For Nathalia Vieira, the founder of the SOMSIREN Music Series, music has always felt like home.
Nathalia was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Brazilian and Portuguese parents, but her family moved to the Bay Area when she was young. It was here that she received her early education in music, through the very sounds that reverberated through their home each day.
Nathalia would catch her parents dancing in the kitchen to Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes and Tim Maia. She would hear her mother singing while cooking dinner, or her grandfather walking around the house playing the trumpet.
“Music was always at the center of my life growing up, and I loved it,” Nathalia says.
“As I grew older and started developing my own taste in music, I found it almost therapeutic. I enjoyed exploring different genres and cultures through sound.” In 1999, at age 13, Nathalia started making her own mix tapes and CDs.
As an adult she carved out a career in the business and curation side of music, working stints at GoPro and Apple Music. She soon noticed her family and friends complaining about how hard it was to keep up with the latest music, or find the music they loved. So in 2017 she founded SOMSIREN to bring the love back into their listening.
“I [started it for] those that don’t have the time or patience to scour through all the noise, to provide one go-to destination for their daily musical needs,” she has said. Now Nathalia curates and releases playlists each Thursday, alongside her original photographs.
Her playlists seamlessly blend songs at the intersection of soul, indie, ambient and alternative. They are fit for road trips along endless coastlines, afternoons by the pool, or when you’re desk-bound and daydreaming.
While Nathalia loves having control over her own project, it hasn’t come without its challenges. “Putting yourself out in the world and creating your own thing isn’t easy. I’ve had to push myself to new limits that don’t always feel comfortable.”
“The most challenging part is staying in a space of believing in what you are doing. There is that little voice in your head that just pesters you to give up because what you are doing doesn’t matter. We all have it but through this creation process I have been able to quiet it down a bit and find my own lane and I’m proud of that,” she says.
After two years, SOMSIREN has developed a community of listeners from around the world, many of whom contribute to Nathalia’s ongoing self-education in music. “As much as I love sharing music, I love it when people share with me. In that exchange, it creates and fosters a community in which is mutually beneficial,” she says.
“One of the best parts is receiving messages from people who genuinely enjoy the time and work I put into it. It is a line of connection to people through sound.”
And she still holds tight to the connection that fostered her love of music early on. Nathalia lives in Los Angeles now. But when she goes home, she still finds her parents dancing in the kitchen. “That will forever be a thing in my family,” she says.
We've been fortunate enough to have Nathalia carefully curate a selection of sounds for Hakea embodying a sense of calm and simple but powerful beauty which you can listen to here.
Nathalia wears the Palma Top and Santiago Bottom in clay print.
Words by Holly Bodeker-Smith