Daily Inspiration: Meet Lera Heroine

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lera Heroine.

Lera, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It’s so nice to meet you and an honor to be inteviewed by VoyageLA. I absolutely admire the way you guys influence the musical culture not only of the United States, but of the whole world by telling important stories that people often times can relate to. I am beyond excited to share my musical path with you.

My story started in Uzbekistan, the country in Central Asia that used to be in the middle of the Great Silk Road. It was a very influential route for many, and served as a powerful tool of cultural exchange among the countries of Asia and the whole world. Although I am ethnically slavic, I grew up in a place where people spoke many languages, including Uzbek, Farsi, Turkish, Korean, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hindu, Chinese and many others. I was always interested in learning more about the nations that had built Soviet Union together, as well as others who have a rich history and experience to share, and it all touched me deeply and irreversibly.
My sense of musicality comes a lot from what I know about the cultural aspects of where I came from. I prefer to have a wide variety of sources to get inspired by. Growing up, I had so much musical influence that I almost got lost in it, haha. My parents are both musicians as well, and I definitely got into music because they were and still are my heroes. My mom is a pianist, conductor and a vocalist, and my dad is a bassist. They both are insanely talented, and I am beyond grateful for their contribution to my musical career. Their preferences are mostly pop, rock, blues and classical music, which affected my choices as well.

The first musical performance I had was when I did an impersonation of Shakira with her song Objection (Tango) and won the first place at the event held at a university where I was studying business English. I was 12 years old back then. Next step was forming some local bands, starting at 14. At 15 I was already navigating through local concert life with confidence. When I was 16, I had my first experience of recording songs at a high-end professional studio. At 17, I had my first performance at a stadium in front of thousands of people. I met my current band Becoming A Hero when I was 24, after I had moved to Moscow, Russia. We started performing live pretty soon after we came up with a bunch of original songs, and then we were invited to participate in European and International music festivals, such as Emergenza and Metro on Stage, where we became finalists and winners, respectively.
At some point, I decided to expand my musical career and move to the United States, and that decision brought me to Los Angeles. I tried to bring my ex-bandmates with me, but due to some circumstances like pandemic and war, it just never happened. So I joined forces with the local musicians who I met at the Sunset Jam at the Viper Room, and we started having shows at LA venues. Slowly but surely, we gained audience. It’s hard to believe that just a while ago we opened up for some big acts at the Whisky A Go Go, the most legendary venue of them all—and now we are headlining it! We’ve performed at the Viper Room multiple times throughout the years, as well as we’ve had a monthly residency at the Rainbow Room for the past two years. We have taken stage at the legendary Garden Amp, Yaamava Casino, The Holding Company and The Bourbon Room. The way I’ve experienced making music and performing it live in America is similar but at the same time very different to what I had done prior to moving to the US. There were definitely some things to learn, but in many ways I have been over-qualified, which was a nice surprise and helped me show my best to the audience here.
Right now, I am working on multiple original music projects, which I am going to present to you super soon. This summer is going to be the best emo summer of our lives, I promise, haha. We just had a sold-out show at the Viper Room on June 13th which was a blast! We are playing the Rainbow Room in a couple weeks, which is super exciting. July is gonna be fantastic, with this huge Naughty Emo Festival we are headlining, and of course the big Sunset Strip emo night at the Whisky A Go Go on July 31st that we are honored to headline! I am so blessed to have had such a wonderful journey, and I am even more stoked for what is coming up next. Buckle up, everybody!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been a blessing, and I have loved every step of the way. What brought me where I am right now is mostly my patience. I mastered it, and it payed off. Many times life taught me lessons that showed me the rest of the way. I accepted the teachings, and I can definitely say that now I am a little more persistent than I was yesterday, and I’d like to think my journey is my strength.

It never is a smooth road, no matter how much you want it to be. It is always a challenge, but I prefer to think that it’s not about what life throws at you—it’s how you choose to react to it. If the attitude is positive and you’re easy-going, this will help face hardships in the most efficient ways, and no matter how difficult it is, you’ll always be able to handle it with a smile on your face. So whatever obstacles I’ve had so far on my path—be it in life or music in particular—it’s nothing I wouldn’t be able to achieve. In my mind, it’s just a matter of time. When I put my work and craft into it—I get what I want.
Struggles make people stronger, they shape us into who we are. I’m a firm believer that what most call luck actually is hard work. If you keep gaining new skills and polishing the existing ones, you can always go beyond even your own dreams of what’s possible. The only person who knows what you’re capable of is you. And nobody can tell you otherwise. I’ve experienced so many situations when people had little to zero faith in themselves, and in spite of having huge talent they gave up and didn’t proceed with their plans and goals just because their attitude was bad.
My whole life I’ve trained myself to believe in good, and I always see positive things in everything. I also think that kindness is the way to go. Any challenge can be defeated with the right mindset!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
First of all, I am a creator. I love making art in all its forms. I write my own music, and I brought it—all the way across the ocean—to this beautiful country. I love being an artist and giving hope to people who are seeking comfort for their souls, minds and hearts.

