We recently connected with Michael Zamora and have shared our conversation below.
Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
We began our band Posival in the summer of 2013 and have been writing and releasing music ever since. Things have been fairly difficult recently and we have taken lots of risks, using our own money to put shows, tours, and organize festivals as well as purchasing merch, paying for recordings, and investing directly to the community. Recently, we have released some controversial music that isolated us from the music community. We understood as a band the risks we were taking but the events over the past year have shown us that we have been on to something ahead of our peers that is now being realized culturally. Being one of the first to take an action like this in such a small community was almost artistic suicide, but the way we saw it, we didn’t have much to lose anyway and interest in our music has grown beyond our expectations. I think people are craving for outside of the box thinking, and anything that has been deemed deviant or immoral by the convoluted cultural climate. I have always believed that people are smarter than they themselves might think they are, so we continue to operate as such as a band and release music that will stimulate the minds of our listeners. Our upcoming 4th album will be no different.
Michael, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I grew up in Saginaw Fort Worth, which is a small suburb about 10 minutes from downtown Fort Worth. At the time, Saginaw was growing but still extremely small, with only one main street that was used to get to and from anywhere in the entire town. Now things there have grown a bit, but my old neighborhood seems unchanged since my childhood with the exception of some new home renovations and such. I moved to south Irving when I was 15 and lived on a really busy street near the historical district of Irving. I used to walk to and from school everyday, mainly with my friend Jaylen who was an aspiring rapper at the time. He was a tall, skinny black guy and I was a short, stocky white guy but we bonded over music and cigarettes. He lived just a few houses down from me but kept in touch for a while until he moved back to Mississippi at some point a couple of years after we graduated. Our music can be fairly aggressive and to-the-point or it can be mellow and diverse, so our listeners must be ready to hear different things stylistically although it will still sound like us. I’m a huge fan of bands that can offer multiple different styles in their music but still remain unique and authentic without sounding cliché. I think our listeners are interested in learning, reading, and complicated subjects for the most part. I have personally found that very rarely will we retain a listener that isn’t ready to entertain complicated or conflicting ideas. I think our listeners are seekers, looking for a new way to broaden their perspectives.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I think the biggest thing I had to unlearn is that the world isn’t a place where you can expect to be rewarded for hard work based on your own measures for success. I believed for a long time that there was some place or destination that I had to get to in order to feel fulfilled. It’s not true at all, and I realized at some point that expecting my life to be a certain way was actually creating my own dissatisfaction with life. That’s a really difficult realization to come to. For a long time I believed that I wasn’t a successful musician because I wasn’t selling out my favorite venues, even locally, I had to give that up a long time ago. I am a musician, thus I have succeeded in being a musician, thus I am a successful musician. I believe this thought process freed me from unnecessary pain in my daily life. Having things work out the way I wanted them to probably wouldn’t have given me all the other things I currently have in my life, and for that I am a happier and healthier individual. That’s what success is.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The past 3 years have been a test to our resilience as a band, but we have always had to demonstrate resilience. Playing an unpopular genre, saying unpopular things in our music, being unpopular people, relying on logic, shying away from actively using social media, and playing shows conservatively has created lots of scenarios that has demanded resilience. Even the economic elements of being in a band and organizing a tour that we are funding ourselves as a band is enough to break most bands up. Some how me and Clint continue to make it happen despite what is going on in the economy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.facebook.com/PosivalBand/
- Instagram: @PosivalBand
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PosivalBand/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8lZ3JrPMVT5FJJYsiGZ2sw