We recently connected with Marlon Simon and have shared our conversation below.

Marlon, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I have produced seven albums as a leader of The Nagual Spirits. My latest album “On different paths” distributed by Truth revolution recordings is my most ambitious project so far , a production supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. My previous albums were in many occasions created under difficult circumstances, however, music has been my unconditional companion through my whole life, always there waiting for me without asking for anything in return.
My next album, titled “Resistance” live in Philadelphia for “Stay black recordings” is coming out in August this year and will be available at www.marlonsimon.com

Marlon, 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?

The life of a musician can be a daily challenge. For those of us committed to maintain the highest level of integrity in the music business our career comes alone with many sacrifices. It feels like the better the quality of music you produce the harder it gets to make a living. I have been in the music business for over forty years, initially as a side man and later as a band leader of my band “The nagual spirits”. When I first came to the USA in 1980 was to get my commercial pilot license. There were only two things that moved me in life, music and planes. You might ask how can somebody handle a pair of career that are completely opposite in most ways?, well, you have to be very disciplined and remain focus at all times. Distraction comes with a high cost to pay and you can not afford to waste time in activities that provides temporarily pleasure. After obtaining my commercial pilot license and a bachelor degree in fine arts, I had to keep different day jobs as a laborer to maintain a roof over my head to be able to come from a long day of hard physical work to a place where you could work on your music and instrument. Of course there are times when you think what is the meaning of all this and how long will you be able to keep going ……..once you go through several life tragedies and disappointments such as burying your loved one, going to numerous relationships among many other obstacles you must face when you immigrate from the place where you grew up to another country with a different set of values and belief system you become a example of one thing, and that is “Resistance”. To hardly make a living creating original music work you learn to live in a way where resistance becomes your daily mantra. As a jazz/Latin Jazz drummer, composer and educator, I do not have the capitalistic machinery behind that the famous names in music for the masses have. You are alone, and I mean alone with your instrument and alone during the composition process. Resist, resist and keep resisting to do what you want to do, it is a long term sacrifice. And all these sacrifices can be heard or seen in your creative art, music in my case. I have had people approach me after a concert saying how my music changed their mood or their life !…….what can be more rewarding than that?.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I honestly believe that even most of us don’t realize this, our main purpose on this journey we call life is to “evolve”. Now when we see the way we are living today we can obviously see that we have not evolve as human species in the past one thousand years. Yes we have made impressive technological progress, we have build highways and shopping mall every where, we can live surrounded by all material luxuries money can afford, but we have been on numerous wars, we even want to conquer the space,( without knowing ourselves first), we all create our own illusion of the meaning of life and are willing to kill for our values and belief systems, I believe if there are any advanced extraterrestrial society out there I am sure they are looking at us and saying look at those animals, look how they kill each other, look at how they must work to survive, what a waste of life that is. As the night come down, sometimes I look up to the sky and think why is it so hard for us to evolve to the point where we value more who we are as a person than what we have, to the point where we can see above our thoughts to be able to give love and peace a chance to become the priority of life. There is no doubt in my mind that we have created our own failing environmental jail and we can not escape from it since we do not know any better. Once I had a friend of mine telling Marlon, money is the cause of all evil, eliminate money and all problems of life will be also be eliminated… I could not agree more….

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Now think how music and arts brings people from different back ground together ? It does not matter what your beliefs are , what religion you belong to, what race, the color of your skin or what nationality you have…. music and arts are that powerful …. very powerful. ….. there is a certain essence in music that elevates us above thought and conditional behaviors. I think is one of the most wonderful phenomenon that life has to offer alone with love, if we just could attempt to come closer to perceive the magical force of music and love we will be towards a better direction in our evolution process as a human being. To me is so simple to realize this, and this simplicity will not bring temporarily pleasure but eternal joy. My uncle Rugby once told me, Marlon any thing , I mean any thing you pay for will bring you only temporarily pleasure, even when you can pay for sex it will bring temporarily pleasure. Those word made realize the greatness of unconditional love , you can express all these emotions and love through music…. and that will bring joy to humanity…. now that’s eternal.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marlonsimon.com/home
• Instagram: @marlonsimonmusic.com
• Facebook: Marlon Simon and the nagual spirits
• Linkedin: Marlon Simon
• Youtube: Marlon Simon Latin Jazz

Image Credits

Photos by Claire Adams