Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Salva Alba. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Salva , thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Although I’m happy how things turned out and I believe everything happens in a perfect and divine order beyond our comprehension, I do wish I would have started believing in myself earlier in life.

I started playing the bass when I was about 13, when me and my friends decided to start a rock band, although none of us knew how to play an instrument. We were pretty successful considering this was in the Dominican Republic, the land of merengue and bachata, and here we were playing a mix of hard rock, funk and reggae. We were on TV, the radio even nominated for local award ceremonies.

And despite all of this, I still thought all of it was a matter of chance and luck. I couldn’t see a future where I could thrive doing what I loved and transcending the limits of the island I grew up in. So when it was time to go to college, I decided to study mechanical engineering.

Three years into that, I realized that was not my path. My girlfriend at the time helped me gather some strength and hope and with that I chose to drop out of college and head to Buenos Aires to study music abroad.

But still then, there was so much disbelief in myself. I thought I could only be a bass player and could only produce music for myself. And that my path would be a lonely one because I would spent hours practicing my instrument every day.

Through out all of this, I should mention I loved writing, but I just couldn’t get myself to think capable of singing for my life.

Fast forward to me returning from abroad, back into my island, running into walls every time I started a musical project to only see it fall apart a few months into it. I thought I was done with music a second time. I put away my instrument and pursued a career in dog training. Yup, dog training.

See, dogs had been a big part of my life. Ever since I was born, I had dogs around me. Except when I moved to Argentina. And something happened there.
The thing is, back when I was growing up and until about 10-15 years ago, people in the DR had dogs in their backyards. Very rarely you would see someone walk their dog. Let’s not even mention train a dog. I was 23 when I left to Buenos Aires and I can’t remember taking any of my dogs out on a walk ever. But the minute I arrived there I was shocked. People took their dogs everywhere and they were so well behaved I couldn’t believe my eyes.

So when I arrived back in the DR and became fed up with my music career, my idea was to learn how to train dogs and start doing that for a living. And I did, pretty successfully for about 10 years. Until covid hit.

When the zombie apocalypse seemed imminent I couldn’t help but ask myself, what about my dreams?

I felt it so strong in me. A calling bigger than myself. So big it made me come out of my comfort zone and started taking singing lessons. I picked up my instruments and started writing and singing my own songs. And I said to myself “these songs are not for you. You are not to judge them. You will sing them for others you don’t even know yet. And if they resonate with them and it does them any good, then your purpose is fulfilled.

So here I am now, living in Miami, surrounded by a community of amazing artists, musicians and human beings, pursuing my career as an artist and music producer. I’ve release 3 singles and an EP with my solo project, Salva y La Salve, and have an ever growing discography of music I’m getting paid to produce for other artists and preparing to start my own record label, Light Frequency Productions.

It’s too late to keep this story short, but what has all of this thought me? Yes, there is a perfect and divine order of things, but believing in yourself, your talents, your purpose and pursuing them with all your heart will create that golden path where everything aligns ahead of you.

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?

As an singer-songwriter, I express my authentic self. I’m not here to achieve celebrity status. I’m here to sing songs that inspire people to shift their live’s for better. I sing these powerful words to equally powerful rhythms from my home land, Dominican Republic. These songs will lift your body and your spirit. You can’t help but move your body when you hear a tambora playing, and you can’t help but feel great after chanting beautiful words while dancing. Salva y La Salve is all of this. It’s my way of answering a calling greater than myself and touching peoples hearts with the healing power of music.

As a producer, I understand what it’s like to have a song and not knowing how to best honor it and share it with the world. I help my clients connect with the essence of their song, the intention behind it and together find the ways to best portray that in sound.

I’m in the process of creating an independent, conscious music record label, through which I’ll be able to support artists like myself, that have started off with no idea where this path is leading to but feel a calling greater than themselves to put their voices out in the world.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

The path to success, and not just in the creative arts, but in life, is not lineal. And what is success anyways? For me, it’s a state of mind, where you are ever learning, ever growing, accepting the outcomes and circumstances as lessons and using them to take your next step in your path. Right now, I feel quite successful at that. I moved to the US just two years ago and I’ve already stablished myself here through my career as an artist/producer. My income may not be huge, yet, but I am able to live a happy life with my wife, with all our needs met. And things will only get better. They might get though for a moment, but they will continue to get better as long as I choose to keep learning, growing and taking steps that benefit me and my career.

The path is not a straight line. Sometimes, a choice that may seem like it has no value at all to my purpose, might lead to connecting me with a new client, or even better a potential business partner. This is really difficult to understand, but it’s so powerful when you are able to walk out in life, do things without any expectations and realize there was something waiting for you along that road.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn self judgement. I grew up listening to my parents make negative comments about people on tv, people on the streets, relatives, anyone they could lay their eyes on. And that prevented them from drifting from the standards they had creative for themselves. That sounds like a lot of anxiety and stress. Yet I learned that behavior and to this day, I’m working on not repeating it.

One thing is to self evaluate an another is to self judge.
Self judgement is a very dangerous habit for any person, but even worse for creatives. When you are not able to stop that voice in your head that says that nothing you do is good enough, no matter how good you are at your craft, you won’t dare show it to the world. You’ll create as many obstacles and excuses as you possibly can to prevent people from connecting with your work.

Self evaluating, on the other hand, allows you to see what is already great about your work, validate you for that, uplift you, making you want to do more of it while also seeing where you can improve, all of this with out putting the negative labels that come from judgement. It is important to objectively see what things we can do to grow as artists/humans, but it’s equally important to recognize the merits of what we already are and do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.salvaylasalve.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salva_alba/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/salva.bass/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@salvaylasalve
• Other: https://linktr.ee/salvaylasalve

Image Credits
Gerardo Lopez (Gerapix)