Today we’d like to introduce you to Fritzi Noirhomme.
Fritzi, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am Fritzi Noirhomme, singer and guitarist in the female band Soulmeal. I formed the band 2016 in Berlin and since then been playing in the local scene of Berlin going through the ups and downs of forming a band, including sound and people. Now we finally found our tribe and consist out of six incredible talented women.
Together we are working on a sound between Roots/Reggae/Rock & Tribal, focusing on a mystique and danceable sound, which is representing the international scenery of Berlin city, being joined by local DJ’s opening their sound also for the electronic music club scene of Berlin. We all are coming from different national backgrounds and use music as their language of communication. The name SOULMEAL is representing the merging of souls through art into one meal.
Right now we are working on our debut album, which will be presented in the late autumn of 2019.
Has it been a smooth road?
No way! Gathering musicians and forming a band is hard work. You have to find people who are sharing the same visions and dreams and especially as being the person who introduced the band members to each other, you have to know exactly what you want and where you want to go. It is extremely hard nowadays to find musicians who are interested in playing together as a band because it means commitment. It is like a family relationship, everyone has there own character and stories they are dealing with.
And especially as women we had to work hard on trust issues and our communication skills and had to discover the strength we create as being just females in a group. We all had already made bad experiences with the music industry and had to rebuild our trust.
We faced a lot of struggles with getting enough money together for recordings or shoots, and if you are working with a small budget, you always try to make the best out of the small things you have, which in the end is always a beautiful result but needs endurance. A recording and video with a good budget can be done in one or two days, but if you depend on the help of friends who are working with no money, it can take a couple of months.
All of our band members are working class people, we rehears after work and play gigs on the weekend, it is a real struggle to keep up the energy. And at the same time, you gotta figure out where each person’s strengths lays and how you can combine your talents to use them as focused and powerful as possible. Oh, it is 100 % communication skills and man let me tell you that can be pretty hard in times of Messengers and Instagram! 😀 Miscommunication is so easily made public, you gotta have people who are loyal!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Well of course making music is a business, but it is so much more than that. Yes we are making money with what we do but if you are working as a musician you always have to differentiate between business and creative work, otherwise you get lost. That’s why it is so great to have our manager Ayaka, she really takes care of us, in the way that she backs us up so we can focus on our sound. Our music is much more than just a gain, we want to bring change and new ideas with our way of playing and with out lyrics. We want to combine different music genres to form a new future of music and with a new future of music, we are forming a new culture. We want to get out of categories, out of male or female, jazz or rock, we want to be and just enjoy the process. A lot of people put the focus on us being female, and yes of course we are female, but at first we are musicians and all we want to do is play great music!
We are represented right now on create-reality.org a platform that I formed to present different artist who are working together on projects. The idea is that everyone, also the people behind the cameras get represented and credits.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I think LA is great to start a business, but at the same time, it can be s little superficial. I think it actually doesn’t madder though in which big city you start a business, everywhere in the world it takes three things to get going 1.vision 2.endurance and 3.network!
New ideas are nothing without people, who do not believe in you and inspire you. That is something I actually really love about LA, it has a crazy range from poor to rich, but people really support crazy ideas there! And Americans are always open for some new ideas, I think in Berlin that is sometimes more difficult. Berlin people are a bit more grounded and really working class people with a big history of fighting for their independence. I have such great inspiring friends from LA, and I love to work on art projects together and make music, for me the mix of LA and Berlin is a great culture clash.
Contact Info:
- Website: create-reality.org
- Email: fritzi.noirhomme@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulmealmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulmealmusic/
Image Credit:
Francois Boudinet
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.