Interview: Cindy Latin
Hailing from NYC, Cindy Latin an R&B soul artist, producer and actress.
Cindy came to Boston in 2015 to study Musical Theatre at the Boston Conservatory. She studied vocal performance, acting, and dance during her time there. In the summer of 2016, she attended a Summer Music Bootcamp course at NYU’s prestigious Clive Davis Program, where she began songwriting and discovered a new passion leading her to change course and come study at Berklee College of Music in 2017. She graduated in 2019 with a Dual Degree in Songwriting and Contemporary Writing and Production and a minor in the Theory of Jazz and Popular Styles.
Cindy's original music is a blend of Soul, R&B, and Jazz. She is strongly influenced by Jazz harmony while admiring R&B singers and writers. She writes, performs, arranges, and produces. Her musical influences range from Stevie Wonder to Frank Ocean to Tori Kelly to John Coltrane.
Cindy just released a new single, "We Don't Get Along," which is available for streaming and download on all major platforms. This is part one of a four piece project of originals she arranged for Big Band. The next song, "Running Out of Love," will be available 10.9.20.
Her June 2019 release "In a Year From Now" was added to Spotify Editorial Playlist "All Funked Up" and has over 340k streams.
In addition to her recorded music, she constantly performs in the Boston and NYC area, playing shows at 54 Below, Sofar Sounds, the Red Room in Boston, Groove NYC, the Middle East Downstairs, etc. Cindy has been fortunate enough to work with and share stages with bands and artists such as Los Elk, JUICE, Tony Award Winner Alex Brightman, John Splithoff, Drew Gasparini, Katie Ladner, Jason Gotay, Eric Stern (Tony and Emmy Winner), Ryan Scott Oliver, Lindsay Mendez, Rob Lewis, and Lamont Leak.
Read below to hear more about her and her work!
So you just released your new single, “I am looking”. Was that something that was put together over the whole COVID, quarantine last year?
Cindy- “At the beginning of 2020, I set out to record 4 songs of mine with a big band of 17 musicians, so I had 4 songs for this instrumentation and I recorded them, like the vocals and band were recorded right before everything hit in February last year. There was still a lot to do during the pandemic, there were 3 other songs and I still have one of them. So i had to do most of the mixing and extra production and editing the video through the pandemic. Most of the recording happened before but a lot of the other parts happened during the pandemic,”
Do you mix your own music?
Cindy- “I do. At least now I do. Years ago I didn't know how but now I graduated college and I was learning how to mix and I get feedback from people whose opinion I respect. Part of why I chose to double major, which was more expensive but in the long run, it was so nice to have independence and not have to worry about hiring other people to do it for me.”
Have you always wanted to be in music growing up or did it come about later in life?
Cindy- “I was doing musical theater pretty much all my life and I thought I would only do musicals and I actually started college at Boston conservatory and transferred to Berklee and I didn’t know I would write or even produce and mix anything. I started writing a little in college and took some summer classes at NYU, and I thought it was super cool so I transferred and I thought I would only song write, but throughout my time at berklee, kinda last minute, I added on another major, as I had more exposure to all of that stuff, I kind of started adding on, I’ve always liked the arts and music but certain parts came later”
You have a lyric in there, “watched Disney movies until 7am” what’s your favorite Disney movie or show to watch?
Cindy- “I don’t know if this counts, it's on Disney plus, but Wanda vision, marvel stuff. That's the highlight of my week these days. It comes out at a specific time I think, which is sometimes 3am for me and I don’t always wait up for it but sometimes I do”
How did the title, ‘I am looking’, come about? Any specific meaning behind it?
Cindy- “It’s like this feeling, where something feels missing in a sense, doing all of this stuff and I feel anxious and I am trying to fix something but I’m doing all of this stuff that isn’t helping me. Something is missing emotionally and I am looking for different ways to figure out what it is and fill the hole, if that makes sense”
Who is your biggest musical inspiration?
