Moonrise is back and running in 2020 (hope everyone’s hanging in out there!) after a brief hiatus, and we’re kicking off the year with an incredibly informative interview! Meet Nara Avakian, an instrumentalist and songwriter based in Southern California who I met through the Armenian Studies Program at the University of California, Irvine.

The twenty-three year old, named not after Japan’s Nara Park but the ancient Ottoman Armenian village of Gülnar, has been playing guitar since they were eleven years old. They also play bass, mandolin, and the keyboard, and have experience with Eurasian instruments like the dutar and the doira. Nara uses GarageBand to record songs in their bedroom, and is primarily inspired by Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham’s finger-plucking style. They also draw heavily upon The Cranberries and their use of heterophonic sonic textures, as well as Daniel Johnston, Linda Ronstadt, Galaxie 500, The Microphones, and eighties new wave.

Nara recently released their third full-length album, Tonight is Tonight and Tomorrow is Tomorrow, and shows no signs of slowing down. Read on to learn about their creative process, progression as an artist, and journey as an instrumentalist.

What inspired you to pick up guitar and start writing and performing music?

I come from such a musical family. My dad’s side of the family is from Ethiopia, and my uncle had his own band there called Sevan (named after Lake Sevan) in the sixties — he had like a Beatles haircut and everything. When he immigrated here, I guess he passed the music gene on because all of my cousins, on both sides, all so musical and they’re all eight to ten years older than me. Growing up, I would just watch them jam and I wanted to be like them, so now I am like them. It’s nice to be included in that way. Now I play music with my cousin, Taleen Kali.

As a solo artist, you record all of your own instrumentals. What does the creative process look like for you?

Honestly, it’s almost like a spiritual experience. You know Fleetwood Mac, right? So Lindsey Buckingham, he always says, play how you’re feeling — so that’s my thing. I kind of just play how I feel, and then, when I feel a song coming, I feel something in my chest that’s like, “this is a song.” It can be me playing two lines, and I’ll be like, “this is a song.” I’ll sit down, in one sitting, at my desk, plug in my microphone, and I’ll record the whole thing. It’s really serendipitous. I feel like every song that I make is like my last one. I usually start with guitar, and everything else is stream of consciousness. If I have a French horn in mind, I’ll sit down at the keyboard and use the French horn feature and play whatever comes out of me. It’s not pre-planned or meticulous in any way, it’s naturally flowing.

That’s an incredible descriptor to your process. Because you’re doing this as a solo artist, are there any technical challenges to that?

Definitely, especially when it comes to things like the drums. I have the drum loop feature, but I’m not a drummer. When it comes to my music, I want to do everything myself, and it frustrates me that I have to use a pre-constructed drum loop. Ideally, I’d love to just pick up the drums and do it myself, so it’s definitely frustrating. Only recently did I begin to employ other people to help me out. For the first time, I had someone else make my album art (Jorgiana Aguilera), and that was a big deal to me to trust someone else with my vision. However, it was exactly what I wanted, so it made me realize that maybe there is a strength in collaborating and I shouldn’t be so possessive of my art and creative process.

There certainly can be strength in collaboration. Conversely, what are the benefits to having the sole creative authority on your music?

I can do anything I want, and I won’t have any disagreements. I get to decide what works, because again, it’s all based on my feelings. I feel like I have more power as a solo artist, because I can just feel what I want to feel. If I were to collaborate, it would probably be more of a logical process, like this chord fits with this line, rather than let me just play with whatever is coming out of my heart right now. Or maybe I just haven’t found the perfect person to collaborate in that sense!

Your sound is really unique, you perform instrumentals on guitar with a lot of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influence. How do you incorporate these classical styles into something fit for a modern audience?

I try to incorporate Middle Eastern and Mediterranean musical influences because those were the first sounds I ever heard. When I think of the first time I ever heard music, it was the sound of a duduk or a zurna. I try to incorporate those sounds — I’m really big on heterophony, which is a big part of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music. Heterophony is essentially different instruments playing the same notes, so I try to really capture that heterophonic texture through my sound. That kind of ornamentation of going down the scale of notes. That’s how I incorporate it in my music. It’s not even a conscious thing, that’s just what I naturally end up playing.

