Biography

RADIO PROMOTION BY ART MENIUS RADIO
art@artmenius.com https://artmeniusradio.com

Radio Add Date August 8, 2023

Hold That Spirit, the third album by Raye Zaragoza, the LA-based songwriter called “one of the most fresh and compelling voices in folk music today" by NPR Music, is a profound statement on Zaragoza’s quest for joy and her journey to celebrating a vibrant intersectional identity as a woman of mixed Indigenous, Asian, and Hispanic heritage. "Hold That Spirit is an album about reclaiming the spark inside you that you once thought had to be lit by something outside of yourself," she explains. "I wrote most of Hold That Spirit the year I was 29. The year where I got engaged, the year the engagement ended, the year I decided to seek help for an eating disorder I had been running my life for over a decade, and of course, the year I thought my youth was gone. Every writing session that created this album was an escape from the tumultuous year I experienced, and the place I went to to heal. Each of these songs tells the story of my healing process, and I hope it makes people out there with similar experiences feel less alone. This album was created entirely by women - from the writing to producing, instrumentation, mixing, and mastering. I am so proud to have created this with some insanely talented women - especially in an industry where about 2% of producers are women. Hold That Spirit was funded by what would've been my wedding budget. I hope this album reminds people that life is beautiful and messy, and as long as we can hold on to the spark within - we will be okay."

Zaragoza comes face-to-face with the things that take us away from ourselves - destructive expectations, painful experiences - and through them, finds the faith to become whole again. There’s an enduring sense of agency to these songs, which pull from buoyant indie pop like Japanese Breakfast and contemplative folk like Joni Mitchell. A feminist undercurrent unifies these songs. She feels that working with women allowed her the emotional safety to fully process the pain of her breakup and to make honest art about her life. She also felt like the songwriting process was communal, less a process of telling her specific story than one of finding ways to connect with her collaborators and share stories that resonated with all of them. Together, they explore the beliefs too-often forced on young women - how their lives should unfold, how they should appear to others, what success should mean to them - as a way to fully break free.“It’s easy for me to be vulnerable with a female collaborator even the first time I meet her,” she says. “A lot of these sessions were 3 hours of us talking and therapizing before we started writing. This album is so much about what it feels like to be a woman leaving the “prime of your 20s” and processing what it means to get older, which is something which men don’t experience in the same way.”

Hold That Spirit is a nuanced, complicated album because it is rooted in Zaragoza’s specific hardships, from her anxiety to her fraught relationship with work to her heartbreak, but it also looks outward and finds solace in people who have a shared understanding of those experiences. By leaning on those who make her feel seen and supported as she ventured into the world alone, she was able to remain defiantly optimistic, and inspire us all to do the same, too.

Zaragoza recently announced her first-ever headline tour, hitting the road with a band, making stops in Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, and more, including special sets at the 2023 Newport Folk Festival in July and the Ghost Ranch Music Festival in August. Named "one of the most politically relevant artists in her genre" by Paste Magazine, Raye Zaragoza is a galvanizing presence, a self-assured artist making music to fight for, represent, and celebrate those left too long outside the spotlight. Known for tenacious feminist anthems and fearless protest folk, her stage presence teems with determined morale.Her sophomore album Woman In Color, named Best of 2020 by NPR Music & PopMatter, spent seven weeks at #1 on the NACC Folk Radio Chart.