20 year-old Panama native Sofía Valdés just released her debut EP, ‘Ventura'(Warner Records) recently admist much anticipation. The EP was something that she manifested when she was around eleven years-old, when she mapped out the various milestones in a diary of sorts of the accomplishments she wanted to achieve by certain ages such as singing in a choir, learning how to sing with other people, writing her first song and other goals on the path towards eventually becoming an artist signed to a record label. One such milestone was to move out of her home by sixteen years old to attend Interlochen Arts Academy, a prestigious boarding school for music and the arts in Michigan. something Valdés says was important for her, “I was in the car with my mom and she said, ‘Do you understand what you’re doing, do you get it?’ and I remember there was a big part of me that wanted to stay in Panama but there was this other part of me that knew that if I wanted to keep moving forward that was the only way.” Although she comes from a long line of great musicians that started with her great-grandfather was Miguelito Valdés, the famed Cuban musician, and her great-great grandmother Silvia De Grasse, a popular Panamian jazz singer, Valdés was born after their passing so she was more driven by her own aspirations as opposed to relying on her musical heritage. “My dream has always been to tour around Europe, tour the U.S. and travel,” Valdés stated. It was while attending the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts did things start to gel for her songwriting and eventually finding her sound. Now signed to a major label in Warner Records, Valdés is right on schedule, “it’s wild! I put that I’d be twenty-one when releasing my first piece of music, so I got ahead on that one. I only wrote for up to twenty-one, twenty-two, so I feel like I have to do the next ten years.”
Valdés spoke with B-Sides host, Pete Mar to talk about the making of ‘Ventura’, going viral on TikTok for a non-music related post and more.
