We were lucky to catch up with Estani Frizzell recently and have shared our conversation below.
Estani, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
To narrow it down to one is a bit difficult to say the least, but, one of the first projects that comes to mind is my children’s book, Sai the Peacock, The Unique Beak! My daughter and I collaborated on this together and I couldn’t be more proud of the result!
Being a singer/songwriter, I was always making up little random songs for my daughter while on our way to school. Whether it be about the breakfast we had, the long wait at a stop light, or what she was imagining for school that day, I would always turn our banter into a song. So when we began seeing peacocks around our area, the questions surrounding their presence ensued. Keep in mind, my daughter was around 4/5 yrs old at the time, so seeing a giant plumed peacock in a residential area really made an impact on her….and myself. I started making up a story regarding how/why they were there and it just progressed from there.
13 years later, along with an album release, a full time teaching position, and BTS video and music production jobs, we finally began the job of writing our first children’s book out of the stories made up and shared from so long ago. Thankfully, my background in music and teaching enabled me to provide the music (with the help of Grecco Buratto) and write curriculum to bring our story about self reliance, resilience, and self worth, into schools while providing a musical escape into the world of a peacock who wants nothing more than to follow his passion and feel accepted while doing it!
I’d like to bring attention to one more which I am currently working on in honor of my grandmother. I’ve just finished editing the trailer for a documentary about the early voices of Conjunto music. My grandmother was one of these voices! More to come soon! This is an exciting new project for me that hones in on the early 1900’s era when Conjunto music was born in Texas. My grandmother is 90 years young next year and I’m honored to provide her lost forgotten music to the masses along with the stories that surround the early Conjunto era!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Well, my first love was/is music/performance while figuring out how my different facets of creative expression can somehow inspire positive change. I do feel the latter is more aligned with my purpose. I always knew from an early age I wanted to perform, and that inner knowing provided a sort of fearlessness I needed to have when opportunities came my way.
I was born and raised in San Antonio, TX. My musical background had always been what I gravitated to as a kid and what was playing in our house; my love of R&B/HipHop/NeoSoul and the cumbias/rancheras/tejano music my grandmother was always playing. Wanting to pursue music, the ideal university to attend in TX at the time, as well as today, is UNT(University of North Texas). After my first year at UNT, I had this deep yearning to live and work in NYC. I applied, waited, called, persisted, and finally got my acceptance letter during the first semester of my sophomore year at UNT. I left second semester to NYC.
During my time in school, I worked as a waitress at IHOP while taking full 18 hour semester course loads which meant working the night shift. What I thought was going to be a horrible shift (11pm-4am), turned out to be one of my most memorable experiences. I worked with three waitresses from El Salvador who eventually invited me to their apt in the Bronx for dinner during one of our off nights which led to an unforgettable night of music and inspiration. I heard Salsa music for the first time! Seems a bit insane now to think I had never been exposed to anything other than what was in my TX environment, but that’s the truth. That night they played Willie Colón, Hector LaVoe, Oscar De’Leon, Irakere, and many more. It was the first time I heard the song, “Vivir Lo Nuestro” with Marc Anthony and La India. I bought the CD and had it on repeat incessantly. I fell in love with the music and did all I could to learn it, study it, and apply whatever I could as a vocalist to get the feel right. As I was approaching graduation, I decided to move to LA to pursue music and acting full time.
I began working pretty quickly upon my arrival to Los Angeles. Throughout that initial summer, I signed with a manager as well as a commercial/theatrical agent and began booking work. My first big show in Los Angeles was at Placita Olvera sharing the stage with acts such as Los Tigres Del Norte and Ana Barbara. It all moved so quickly and the opportunity came after to sing with, at the time, one of the more well known salsa bands in LA. Life was moving exponentially fast at that point. That’s when I took time out for the birth of my daughter.
Once I decided to get back to work, I had to make it count. I was now a single mom and had a daughter that was watching how her mom presented herself. I wanted to teach through example, the fundamentals of confidence, independence, and self worth. I regrouped, readjusted my focus, and recharged. I formed my own group Estani Y La Ascension and booked a tour with Mexican recording artist Joan Sebastian. I wrote and recorded my first full length album and was now working for myself.
With my daughter now 4 yrs old at this time and ready for school, I once again had to reassess my priorities and what/where I placed importance. I used my degree to teach full time and be next to my daughter. I was always looking for ways to intertwine performance into my curriculum which, unbeknownst to me, would serve me quite well with our future children’s book. I began to cultivate a small after school choir at a performing arts school, and musical theater camp which, at first, drew little attention. However, I had excellent students and parents who knew my background and believed in what I was trying to put together for the kids. The support was phenomenal and it was at that point that I started to believe I could start my own production company, Ascension Vocals. I took a leap of faith and did it. I quit teaching in a traditional school setting and began offering vocal lessons and full original song productions. A few of the parents/managers knew I wrote my own songs and knew about my album and singles. Word spread and before I knew it, I was working full time on a full music production from the inception of the song, to the filming of the music video.
After many years of working BTS, I found the urge to start writing and producing music for myself again. Because of my background, I had more of a concrete understanding of the technical aspects of production so I began to harness that for myself as well when it came to video production.
