Taking inspiration from composers on and off the island to keep in shape, Tanicha Lopez is reinventing her career
By Layla Brown-Clark
Medill Reports
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — It’s a beautiful day in Miramar, a neighborhood in the expansive city of San Juan. The weather is warm and humid, and inside Gustos Coffee, the espresso shots and order calls set the scene for a promising day in the bustling city. The coffee shop is buzzing with vigor as Tanicha Lopez enters the establishment in her own way. Her hair is up and out in a tightly coiled Afro, a smile graces her face, and she greets all she knows in the vicinity with warm hugs and attention as their conversations unfold. This energy remains as she settles in for an interview, comfortable and putting away her headphones, ready to chat.
Busy days like these are not unusual for the singer, but Lopez is much like the rest of us.
“On a good day, I sleep and wake up whatever time I want. On a bad day, I don’t,” Lopez said.
Lopez may feel like most, but this has not stopped her from becoming one of the best vocalists in Puerto Rico. She is best known for being flexible with her sound – fitting snugly in genres such as jazz, bolero, hip-hop, R&B and anywhere else she sees fit. Her sound is forever changing to fit into what she feels is necessary. “La Burla,” her newly released single, serves as a testament to these genre-hopping abilities.
The power isn’t in her genre-hopping but in her voice and routines.
Pursuing a balanced diet and structuring her days is a must to keep the momentum in building a new stage for her career, she says.
“A day in the stage of my career is waking up at eight or nine [in the morning] – especially eight because it’s like ‘Damn, I’m responsible!’ Then, have a fruit smoothie for digestion,” Lopez said. “One of the things as a singer I have to consider is how to take nutrition to the next level, so it can help me be best at all times. Having a smoothie to start the day can help me with many things such as my gut health.”
Smoothies are not the only keys to kick-starting Lopez’s new nutrition-focused career. She’s adopting a host of new routines to make sure her body is in tip-top shape.
“I am implementing a more detailed map of how I need to care for my body,” Lopez said. “I’m a musician, and though I improvise and use my voice, I [also] use my body. I want to be able to implement movements at my concerts, so I know I have to do my studies. If I had the chance to take a class with a singer during midday, I would do it after 3 p.m. By night, I do dance classes, whether it be contemporary, jazz, hip-hop, or tango. I try to understand and incorporate these movements so that they can help me with my musical language.”
Maintaining her health through coconut water, fruits, vegetables and yogurt kickstarts her mornings and helps her stay as active as possible, handling a range of events each workday. Self-management is another major key to her career.
“I need to have my office hours,” Lopez said. “I don’t have a boss, and I am my boss at the moment. It’s hard to be your boss and put pressure when nobody is doing it for you. Now, I am working together with a management crew, and so I have to deliver on those office hours where I can work designing my musical times, creative times, invoices, rehearsals – things that I still have to do.”
With this change to her routine as a singer, Lopez said she feels she is entering a new stage in her career. When asked about her writing process for her songs, Lopez ponders as she finds the right words to explain her unique process, and how her deep connection with music helps in creating and finding inspiration for songs
“My songwriting can be very strange. I haven’t been very acquainted with songwriting. It is the muse that appears in me and gives me the whole project in one go. It’s a vomiting process like, ‘Wow, this is easy.’ The beats help me a lot,” Lopez said after a while. “If the beat is good, groovy, soulful, meaningful, and honest, it will provoke in me a lot of inspiration in the lyrics. It’s a challenging environment for my music. It’s easy for me to scat, to do melodic and rhythmic patterns, and to think of structure.”
Improvisation, where Lopez shines bright, is a cornerstone of her career, following in the footsteps of musical greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter and more. Scatting is an ever-evolving skill, and Lopez puts in avid practice every performance.
“Whenever I’m out there and there’s a jam happening, everybody knows I’m going to get up there and deliver. But, more than delivery, it’s a place for practice and internal investigation. That’s where I put into play people I have admired,” Lopez said.
