We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Siv Disa Anderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Siv Disa below.

Siv Disa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve known that I wanted to pursue a career in music from about the age of 14. I had been playing piano since the age of five but was taught classical music, and had never considered writing my own music. When I was 14, I made the jump from playing cover songs as my non-classical activity, to writing my own songs and short compositions. Once I started writing music and realized how freely I could express myself with it, there is no looking back.

Siv Disa, 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?

My name is Siv Disa (she/her) and I am a recording artist and composer. I am Chinese on my mother’s side and midwestern on my father’s side, My work explores matters of identity, interpersonal relationships, and history. After college, I started working as a piano teacher and also started going to open mics in Boston. While I liked teaching fine, I couldn’t help feeling like there was something else I wanted to also pursue. I then moved to New York to continue chasing performance opportunities. I quickly formed a band, had a monthly residency at the Bowery Electric playing with my band and booking my friends’ bands. This led to me signing with UK label Trapped Animal and the release of my debut album, Dreamhouse in 2021, described by Line Of Best Fit as: “psychedelic pop that converges the encompassing textures of Broadcasts with Joanna Newsom’s pleasantly off-kilter melodies”
Shortly before this, I lost my teaching job due to Covid. This led to me moving to Iceland for a graduate program in Composition. My time in Iceland culminated in writing an Opera set during the cultural revolution in China titled ‘1966’ for chamber orchestra and choir.
Following graduation, I moved to LA to continue pursuing both composition and my pop career. I have been hired as a music supervisor for award winning independent feature ‘August At 22’, have written the score for several independent video projects, and I have a new album entitled ‘Good For Her’ coming out this fall- you can hear the first single from this album on May 30th!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think one of the greatest challenges facing creatives is the idea that their work can be done for free, Because of market saturation, and because people think of it as ‘fun work’ creatives are asked to give their work away. The issue with this is without an income, a Creative cannot progress in their field, because the progress that one pursues in building a creative identity and body of work takes time. When creatives are forced to work outside of their field, in order to supplement income progress takes so much more time. I have been very grateful for the periods in which I could focus solely on my craft. I think about this a lot because I used to live in Iceland and arts funding in Scandinavia is mind boggling abundant in comparison to the amount we invest in artists in America.. In turn, Iceland, a small and recently industrialized nation has a flourishing music scene. Many Icelandic musician friends were given grants to pursue their projects, and I saw first hand how much this helped their growth. I think the arts is in dire need of funding in the states.

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 have had to unlearn my impatience, because patience is just another way of saying “not rushing things” and art does not respond well to being rushed.

When I was a kid I was taught to always be busy: I of course applied this to my music career early on and experienced burnout. As an independent artist, I wear many hats: marketer, content creator, videographer, performer, all of it! It is absolutely a terrible idea to try and wear all these hats at once. Instead, it is so important to find a rate of progress that is sustainable for your human body. Your art will be better for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: sivdisa.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/sivdisa
• Facebook: Facebook.com/sivdisa

Image Credits
Sanchez Murray Siv Anderson