STEPHANIA NATASHA
Originally from Florida, Stephania moved a lot between Bolivia and the US when she was young. Always the new kid at school. She immersed herself in Disney movies, musicals and popular cartoons like Pokémon. Always surrounded by music at home. Her grandparents played classic Mexican musicals on videotape or CDs of famous Latin singers from the 60’s and 70’s. Her mom blew the house stereo with classic rock from the 80’s including The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Queen and Bon Jovi. She performed in musicals like Grease, Beauty and the Beast and talent shows throughout high school and engrossed herself in music. Always learning multiple musical instruments during lunch breaks, singing, dancing, taking music theory and listening to a lot of alternative 2000s rock like Nirvana, Creed, Coldplay and soloists like Tina Turner, Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson.
It wasn’t until after a few entrepreneurship pursuits that in 2016 Stephania wrote her very first song in the middle of the night in her tiny closet apartment in NYC. This turned into casual songwriting and DIY music video making that she shared with friends and family. She moved back to Maryland a year later where she was able to climb up the ladder as a UX designer. By then, she had lived a full life. She owned a home, helped the family, built a stable career and started to record and release music. Stephania had way too much responsibility and no time or energy to take music more seriously. She realized that music was the place where she was the most honest, where she felt the most safe and was the most happy and has left it in the back burner long enough. She made a shift, cut down the six-figure salary in half, trimmed down her work hours and started to focus on her art.
“She realized that music was the place where she was the most honest, where she felt the most safe and was the most happy and has left it in the back burner long enough.”
Her life has been a series of businesses and entrepreneurship. She learned that she's capable of doing anything as long as she sits with it, studies it, and keeps at it. She wrote many songs during COVID, revised them, joined online songwriting communities, did a few trips to Nashville and fell in love with the city and songwriting art form. She wrote and recorded an EP with a producer in the area and one other in Jersey City. It encompassed everything she is today and the moment in my life, when she turned 30, when everything changed. She then started to look for musicians to build a band and start promoting the EP and now, here they are, having shows lined up all around the DMV.
Stephania built many careers in her 20s and learned a lot about being a professional adult. Nothing prepared her for the music business like the last 10 years did. All the business and learning pursuits enabled her to be more picky, believe and reconnect with myself, and live her own life by pursuing the life she always dreamt of.
