Oct. 09, 2007 - Issue #625: We’ve got an election!
This singer is making history happen
“History and culture, those are our roots, so everything that we experience today connects to our past,” Cuevas explains over the phone from her Toronto home. “Of course there is progress, there is evolution, there is all this, but human nature is something that has been around forever.”
Cuevas came to Canada 10 years ago from her native Venezuela, first studying English and then focusing on Latin American history. And, despite the distance and differences between her place of birth and Toronto, Cuevas says that her time in the big city has opened her eyes to an impressive variety of cultures.
“I do find that being in a city like Toronto that is so multicultural also brings elements from cultures that I don’t really know, that I haven’t lived in, that I haven’t been involved in in any sort of way,” she explains. “There is definitely an influence that comes through in my music, and even also because of the different musicians I work with who have experienced different things and come from different backgrounds.”
That multicultural influence rears itself in Cuevas’s music, too; she writes songs mainly in Spanish, but she also sometimes works in English and Portuguese. Still, she says that while the technicalities of each language may be different, the emotional content of the songs is similar.
“It all comes from the same place,” she admits. “It is different because of the language, but the inspiration all comes from the same place.”
And ultimately it is the heart of the songs, the emotion, that is important to her. “Definitely,” she states with certainty. “Yeah, that is very important to me. With the words I try to express everything that I see around me, things that I have gone through myself and things that people close to me have experienced—and even people that I see on the street that somehow I feel a connection to or what I see in them moves me in some way.”
There’s little doubt that Cuevas is fond of both her home country
and Canada, but she admits that she doesn’t know where she will end up.
There’s a free spirit inside her that wants to learn from the rest of
the world.
“I am very open-minded, so I don’t know,” she laughs.
“I have no idea where life will take me. I know that I am very happy
where I am at right now. I know that I am very grateful for everything that
this country has given me ... but I also know that there is a lot to learn
and the world is very big. Anything can happen.”
That’s where her interest in history comes into play once again. Cuevas
views history as something that is constantly being written, evolving as we
live each moment and influencing how we live the next.
“The ideal thing is to remember history so that we can learn from
it.” V
Thu, Oct 18 (8 pm)
Eliana Cuevas
Blue Chair Café, $15
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