As Jasmine Kara is poised to get on stage at Melodifestivalen in Växjö later this week, we now bring you the second part of our exclusive interview with her.
In the first part you heard all her thoughts about Melodifestivalen and you can read and watch it right here, in case you missed it. This second part tackles more issues about her music and life in general.
Jasmine Kara‘s latest releases, the two EPs Love at First Sound and Phonograph, did not come easily, as Jasmine explains about all the adversities and obstacles involved in the recording process.
We had to record the EP three times. The first time the sound engineer had made some mistakes and the headphones were bleeding through too much. The second time the engineer went to jail and we couldn’t use the vocals. So I had to rerecord it a third time. And they I had nodules on my vocal chords. I shouldn’t have kept the vocals, but I also kind of wanted to keep the rawness and the frustration, as it was matching with the music.
During the past few years Jasmine has been running her own label, through which she’s released her music. Recently she signed with Warner, partly because of Melodifestivalen but also because she was feeling running everything on her own was taking too much time and energy.
I felt I was sitting with paperwork all the time, when I should be doing music. That’s what I wanna do, make music and not send press releases to people and push papers.
We also wanted to ask Jasmine about her relationship with the USA, where she has mostly been living now for the past years. She first went to New York at the age of 18.
I immediately felt like this is my home. Everything was just so real. The struggle was real, the joy and happiness, the tears, everything!
But when I moved to LA, that’s when I got my vocal chord nodules and one year kind of flew away, when I couldn’t talk and had to get the surgery. I can’t really say that LA has been my best card to play in life, but New York for sure. New York has given me so much. I feel home there!
What about future plans then, what’s in store for Jasmine after Melodifestivalen and all that hoopla?
I have a lot of plans for the future. I always plan too much, I think. But it’s good because at least some of it will happen.
I have written three books, so the other two are up for release. And of course I want to release new music all the time.
On Jasmine’s social media you can ofter see her doing her physical excercises, so we asked her about how she finds a balance in her life with all the work and taking care of her health and other issues.
To be honest I don’t really have a balance. I’ve always been like all or nothing! If I want to write a book, I will sit down and write until it’s done. If I want to do my excersices, I go for two hours at a time and go all in. But then the day after, I might eat a whole jar of Nutella. So there’s no balance, Jasmine laughs…
But like I said, I always go all in and it’s the same with my music. You will see me on stage when I’m 80 years old! Don’t be surprised…
Text & pictures: Nina Uddin
Videography & editing: Karen Pérez Guzmán
