We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Luna Achiary a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Luna, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My Italian grandmother is a great example of perseverance and independence since an early age, being a single living and working physiotherapist, masseuse and healer, living by herself and holding a business together, coming from rural post fascist regime, which left most of the country in extreme poverty.
My mother, as a professional jazz singer, vocal coach, an ethnomusicologist. As a single mother of two she was always able to prioritize her art and growth, never leaving it behind, despite the bills and residing in a non-stimulating environment.
Apparently my grandfather that I never met was a genius electrician and builder, with a very sophisticated and curious mind, ready to challenge the Status quo in a 1960 Renaissance Italy, finding a way out of the frugal farm life and establishing connection with modernization.
My Basque French father was an opera tenor at the time, now psychologist and anthropologist, rigorous traveler and passionate artist that took every chapter of his existence to its fullest potential and followed it till the end every single time.
My French grandmother lost two husbands in a row to the war and I cannot imagine how a weak mind could have survived such pain, left alone with 3 kids.
That ethic inherited by survivalists I guess runs through me, a spirit that cannot afford to slack or pass on their duties and responsibilities.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I was born from two professional singers and artists at the time. She’s Italian, in love with jazz, folk and blues. He’s a basque, French, Spanish mix, in the operatic world.. Obvious cultural differences might’ve played a role in some misunderstandings, as they parted ways immediately.
The path of the seeker was shared with me at an early age through constant traveling and a very rich musical background, from academic to private instruction and multiple performance opportunities, starting with vocal training (my mom is also an outstanding vocal coach), piano, drums and percussion, bass, guitar…I learned from my parents how to be a good student of life I guess…following them on stages and recording endeavors, learning repertoires and putting shows together. Far from a traditional family system I was surrounded by independent tough ladies…somehow men’s presence did not sustain in our nucleus, healthy relationships did not exist around me. The quest to find peace and committing to a fulfilling career as tough as music stimulated the motivation I needed,
When I moved to the US at age 20, the goal was to fully extrapolate my being of any root system and find my one of a kind direction. An all inclusive one. A constantly growing expansive one. In LA I attended LACC College of Music for composition, specifically jazz, and fell in love with my former husband, a pop/rock professional music engineer, he showed me the world of recording in deep detail, and brought me into the most famous recording studios in LA. But, was I to be settled at the tender age of 28? No. Life was starting just then.
My legacy as a producer, artist, writer and performer is to destroy the status quo, bridge gaps between cultures and social envoironments, facilitate a global understanding in our human world, to represent my own story in the best possible way, to share my female voice. The songs I write follow a life’s diary. The main ethos behind it is to establish a freeing connection with our emotions and channel them into a much more sustainable relationship with nature and our truth, to promote a more peaceful and joyful existence. My time spent with indigenous shamanic communities made me more familiar with matriarchal family systems, more ecologically symbiotic and natural. Here sound and music are still sacred, they’re connected to the divine. Learning ancient pre colonial languages holds the key to a whole new level of understanding.
I believe the magic of this work lies into its community. It is a very dynamic and adventurous quest, to try to help any project and record come to life within social context, with resourcefulness and awareness, which eventually inspires more creativity. What is already available to you? What has not been intelligently organized and reframed? The whole potential is already present. It’s about connecting the dots.
The artist’s role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Courage. To expand your comfort zone to the expansive unknown.
Courage brings us to the wisdom we need to guide others in return.
We gain more courage with discipline, as we build the blocks of our understanding and trust in ourselves to take over more complicated tasks. Showing up every day in a ritualistic fashion towards practice of the craft. Learning is cumulative in this.
I’ve also been enjoying a lot collaborating with other producers and bands. It delivers many opportunities for us to test your courage and expand our thinking and emotional spectrum.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
What is there to say that has not already been reiterated? We all go ups and down. There is no cure to simply embrace the human experience. Exercise and Meditation have been key.
Days are extremely different and don’t always respect the circadian rhythm. There’ is no such things as a vacation time. Artists follow the seasons and the flow.
Anything from recording music, writing truthful songs, performing with grace, setting up production and events, all require a strong body that is in sync with a good emotional health. Nature, good sex, friendship, studying, good food, no television. All these elements have the capacity to bring us closer to a more balanced, peaceful state.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://monsterluna.com/home
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monsterluna/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monsterlunamusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCkInn6pEi3ZFo1Kd2a02JA
Image Credits
Watchara Photography, Ronnie Lion Photography, Aithen the Joker, Tanya Nesta
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