Are there any specific Middle Eastern or Mediterranean songs or artists, outside of what you’ve heard your family playing, that significantly inspire your sound?

Oh, yes! Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian Beyoncé, is so cool. She has an hour-long song called “Enta Omri,” which in Arabic means “you are my life,” and its amazing performance blends classical Oriental instruments with the electric guitar on the side of the orchestra. She sings with such passion, and she was one of the first real Middle Eastern women singers that gained a popular following. When she was growing up, as a young girl, she would dress as a boy and make her money by singing in the village (as girls were not allowed to sing in public). She played a really big role in the anti-Zionist movement, and I believe she had close contact with President Nasser, too. She was an advisor on certain things, and had a lot of influence on him. They tried to ban her music in Egypt, but Nasser instructed to put her on the airwaves. She’s definitely an influence. I listen to “Enta Omri” whenever I need inspiration. It’s an hour long, but it’s worth it, like when you have a long drive. In the lyrics itself, there’s a line that gives me goosebumps and I start tearing up when I think about it. She says, “what I saw before I saw you.” It’s such a beautiful line, I love her a lot.

That is a beautiful line! And such an inspirational figure. Are there any challenges to not being a male player of this particular genre entering the music scene?

There are definitely challenges that come from not being taken seriously as an artist. Sometimes, people will say, “wow, you’re actually talented.” I get that a lot, it’s like people are shocked that I even have musical ability, whereas when a man has a guitar, no one’s ever like, “you’re actually talented.” But then, on top of that, as an instrumentalist, a lot of people also don’t take my music seriously in the sense that there’s no singing. They’ll say, “wow, your music is so good, but I was waiting for you to sing,” or “your music would be so much more meaningful if it had lyrics.”

Like, did anyone tell Claude Debussy that “Clair de Lune” would be more meaningful with lyrics? That’s just not my genre of music, my music is compositions that are meant to be in a film score. They’re introspective symphonies, almost. Especially with my new album, that is pretty much a score of my feelings in the past year. I definitely get undervalued in that way. It’s hard to have a voice as an instrumentalist. It’s about finding that right audience, and ultimately, it comes down to different people liking different music.

To add to that, do you feel like there's already a space for your particular style of music and performance or is it something that needs to be adapted and created?

It definitely needs to be something that’s adapted and created. My biggest challenge is to engage the audience and have them automatically interested, because people don’t show interest until they hear your voice coming out of your mouth. I’ll try to reel people in, like I do this thing where I tune my guitar on stage while mic’d up, where I’ll be like, “alright, that’s it, that was my set.” I try to get that personal connection first, which I think singing also does. There is a disconnect sometimes between the instrument and the audience, because it’s something that you may not understand unless you play. But music is a challenge in general, and even if I did sing, it would be just as much of a challenge to capture an audience.

You've already released three full-length albums in the past two years: Bowling Green (2018), Mosquito (2019), and Tonight is Tonight and Tomorrow is Tomorrow (2019). That's a lot of work for the given timespan! How has your creative process changed from your first album to the most recent? Do you feel yourself overcoming certain obstacles or encountering new ones along the way?

Before I made Bowling Green, I was in an awful relationship, and that situation just made me not want to play guitar ever again. I lost all my passions. We ended up going to New York, and the trip was awful, because my relationship was awful, but I remember being in the Bowling Green subway station, and I had a moment of like, “I’m breaking up with this person and I’m doing music again.” So when I came back from New York, I got back into music. I picked up my guitar and had the feeling that I have to record this, and “Bowling Green” and “Don’t Worry” were the first songs I recorded. Since then, it’s been me finding music more and more, and finding those parts of myself that I lost during that brief period of time. When I released Mosquito, it was everything I had wanted to do with Bowling Green, but I had limited myself too much with the first album. With Tonight is Tonight and Tomorrow is Tomorrow, I was like, alright, we’re getting rid of all boundaries, and we’re going with whatever sound we feel like. I went through a lot of emotions with that album, I lost someone that I loved so deeply.