Improvisation opens the door to further experimentation with her sounds as she mentions a few of her inspirations. Drawing from Puerto Rican, Japanese, and African American influences, Lopez’s sound continues to evolve as she continues to experiment with many sounds from different cultures.
“I have admired artists like Esperanza Spalding primarily. She’s an artist from the United States. She is a beautiful Black woman who plays bass and sings at the same time, scats, arranges, and composes. Another inspiration is Ella Fitzgerald,” Lopez said.
She said Fitzgerald provided her with the “eye-opening experience of knowing that I didn’t have to rely on lyrics to sing.”
Her eclectic influences also include Yoko Kanno, a Japanese composer, who has contributed a lot to anime, video games, and music.
“I first started with Japanese music as a way of getting out of rhythm I would hear when I was a child. My curiosity wouldn’t have been awoken yet until I heard Japanese music. It helped me to be more neurodivergent, fully capable of receiving information that was very weird, random, and fusioned. It was iconic,” Lopez said.
Many musicians rely on songwriting, but without songwriting, Lopez still manages to plant and cultivate her identities through her music depending on her muse at the time and place. Whether it be searching for a deeper means to connect with herself or with the environment around her, this process is rooted in a means of exploring race and her emotions.
“The first is the nature of humankind and the power of voice, vibration frequency, and the power of rhythm. These are innate in the Black lineage in Puerto Rico – thanks to our African ancestors,” Lopez said.
“The second is the awareness of wanting to understand my internal battles and desires,” Lopez said. “I am on the path of learning how to love myself better, tune in to the void of me, and get acquainted with it through words. My music starts from wanting to be as vulnerable as possible so that whatever information comes through my voice can be information for me as to who I am.”
“The third and last would be my independent community,” Lopez said, “I get inspired from seeing other people choose their art. It’s courageous, and life can be very daunting. I see people surrounding me that live in the same place that I do. It’s not hard to be inspired.”
There is a certain electricity that flows through Lopez as she speaks about the independent scene in Puerto Rico. It is a community that is tightly knit and serves as a great support system for those who are attempting to break into the industry and those who have been there since its inception. This community has also effectively moved Lopez into a more focused mindset about her career.
“In terms of my original music, I am well known to be a singer who collaborates with many artists,” Lopez said. “The way I have grown in the industry is by understanding how to grow in the industry in Puerto Rico specifically. It’s a small island. You have to get to know who is doing whatever they’re doing so you can be supported too,” Lopez explains.
“You cannot expect people to support you in doing something if they don’t feel like you’re doing the same,” Lopez said. “I understood this from way back and because of that, I am proud of little Tanicha. She has been able to manifest a good reputation with the artists for being supportive of what they do and offering my services in a very modest and economical way.”
With the support from her community and building a new routine to mold her career, Lopez is shaping up to pursue new heights in her career as with confidence she said, “Going up.”
She continued, thoughtfully, “Being consistent. That’s my major goal. I don’t want to go fast or anything like that, but I want to feel my heart in terms of consistency. I haven’t been as consistent due to my mental health or psychological or emotional problems. I consider myself a sensible and fragile spirit. Many of the things that happened in my life have overwhelmed and paralyzed me. Up until now, I’ve made progress but not to my expectations.”
Gustos Coffee begins to empty, and Lopez is looking for a caffeinated fix before setting off for the rest of her day whether it be filled with dance classes, socializing with her community, or going home to plan out her next ventures.
She gives a soft smile followed by a laugh as she says, “My next plans will be to manifest a lot of recordings. Hopefully recordings with other people as well, but primarily myself. Festivals and concerts that I can curate myself filled with dancers or painters with the community being a part of it. I’m trying to envision myself becoming a voice for independent music as well. How can I support the people surrounding me with information through podcasts or videos that express a little bit of my journey, so it could be of service in the investigation spectrum?”
Layla Brown-Clark is a magazine graduate student at Medill. You can follow her @laylabclark on Twitter and @laylabrownclark on Instagram.
