Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to CHRISTINASERA. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi CHRISTINASERA, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’d like to say that I always knew that I wanted to be a performing artist when I grew up, but I did have a brief yearning to be a veterinarian when I was about five years old. That dream, however, was short-lived as I am and always have been extremely allergic to cats. All joking aside, I truly have always known deep within my soul that music is a huge part of who I am. Even from the ages of 3 and 4 I was planning elaborate talent show performances with lighting and costumes and begging for my brother and sister’s elementary school to let me in their talent shows even though I was too young to even attend school there at the time. I grabbed a composition notebook and started writing songs about princesses and bunnies, scribbling shapes that resembled notes on a page of sheet music that only I could read. As I got older and continued writing music, I yearned to go on tour and sing my songs in front of thousands hoping to touch the hearts and lives of those who had hopefully come to love my music. I joined every choir, acapella group, and church band available while taking piano and guitar lessons after school trying to learn as much as I could about music theory, voice training, and performing. I even released my own EP of original music featuring my vocals, available worldwide, for my high school senior project! We recorded the whole thing live with a full band in single takes for each song.
Once I realized I could go to a college that would allow me to learn more about the music industry while crafting my vocal performance and songwriting skills, I was sold! Enter the Berklee College of Music! Since graduating in late 2021, I have been working on writing and recording lots of new music and navigating the industry with everything that I have learned, in order to make my dreams a modern reality!

CHRISTINASERA, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a singer-songwriter and independent artist that is based in the Orlando, Florida area! I have over 18 years of vocal performance experience and a Bachelor’s in Music Business with a specialization in Vocal Performance and Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music. When I am not working on my own music, I like to help fellow independent artists by giving them lessons on the music business and everything they need to know to navigate it (ex. distributing their music, registering for copyrights, licensing information, synchronization opportunities, and more). I recently spent time in Nashville, TN working with Elevated Music to record my next single, which comes out in October! I am so excited by the progress that I have made as a songwriter in the recent years, and I cannot wait to share this next chapter of music with the world!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I was about halfway through college, I began to have daily debilitating symptoms. It took a few years and many many specialist visits for me to finally be diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). POTS and MCAS are both forms of Dysautonomia, while hEDS is a connective tissue disease. I have always had issues with my health here and there, but the daily presentation of all of these conditions is something far beyond what most could stand. Each day is met with extreme levels of pain, joint instability (even dislocations), irregular heart rates, vertigo, pre-syncope, headaches, allergic reactions to triggers that are ever-changing, and much more. For me, these conditions are multi-systemic meaning they affect multiple systems in my body (nearly every system). Finding this out as a young, aspiring artist was extremely difficult. On top of coping with symptoms, I would now have to find a way to cope with new limitations on myself as an artist. In school each day I was learning about how touring was the new main lucrative department of the industry, while I was struggling to walk across a room due to pain, finding I couldn’t sit for long for car rides without needing multiple days to recover, and passing out from the simple act of standing for more than ten minutes at a time. It took a lot of perseverance to finish my degree and trust that I was going to curate a tool kit that would make success in the music industry a possibility for someone like me.
I did my final capstone research project on how we can use technology to make today’s music industry an accessible one. I was able to use data on virtual touring from the height of the pandemic to inform my statements that the future of lucrative touring is accessible to all, even artists with disabilities like me. I have been to countless specialist appointments and many physical therapy appointments to adapt to my own personal “new normal” over the past few years, and I remain optimistic that there is a place for an artist like me on the world’s biggest stages (even if I’m only on it via hologram). I will continue to fight for my dreams and am determined to carve a path for others like myself. Because we deserve accessibility to the music industry and the opportunity for our voices to be heard.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is being able to express myself and tell stories through music. Especially as a songwriter, there is something so powerful to me about taking a song from an idea or a particular event or hurt in your own life from literal silence into something that can be heard and dissected and played over and over again. That expression of being able to take something from a space of silence to the final product is something that never ceases to amaze me. And then there’s the flip side too of being able to hear how your listeners have interpreted your lyrics and how they were able to apply your music to their lives and their stories. It can be so therapeutic to move through the process of writing a song and putting your words out into the universe in this medium that can touch people’s lives in so many ways. It’s beautiful.

Contact Info:

• Website: christinasera.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Other: Email: christinaseramusic.com

Image Credits
By The Waves Photography & Brittany Weir Photography