you’re teaching youth how to DJ at the New York Public Library, what’s something that is key for new dj’s to learn?
CC: A kid actually just asked me, if there’s one thing I need to learn, what is it? Man, I would have to say reading the crowd is extremely important.
AC: And how do you read the crowd?
CC: I mean, some of it is just experience, but you have to look at your demographic. And I know some people don’t like to talk about this, but it’s like, what’s the age range? The ethnicity? The style of the people? And you try to pinpoint it. Well like, they’re very young and I’m going to play some more current stuff and see if that works. And if it doesn’t, go a little further into the 90s the 2000s. That’s what I do. I start with current and I see if people are reacting, and if they’re not, I go back into 2000s. Oh, they like 2000s? How about 90s, how about 80s? No, that didn’t work? Let’s go back to 90s. You
find that sweet spot, and then you get the crowd going.
AC: Do you still have a vinyl collection?
CC: I do. I have an entire room in my apartment that’s all vinyl and clothing.
AC: So when you DJ, do you carry vinyl?
CC: No, not anymore. Unless it’s an all-vinyl gig specifically, and that doesn’t happen often. I get excited about those gigs, because I get to dust off the vinyl, bust out all my classic stuff. Yeah, those are fun. Now they’re fun. Back when I had to carry crates around, not so much fun. But now you have the freedom of carrying your entire “record” collection, music collection, on your computer. So if you have to shift from house music to hip hop, to whatever other genre, you can do it because you have it all there.
AC: But how do you feel it’s changed your relationship to music? From analog to digital?
CC: It’s so different and I’m super glad that I actually am from the analog generation. I spent so many years getting excited about certain songs or tracks, and waiting until that one record arrived at the record store after a certain other DJ had played it because he had an advanced copy. And now you can just download the mp3, you know what I mean? You can probably find a bootleg copy of it or an illegal download of it. I would spend hours at a record store going through tons of records! My hands would be filthy by the end.
AC: Which one was your favorite?
CC: I would go to Dance Tracks. For drum and bass, Breakbeat Science…God it’s horrible that I’m forgetting all the names of these record stores because they don’t exist anymore. But whenever I was in California I would go to Amoeba Records. You could spend an entire day in Amoeba. It’s like a supermarket of records. Now of course it’s mostly CDs. Kids don’t spend hours in a record store anymore. I have friends that are not even that much younger than me and they’ve never DJ’ed with vinyl. They’re completely in the digital era.
AC: I do think that how we find something like a book or album has changed dramatically and maybe to a creative and critical detrimen. Like scrolling down a screen to read a news story, versus actually holding a newspaper. When I read a newspaper in print, I find myself reading articles I would not necessarily come across when online. But also the physicality and smell of it. The ink on the fingers. And now when I think of songs or albums I rarely think of the covers. They are kind of disembodied, in a way. But back then I remember the covers distinctly.
CC: Not only that but bpm’s. I used to organize my records by bpm’s. Meaning these records will mix with each other. So I kept all the records in the same bpm together, whereas now it all gets organized for you. I mean the lazy side of me loves just having the bpm’s. It’s all there.
AC: But what is missed is that you don’t get lost in the archive in the same way. There are times where I forget the name of something and my mind used to travel to figure it out, but now I Google and have the answer, and that initial inquiry doesn’t really lead to a potential discovery.
CC: And do you remember when an artist would come out with a new music video and we would sit there forever waiting for it?
AC: Yes!
CC: Now you Youtube it. There’s not that same excitement, appreciation, anticipation, that there used to be.
Carol C founded the soulful electronic pop band Si*Sé. Music legend David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, discovered the band at a local show in NYC and quickly signed Si*Sé to his record label and enlisted them on an album release tour throughout North America and Europe. Carol C has released three albums as Si*Sé and, in addition to musical collaborations with Byrne himself, has been a featured vocalist on albums by Thievery Corporation, King Britt, Mocean Worker, Madrid De Los Austrias, and The Jungle Brothers. Cleopatra In New York, a collaboration with producer Nickodemus, was featured in the Spike Jonze film Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. Television shows such as Sex In The City, Nip/Tuck, CSI, Lipstick Jungle, One Tree Hill, Project Runway, Law & Order SVU, Six Feet Under, and MTV’s Road Rules have also featured her music. In addition to her work as a singer, songwriter, and producer. In the past year Carol has also become an intricate part of Bjork’s Biophilia project, teaching music theory to elementary school students throughout New York City. For more on Carol C visit follow Carol C on Soundcloud, Carol C on Instagram
Carol C’s Album, Seven, is available for purchase here.
