We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rakel Saranga a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rakel, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In January 2026 I am releasing a project called “Durme Durme” which is a Sepharid Jewish Lullaby in Ladino (an ancient language spoken by the jews of the diaspora around the region of Turkey) in collaboration with my colleagues Cris Aramayo and Amir Mankovski, that is arranged for a small choir, percussion and live electronics.

In November 2023 I had the pleasure of being commissioned by the Splice Festival which is an annual festival held by the Splice electronic library to create this project. This festival usually features the newest technologies in sound design and music technology.

A couple of months prior to this festival I have been working on a passion project where I was writing an arrangement of this beautiful lullaby (that I had always sung with my community children’s choir) with traditional instruments of the region like baglama (saz) duduk and percussion. This Arrangement and exploration became the basis of our Splice Festival Piece.

Already having this acoustic arrangement I went to my friend Cristina Aramyo who is an inspiring artist/producer from Mexico. We started working on an electronic arrangement that would incorporate the old tradition and combine it with the new technology which was what the Splice festival was all about for us.

In the end our project consisted of 5 singers singing live in addition to Christina’s live electronics which granulated and processed pre recorded vocals. And for the final touch we had live percussion gluing these different working parts together.

What was exciting about this process was connecting old melodies with an electronic sound, playing with the dynamics of old and new. The idea is to have percussion and singers live, whilst recordings of the voice are being synthesized within Ableton Lives Granular II, creating a mass of auditive textures that will eventually turn into what electronic musicians like to call, “wall of sound”. Also fusion that emerges from the confluence of the traditional and the new/modern demonstrates the merging of the Jewish Sephardic culture with the new modern world. In this arrangement, Ladino, a language that has been falling out of use, is presented to the modern Western sensibility with modern harmonies and modern musical performance methods.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am Rakel Saranga and I am a Boston based singer, composer, arranger and a producer who just graduated from Berklee College of Music where I studied Contemporary Writing and Production and Vocal Performance.

My music draws inspiration from jazz, pop, folk, experimental soundscapes and middle eastern genres. Growing up in Istanbul Turkey I was exposed to all kinds of eclectic music from international pop to traditional Turkish folk/ottoman music. In contrast to the musical exposure I got as a child I started training classically in high school later developing in the style of musical theater as well. Despite always having music around me I never considered it to be my profession until one magical night I was introduced to some musicians at an open mic which led me to be a singer in their Americana band. Having had so much fun playing music and performing with them I started considering a career in music.

Later in Berklee I studied jazz with Kris Davis and Alain Mallet, under Jazz Gender Justice Institute, diving deeper into concepts of jazz harmony and improvisation as well as with Rebecca Shrimpton and Kathryn Wright on vocal technique and style. Now I perform with my own compositions and arrangements across Boston as well as singing for other artists.

My main goal is to push the boundaries of traditional song form and create a unique sound that is truly my own which is a combination of all these different things that I am. But more importantly my aim is to craft authentic music that speaks from the heart which also reflects the emotional and intellectual freedom that is boundless, experimental and fun.

Here is a link to my Spotify where you can find my latest music: https://open.spotify.com/artist/04rsDQkD3sYK7plvUva0rq?si=Sl-IUEYfRxi2IikdK-L7ow

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

At the age of 18 I moved to Germany, Munich to train to become a professional dancer. Even though I had music in my life growing up, at the time dancing had a more prominent role in my future. And for the five years following my move I trained and studied in dance without questioning my life trajectory. I was choreographing, auditioning for dance companies, and getting my dance teacher certificate. I was absorbed in all things dance which built a tremendous amount of discipline and a profound understanding of work ethics and practice. I believe my life around dance built me up as a more reliable dedicated person but also helped me develop a more critical view around art that is more than just emotional but also intellectual.

Before the pandemic I was a full time dancer and dance/movement teacher at an elementary school but with the start of the lock down everything came into a halt. And I found myself composing and singing to make use of my free time. I never stopped playing music during any of these years. I was still performing all around Israel which is where I lived at the time but I got to relish and rediscovered the depth of my passion through the free time I was granted in the Pandemic. Therefore, even though it was a tough time for everyone, I am grateful for the allowance and the space this period of time has created for me, to make the necessary changes to take charge of my life.

During this time I deeply got to consider where I want to take my life and I got to make a solid game plan to get to the things I wanted from life. Which led me to my journey here at Berklee and beyond.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me art is about authentic expression paired with freedom. If either of these components are lacking the performance and the art suffers. The art that truly moves people and touches their heart, comes from an honest and real place. And we as artists arrive at that authenticity through freedom. Freedom is the playground to explore, try new things, think outside the box and feel deeply. If in any setting in our lives we don’t give ourselves the freedom to feel and express, we are blocking our authenticity, therefore our potential to create art that really matters to us and to the people around us. That’s why society thinks that artists are sensitive… It is not that they are sensitive, it is that they are close to their feelings; they give themselves the freedom to explore and express how they feel fully therefore be authentic. Real art, creation and exploration is all that matters to me. And therefore embarking on this journey of becoming closer to myself and expressing that freely through art is exhilarating to me. But another key component to this method is to always have longview. Life, authenticity and art is a process. We get closer every time we attempt. The journey of authentic art making process is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rsaranga.wixsite.com/rakel-saranga
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rakelsaranga/
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/rakel_saranga

Image Credits

Antonio Perez-Coca
Elia
Matt Muise