Luna Manzanares enjoys herself when composing songs

March 14, 2020

Accustomed to performing the work of other authors, songwriting has been a tremendous discovery for Luna Manzanares. With a wonderful voice, the young artist brings her new album Luna Nueva to life, ventures into musical theater, and immerses herself in the satisfaction of writing her own songs, something she describes as "a beautiful process that I'm really enjoying."

"Performing other people's songs is like stepping into another skin, which is super interesting," she explains. "But it's important to have the tools and experiences to put the necessary emotion into them. But putting your own words out there is wonderful because, whether they're more elaborate or simple, they're yours. You own your thoughts and your music."

In addition to creating based on what she wants and feels, she can reflect what's happening socially. "We musicians can't distance ourselves from what's happening. You have to reinvent and renew yourself, and that has a lot to do with songwriting too," the performer specifies.

For Luna, all creative processes have a specific magic. "Now I enjoy discovering my own thinking and writing it into songs, because having your own voice is very interesting. The most complicated part is, perhaps, translating that into instruments, a part that I leave to the musicians who accompany me. From there to performing live, there's tremendous magic because I enjoy that evolution. Even while I'm writing, I'm already thinking about how I'll perform the song on stage," she assures.

Musical theater is a recent gift that came into Luna Manzanares' life, whom we've seen as host of the Cuban song contest Adolfo Guzmán. "It's curious, because my mom is an actress and wanted, initially, to be a singer. She found musical theater through life's irony, because it was meant for her, and she was one of the last people to study it deeply and pursue it.

"It's a genre that unfortunately has had a setback in our country. It's very nice that the opportunity came to me in my career; it's helped me grow a lot as an artist and as a person," concludes the Luna of Cuban music.