This week I’m featuring an artist from within the Bradley music program. Adriana Dunn is a student at Bradley in the Music Entertainment Industry major. In the time she’s been releasing music, her songs have given fresh life to the pop scene at Bradley. By combining influences from alternative, dark pop, and Latin music from her native Bolivia, Adriana has carved out a place for herself in the Bradley music world. In my interview with her, we talked about her music and where it comes from. I’ll let her tell you the rest.

R: How would you describe your music, what do you want people to know about it?

A: Well I think my music has a very unique sound to it because I’m still exploring genres. I haven’t landed on one yet so it’s all very mixed up in a variety of styles.

R: So what genres are mixing to make up your sound?

A: A lot of alternative stuff, but there’s also a big influence of pop, some dark pop.

R: When you say dark pop what do you mean by that?

A: Paris, if you’ve heard of them, had a big influence on me. A bit of what Billie Eilish is doing.

R:How long have you been involved in music?

A: I’ve been singing since I was very young but I never got any actual training in music. I’m totally self taught and then I started writing and producing my own music about two years ago.

R: So your work as an artist is pretty fresh. What made you want to start writing?

A: Mostly that I had been singing for so long and I wanted to do something more with it, really see what I was capable of as an artist. I started to learn how to use production softwares, took songs that I had written and started adding instrumentals and everything to them.

R: So what makes you want to write music?

Cover art for Adriana’s most recent release, “Won’t Let You Go”

A: A lot of my songs come from personal experiences. Like my first song is a lot about personal growth and trying to avoid getting lost in that growth. I wrote it when I had first moved away from my country and was going through that huge change so there’s a lot of those emotions built into that song.

R: Moving to a different country would absolutely be a huge shift I would imagine that had an affect on your writing. How would you say that move translated into your music?

A: It was so different to be away from my family and I really learned a lot about myself in that time. I became a lot more independent and I think you can really hear that in my writing.

R: So when you go through that process of writing, performing and producing, is there any help or is that all you?

A: That’s all me, I do every part of the process myself.

R: Very impressive, so would you ever consider bringing on collaborators and working with other people along the way?

A: Absolutely. It’s really hard because I get stuck a lot in the writing process so it would be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off.

R: What would you say you’re trying to achieve to your audience through your music? What would you want a listener to feel?

A: I want to relate to my listeners, make people feel like they can understand what I’m saying and apply it to their own lives. When I write my lyrics I always try to keep the wording and metaphors very general so people can take the songs and use their own experiences to add whatever meaning they can to them.

R: How would you say your sound has evolved since you started writing?

A: When I started writing it was a lot of typical pop songs. Ariana Grande style upbeat very happy music where the lyrics don’t really have any meaning to them. I was making songs like that but it felt wrong, like I would read it and it wouldn’t actually mean anything to me and that felt fake. So from then on I started writing songs more connected to my emotions and the lyrics were coming out darker and with more sad themes. Once I was writing those lyrics I had to change the instrumentation to match those ideas. I started getting into new artists and started changing my sound to reflect those new influences.

R: How do you think growing up in Bolivia has affected you musical style?

A: Well it’s a mix because I do my best writing in English. I think it’s because I learned it by writing essays in school so I’m better at articulating my thoughts that way than I am in Spanish. It just comes out a lot more clear. But the influence of that culture and Latin music is absolutely present in my music. I think I get a lot of my vocal styling from that kind of music and it helps me stand apart and give myself a unique feel.

R: How would you say the Bradley music world has affected your music? What’s been your experience?

Cover art for Adriana’s recent single “Isn’t It?”

A: It’s been huge for shaping my music. So I actually wanted to come in as a vocal performance major but since I don’t have any formal training they wouldn’t take me in the program. That rejection is actually what inspired me to start writing my own music. It was sort of a decision made out of spite (laughing) but it ended up being very important for me. I don’t think I would have ended up making my own music if it wasn’t for that moment. And then of course I joined Brave Sounds and they signed me as an artist and that’s been amazing.

R: Yeah Brave Sounds! Tell me about your experience there.

A: Oh they’ve been just amazing. They’ve helped me promote my stuff and sort of define myself as an artist. They have also been super helpful with their songwriting sessions, they help me a lot with getting past writer's block and figuring out the sound of each song. I’ve really gotten more confident as an artist by having Brave Sounds as sort of a home team. They always try really hard to support me and feature me and it’s been great.

R: What about the rest of the music program through the school?

A: They have also been great. Just this semester actually I worked with the Music Business Practicum to produce a music video for my song “Won’t Let You Go”. It was a fantastic experience and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Below I’ve embedded that video so you can all get an idea of Adriana’s sound. It’s something I enjoy and I hope you will as well. Check back next week for my interview with local rock group “Voight’s LaBaron”