Cindy-“Stevie wonder .He’s my number 1. I think he is brilliant and he does things that are complex but don’t sound complex if that makes sense. Instead of making it sound really busy and like complicated, it still sounds like, people who aren't musicians could love it and people who are, also can love it which is something I wish I could do better. You know, I’ve had so many wonderful teachers, mentors and guides college and before school and so many of them have helped me with so many different things and I would say I am really grateful to all of the teachers that I have been able to work with”
What was the biggest piece of advice one of those teachers gave you?
Cindy- “Definitely. I wish I could remember who said this or maybe its a combination of things different people have said, but a big one is, to kind of write and do as much as you can instead of kind of worrying about getting one really good song out. I have some friends or people I just know, who I feel like spend a lot of time getting that one song perfect and it makes them really frustrated and worked up. I’ve been told that you know, do the best you can, get the song out and if its so bad no one high in the music industry will hear it and ruin your career. All of this amazing music doesn’t even get heard, so if your song is so not great, who is going to hear it, its not going to get to someone’s ears you know. Get what you can out and keep writing as much as possible. The more you write the better your good songs will be”
You have released one album a few years ago, any plans to do another? Or stick to singles right now?
Cindy- “I’ve always been putting out singles since then. Its just that I feel like with the singles, since I’m not really, you know, I’m still working my way up to where I hope to be in my career. I feel like at this point the more, If I just keep with singles, there is more of a likely hood someone is going to listen to one song at a time. Like right now If i dropped an album, I don’t feel like many people are going to sit through it. Whereas if I keep with single, A. Its another reminder of my name every few months or so, its more often when I put one out with more frequency for my name to like pop up on someone’s phone or wherever. B. I just feel like at this point since I don’t yet have you know, such a big loyal following, its not really the time for people to sit through my music. Its not that I don’t want to to but I just don’t think its the time right now. In the future of course, I’m not against it but I don’t know when”
What's one lesson you learned young that you’ve kept with you through life?
Cindy- “Stick with Piano lessons. Actually though, I know its so specific but like yeah I wish I had kind of gotten into instruments as a younger kid, I think that would’ve really been helpful for me. Be open to trying new skills. It’s okay to have an interest in something and to pursue that interest 100%. But don’t think it has to look one way you know. Don’t think that you need only a certain skill. Get as many skills as you can, learn as much as possible. Learn other things related to music and the arts earlier because the less you have to depend on other people with your projects and to be able to do as much as you can by yourself”
I feel like there is a lot of stigma around the whole being women in the music industry. Have you faced anything like that being a singer?
Cindy- “Yeah, it's funny. One of my good friends, who's finishing up Berklee right now, was just talking to me about this last night. She said she has to do extra just to gain sometimes the respect of other musicians and like anytime a singer slips up, especially a female singer like, it feels like we are being judges more harshly and I agree. Especially since I am a band leader and at this point in my career, I am able to arrange and do a lot of stuff I couldn’t do before. Again, the people I work with overall are wonderful people who don’t give me issues, but you know once and a while, there have been small circumstances here or there, where like I find someone is being incredibly nitpicky of something I wrote just to kind of pick an argument. If they mess up something that I wrote, they will criticize the way that I wrote it down, rather then then just being like, ‘I messed up’ kind of thing. i don’t know if that because I am a vocalist or a female but its sometimes feels that way as I observe other females leading. People sometimes assume you don’t know. Another time for example, this one actually really bugged me. I was still in school and I had to engineer a session, just to record a saxophone part, and I’m still learning and I had a friend who was in a more heavy engineering major. I asked him if he would come help me out and just take a look. He came, which was nice of him, but then he said something like ‘oh, (the song we were working on) Oh, that sounds cool, whose producing it'?’ and I go, ‘Oh I am” then he goes ‘Oh okay yeah but whose producing you?” and I didn’t call him out specifically but I made a Facebook post about it and I was like I feel like its not really right that someone would assume that because I’m a vocalist and songwriter that I don’t know how to produce music. He ended up Facebook messaging me separately, which was nice, and apologized and was like I’m sorry, I don’t wanna paraphrase because I don’t wanna misquote him but it was something like, its not that often that you see that happening, which maybe true, but I don’t think its as true as people think it is because I know a lot of female vocalists who are amazing producers”
Watch ‘I am looking’ video now