To add, funnily enough, the title of that album actually came from me reading a chapter in William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, but when I went back to find it, I couldn’t! So I don’t know if I dreamt it or what, but I have a vivid memory of me reading it and seeing the title and writing it down on a post-it note, but I can’t find it! Maybe my mind created it though, who knows. I probably hallucinated the title! Either way, it’s somehow inspired from the book, I don’t know how exactly though.

But overall, a lot of the emotions that I feel are found, or lived, in my music. It’s a process of me breathing out what I’m going through, like an outlet in creating (aside from me being a Capricorn and constantly needing to be working!). It’s about constantly letting out those feelings, it’s a full-body experience, for sure. I don’t sit down and try to process the situation and write something, it’s like my body kind of decides when. I always feel like each song is my last, like maybe this is the last time my body makes a song. That’s why a lot of my work is intense, like this might be the last ever time. I never know when I’m going to have that creative feeling again. It’s a mixture of pushing yourself and genuinely feeling those things you’re trying to articulate through music.

What has been your biggest accomplishment with your musical work thus far?

Writing the songs, for sure. It really goes back to the fact that every song feels like my last, so anytime that I do have one done, it’s amazing. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to connect to it, like “woah, I did that!” It’s hard for me to recognize that, so to be able to make music is a huge accomplishment for me. I was on KUCI just the other day, and when I heard my songs on the radio, I was in disbelief. There’s the music Nara, and then there’s just Nara, and they’re not connected in my mind.

Are they different people?

They’re definitely different people. Nara is just the day-to-day, drives in traffic, has a final in a couple of weeks, whereas music Nara is like a really emotional recluse in my bedroom with my guitar and my headphones in, intensely playing. I always tell people that when I’m playing music, I dissociate, but not in a depressed way, more in a detached way. I’m not present, I’m kind of floating — like a psychedelic experience almost. Just the other day, I was playing “Silver Springs,” as it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. I have a cover of it on Bowling Green, and I have another cover of it on my Bandcamp. I played it in my room, and I remember afterwards that when I opened my eyes, I felt awake again after I had finished the song. I completely was gone, and I had to sit down and breathe for a little bit — it’s a spiritual experience that’s hard to explain and talk about.

““I always feel like each song is my last, like maybe this is the last time my body makes a song. That’s why a lot of my work is intense, like this might be the last ever time. I never know when I’m going to have that creative feeling again. It’s a mixture of pushing yourself and genuinely feeling those things you’re trying to articulate through music.””

Do you have any performances coming up where people can hear your music live?

Not at the moment! The last show I played was at the House of Machines with Taleen Kali, where I was a guest performer and I played acoustic guitar for her song “Miles Away.” Santa Claus came on stage and made the audience wish me a happy birthday because it was two days before my birthday, it was a really good show.

What is in the future for Nara Avakian?

It’s about rebranding. I have a lot of lyrics that just need a voice, and sometime in the future, I hope to do something with that. My lyric writing is also very serendipitous, like I’ll be driving in my car and it’ll come to me so I’ll pull over and use a Voice Memo. In general, I never sit down and write something, it’s always something that comes to me. A lot of the songs on Tonight is Tonight and Tomorrow is Tomorrow have lyrics, so sometime in the future I will redo that album with the lyrics. When I recreate it, it will have half of its current songs with a new rendition. For example, “Chaos & Spite,” the last song on the album, was written with the intention of lyrics, so this will allow that track to be played in that iteration.

Also, I recently bought a new guitar, a Fender Lead III, which I named Linda Ronstadt, because I love Linda Ronstadt. I also bought a BOSS RC-2 loop pedal off of Craigslist, which was my first-ever Craigslist purchase! I’ll definitely be doing more electric stuff with loops and just be creating new stuff. I’m always trying to create!

Thank you so much for the wonderful discussion, Nara! Please be sure to follow them on Instagram, Bandcamp, and Spotify, and stay tuned for new work and shows!