The pandemic really pushed the momentum into high gear for me and I was able to flourish with some of my best creative visual work coming out during that time. Everyone was forced to find a new way to communicate and thankfully, I found a way to express my imagination through song and video. Due to my experience BTS and production, I was able to reach out and work with some amazingly talented individuals, but more so, just great people with beautiful souls. :)
It was 2020 when we began working our children’s book, Sai The Peacock, The Unique Beak. This carried over into the pandemic momentum as well. Looking back, that time was such a blessing in disguise for me. It enabled me to focus solely on the creative endeavors I had been longing to accomplish but felt so many time constraints. The pandemic took all that away. During those two years, all we had was time…time to make things happen. Fortunately, I took advantage of that to the best of my ability.
Thankfully, I’ve had incredible opportunities that have given me the knowledge, experience, and insight to provide vocal coaching/songwriting/and production for all ages and ranges. Although even when I didn’t have the experience, I knew to listen to my inner voice. My intuition would guide me to follow the steps to make a new vision happen despite the fear, lack of resources, and the judgments or fear of failure. This is why our children’s book became a tangible actualized dream that now has a soundtrack, a musical score, an audiobook narration, and a book number 2 on the way! I had never taken on anything of that magnitude before nor did I have someone to lead by example, but it is actually crazy how the universe conspires in your favor when you’re truly ready to make something bigger than yourself happen.
I also have personal life experience to empathize with those who have endured extenuating circumstances while relying solely on faith, conviction of self, and a passion for realizing a goal/dream/vision regardless of the challenges. Raising a newborn in a city like LA with no family and no real foundation kicked my fight or flight response into overdrive. 20 years later, I’m so proud of what we have done together and what I was/am able to provide and do on my own for her and for myself. I’d love to be a support system for others who see the dream, see the goal, see the vision, but just can’t see a way to make it happen, I’ve been there and can understand the dire circumstances on so many levels. To be the person that helps someone else see a lifelong dream come to fruition, is where I believe myself, and others flourish most.
So, after covering a few dreams I’m proud to have made happen, the work I’m most proud of at the moment is a documentary I’m focusing on honoring my grandmother. She was a TX Conjunto singer in the 60’s and 70’s. By accident, someone asked me if my grandmother’s work was a part of the UCLA LA Frontera Collection. At the time, I had never even heard of that or remotely knew what that was. I right away asked for the link, visited the site, entered her name, and lo and behold, my grandmother’s early recordings are there! We knew she had recorded a couple of singles, but to see this was such an honor for me. This foundation honors the early work of, primarily, early Texas, Tejano and Conjunto Mexican and Mexican/American musicians, It’s in collaboration with The Arhoolie Foundation, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and the UCLA library. You can visit the UCLA Frontera Website to listen to digitized long lost recordings, view the old record labels and read the bios of the musicians. These are small legacies that so many musicians have left behind.
At the end of the day, I would want followers, fans, clients to know that my “niché” isn’t just latin music, or singing, or vocal coaching, or my children’s book. My niché is me. :) My niché is doing all I can to leave behind something this world can be proud of, and connect with people who make a difference in my life and feel the same about me.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I think there is such an emphasis on job status equaling financial strength and how one falls into the financial career tier. The perception used to be that this was usually the outlook of someone older. I feel now that even Gen Z are so consumed (understandably) with the best way to make an exorbitant amount of money in regardless of the happiness factor.
All this to say, when you’re a creative, it’s not a hobby, it’s not something cute you do as a pastime, it’s a fulfillment and a joy that isn’t just what you live with and do on the side, it’s that thing you can’t live without and is a must to fulfill. Of course, we all need to survive and take care of the essentials, but it seems that happiness, joy, and fulfillment are forgotten essentials/priorities. It sounds cliche to say but money does not guarantee happiness.
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. – Maya Angelou
It’s perplexing for some people to see others willingly put themselves in a position of adversity or challenge when there’s a much safer and no risk approach. Many think any creative market is entirely over saturated, others question the need to make yourself vulnerable for judgment and question the “need” for attention and supposed validation. It’s the knowing of what’s on the other side. You’re leaving a visceral timestamp with your creative vision once it’s been realized and fulfilled. We aren’t meant to play safe, we’re meant to be the best version of ourselves and meet our highest potential, and ultimately, we’re here to create. Do what you love and the money will follow.
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. (Norman Vincent Peale)
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
The lesson of “you’re too nice.” People will always remember the version of you when they had the most power over you. One of two things will happen when you finally begin to step into your power, realize your self worth, and create boundaries. People will either respect the change and fall into that alignment of your growth, or they will want nothing to do with you because you’re asserting an unfamiliar side of yourself that does not resonate with their version of you. There’s a clear unspoken irony to this dilemma that is very contradicting on so many levels. It’s always perceived as a negative trait that needs to be addressed, however, only when it doesn’t apply to the person offering their observation.
I can recall a few experiences, but one that really made me take a step back, analyze myself and the people I was surrounding myself with while recognizing the part I played in all this, was when I received a call to perform for a large convention. Throughout the entire process leading up to the show, I continuously found myself begrudgingly complying to certain situations with the Music Director I made extremely clear I didn’t want, simply to avoid confrontation. I didn’t assert myself like I could have and perhaps should have. Everything that was supposed to be easy felt so difficult. There are too many to list. I made a resolution in my head after this experience that I needed to surround myself with different energy, and like minded communication.
It was a life lesson I had to unlearn about always being nice and accommodating. I didn’t want to have to “unlearn” it in this way, but at the end of the day, you have to be nice and kind to yourself while protecting your energy. It felt like such a selfish outlook at the time, but I no longer see it that way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.estanifrizzell.com
- Instagram: @estanifrizzell
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/estanifrizzell1/
- Linkedin: @estanifrizzzell
- Twitter: @estani
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EstaniFrizzell
Image Credits
Airic Lewis