We were lucky to catch up with LISSET DIAZ recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi LISSET, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

In my experience as an independent artist, it honestly feels like every single step you take is a risk and a potential mistake with important consequences lol. It’s a constant learning process full of possibilities in both , the creative and business world. BUT if I had to talk about some remarkable risks I’ve taken they would be changing carriers to become a full time musician and moving to another country to pursue my dream. I studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Havana, my hometown. It was always my dream to become a scientist. I loved Math and Physics. I still do. I graduated with honors and taught at the University for 3 years. I always loved singing, but as I hobby. I was not particularly surrounded by music or musicians when I was growing up so no one ever encouraged me to develop my potential musician skills. I kept singing though. I also loved writing about anything and everything so at some point I thought “I could put words to a melody I’m thinking of and then sing it”. And I say it like this because the word “songwriting” was not a thing for me. I didn’t know anyone who was writing songs or anything like that. I was just enjoying the process. When I was 15, my mom got me an acoustic guitar. I had a classmate who had one and I was fascinated by it. So I started learning some chords and some songs until I was able to use my guitar as a tool to “put words to those melodies in my head”. In my fourth year at the University I felt like recording some of the songs I had. No commercial interest at all. I just wanted to have them so I could show them to my kids in the future. No one was gonna hear them anyways. That’s how I met Miguel Comas, full time musician and producer, a friend of a friend. He offered to help me but when he listened to the songs he really liked them and got the idea of making an album! I couldn’t believe it. He had some songs of his own and then we wrote some more together. We made a demo with 10 songs and we took it to a Cuban contest (kind of like the Cuban version of the Grammys) and the album was nominated in two categories. Crazy! We started getting gig offers and radio interviews. That’s how we decided to form our band ”Sweet Lizzy Project”, to be able to play the songs live. This happened nine years ago and the band has been together since. My plan was to do both science and music but at some point I realized that music was my real passion. That’s how I started being a musician.

Inspite of the creatively hostile environment in Cuba, SWEET LIZZY PROJECT got well known all over the country, a very unusual scenario for a Rock N Roll band playing original material, all in English. Cuba doesn’t have music stores, musicians have to go through auditions and institutional red tape to be able to perform live and foreign music genres like Rock N Roll don’t get much support from the music institutions (Rock N Roll was basically banned by the Communist Government during the 60s/70s). In the middle of all this, and after four years working on getting recognition we got an offer from PBS to be a part of their upcoming special “Havana Time Machine”. Raul Malo from The Mavericks was the host of this show and he loved our music and the band. He immediately offered a record deal for us to come to the US and write and record our next album Technicolor. I would say that was the second biggest risk I have taken. We had to choose between staying at home with an audience, places to play, songs on the radio OR leaving everything behind (family and friends included) and embarque ourselves on a new adventure without really knowing what to expect on the other side and a huge change for our lives, new language, different culture, etc.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the lead singer of the Cuban Rock band SWEET LIZZY PROJECT. We are very unusual for a Cuban band and also pretty peculiar compared to an American Rock band, because we’re Cuban. I already talked about how I got to the United States 5 years ago and some of the risks I took before making the big decision of coming here, but the real challenges started when I realized there was a music industry out there I didn’t know about. Publishing deals, promoters, booking agents, managers, never had to deal with any of that before. I just wanted to write music and perform. I quickly realized that was only a part of what my life was gonna be. I became a small business owner and that means a lot more work than writing and singing. We spent our first two years putting our immigration status in order and recording our album Technicolor. We also started touring all over the country. By 2020 the band had performed in the US, coast to coast, and had opened up shows for big acts such as Heart, Joan Jett, Johnny Swim, The Mavericks, Raul Malo, Jamey Johnson, Buckcherry, Billy Strings and Silvana Estrada. Along the way, we earned a prime performance broadcast for PBS’s Havana Time Machine; an artist profile on NPR’s “Weekend Edition”; and a cover story in the Miami Herald.

“Technicolor” was released in February of 2020, a much anticipated event for us that did not turn out as hoped, since our scheduled tour was cancelled.

By the time the pandemic shut everything down, the five of us had moved into a rental home together to write and record the new songs that would become our third album. This brand new body of work is particularly special because it was written in both English and Spanish. Pirate Radio/Radio Pirata came out October 7th, 2022 under the record label Thirty Tigers/Mono Mundo Recordings. It is a compilation of songs that are inspired by our musical and physical journeys. Our sound reflects our devotion to rock and the music that inspires us including the Foo Fighters, The Police, The Beatles, Paramore, and Of Monsters and Men with a hint of the Cuban roots that make our band unique. The album is available every where and for the first time, we are fully on the road promoting our brand new album.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think our entire story illustrates our resilience. The fact that we have been together for almost 10 years, making music together to me says it all. We survived a hostile environment in Cuba, moving to a new country with NOTHING but few instruments and fewer clothes, a pandemic that got us stuck together in the same house for two years with a full tour canceled and a basement full a vinyls that we were supposed to sell on the road. And we are still here. We just put out two more albums PIRATE RADIO and RADIO PIRATA (11 songs in English, 11 songs in Spanish), we are back on the road and we have not killed each other… yet lol. And most importantly, we are not quitting any time soon. Can’t wait to go everywhere and play our music.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

To me, the most rewarding thing is to hear about how your music is impacting other people’s lives, people you don’t even know, people from the other side of the world. We get messages from all over the world, from people telling us what a particular song means to them, or how listening to our music helped them survive the pandemic or a rough patch or depression. That is priceless for me. Music has always helped me in so many ways, and I feel like I’m returning the favor when I make music that can help other people. Thinking of the value of music and how we can support and inspire people was inspired us to write our latest album PIRATE RADIO. Pirate Radio is a concept album that describes the story of a fictional character living in Cuba in the ‘70s, when foreign music genres such as Rock and Roll were banned by the communist government. Admirers of these unauthorized forms of music created illegal antennas to secretly tune in to radio stations from different parts of the world, which made it possible for them to listen to bands such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Elvis Presley. If caught at this activity, these music lovers were socially marginalized because they did not conform to the oppressive expectations of the recently triumphant Cuban Revolution. Frequently, they suffered arbitrary arrests, abuse, and imprisonment which ultimately forced thousands of Cubans to emigrate, legally or illegally, from the country. Many of these emigrants never reached shore in the United States, but instead tragically lost their lives in the deep waters of the Straits of Florida.
Pirate Radio is our tribute to this generation of Cubans with whom we are united by respect and love for music. It is an ode to freedom of expression and thought. It is an anthem to those who dream of change and struggle against oppression. It is our cry for, and commitment to, the end of fear, censorship, and silence.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sweetlizzyproject.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetlizzyproject/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sweet.Lizzy.Project
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SweetLizzyProj
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SweetLizzyProject

Image Credits
photos by Jace Kartye