Thoughout the course of my life I’ve learned how to play various musical instruments, which helps a lot with my musical thinking when it comes to writing songs, recording and editing them. This is a very helpful skill to have—to be able to switch from guitar to bass or keys, or drums—and quickly re-arrange tunes as needed. But my major instrument, or tool, is my vocals. Also, I love recording backup vocals more than anything else—I do that for hours, and it brings me so much joy! I love arranging songs and producing them as well. Every single note has to be intact for it to be a success. I am very attentive to details and never miss a thing. Sometimes I annoy my own self by how specific I am about some things, but I always aim for a great outcome, so it’s all worth it.

I am most proud of never giving up. When I set my mind to something it always works out no matter what. Just like everyone else, I’ve had my share of challenges. But I always try to handle them with grace, which paved my path to success.
To me personally, singing in English and learning it have always walked hand in hand. I started learning English language early in life, thanks to my mom it happened at a very early age of 3,5 years. She always made sure I had the best English tutors. That helped me discover a foreign language confidence, and I started using my boombox to record my voice, both talking and singing. I also started reading a lot of books in English and listening to songs in English over and over again, trying to write down the lyrics that I thought I had heard, which I think I did a pretty good job at, considering how young I was at that time. Slowly but surely, the lyrics that sometimes would sound like mumbo jumbo to me started making sense, and the more I was listening to different genres of music, I could hear the words easier. Sometimes it would still sound like a bunch of gibberish to me, but I kept going, and I’m glad I did. I can definitely tell that it helped me a lot in shaping my songwriting mentality. All those lyrics pretty much had the same algorithm that they followed, and the more I did it, the better my skill got. I remember hearing all those songs when I was a little girl and singing along to them. The more I was singing through those words the more I understood. Also, as I was growing up more and more, I would learn new words and expressions, which also helped a great deal in trying to get those lyrics. Keep in mind, at that time there was no Internet yet, so everything was manual, and it’s not like I could go look it up somewhere. Now that I’m an adult, I sometimes ask my American friends if they can hear what the lyrics are, and even though they were born and raised in the US, in some cases they cannot tell for sure what the singer is saying in their song because it’s being pronounced in a specific way, or too fast, or the music is being too loud.

I’m glad I trained myself from my early childhood to hear more, to see more, to feel more. That, in itself, defined my future music career in so many ways. When I perform live solo or with my band, I take so many things in consideration. It’s not only about how it sounds. It’s about the looks, the moves, the lights, the branding, etc. Everything matters, because at the end of the day, it all comes together into one big picture that shows the audience how much they are loved and cared for, as they can see how much effort their favorite band put into making really cool stuff for them.

There is always something special about every artist that defines them. I think what makes me me is my work ethics and my passion for learning new things. When I write lyrics, I have a special way to go about it. One more reason for that is me being multilingual. I simultaneously think in different languages, and when I come up with some rhymes for my songs, it’s kind of a combination of my thought process that I use when I translate from one language to another. Different languages have different flow, texture, speed, volume, level of expression, gestures that they often come with, musicality. Some are tender, some are sharp. Some sound like they have so much in common with the other ones. They all are built in a certain way that makes each of them stand out, and that’s the beauty of it. Every single one has its own semantics and grammar rules. A big part of it is slang culture that has been used in songs for quite a while now. Depending on the style, you can even misuse some rules or pronunciation to accomodate it for a certain song’s “needs.”
I’m a big fan of the history of languages, and of how words came out of one another. Let’s look at the word “guitar”: the German “gitarre”, the French “guitare”, the Spanish “guitarra”, the Arabic “qīthārah”, the Latin “cithara”, the Persian “sehtār”, the Ancient Greek “κιθάρα.” In Russian, it sounds like “gitara.” And guess what? If you look at the Sanskrit meaning of “gita” it means “song”, + “ra”, the sun god and principal deity in Egypt, which gives you “the song of the Sun.” Isn’t this cool? And there are plenty more examples of how connected and intertwined everything is. When writing songs, I try to always pay attention to the details, I use cheeky rhymes and references to movies, TV shows, video games, ancient myths and legends, jokes, comedy, anime characters, cartoons and such. I feel like life would be so boring without music, and if music is not just a bunch of rhymes but clever rhymes, it makes it spicier and much more likely to relate to and to get back to again and again, when it differs from everything else you usually hear on the market.
The other thing that determined who I am as a musician was the fact that my parents are both musicians as well. Sometimes I feel like I had no other choice, although there are so many things in life that I like doing, it almost seems impossible that I would do something else for a career. I’m super grateful to my mom for never stopping to educate me and making sure I had everything to succeed in life. I pursued my passion, and here I am, living my dream in America, just because someone really believed in me, and keeps believing to this day.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I wish I knew that it all would fall into place anyway, and wouldn’t worry so much about the outcome. I guess what I want to say is, don’t spend your time analyzing something that is about to happen or has happened already. If you put your mind and good work into it, things will happen in the best way possible, and you will be surprised how precisely dreams turn into reality. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t supposed to visualize your future. But don’t focus too much oh what is yet to come, enjoy the process of becoming instead.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leraheroine/
• Soundcloud: https://open.spotify.com/album/0cW4qHxJBgqtwTFAXDarFG
• Other: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1636609179

Image Credits
Photo credits: Alexander Derrick, Jasmine Day, Chris Garcia