Ximena Sariñana Would Move to Austin 'In a Second' - Top 100 Acts of SXSW 2011

Posted on Mar 3rd 2011 8:29PM by Joe Tacopino
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As a young girl, Ximena Sariñana acted in Mexican soap operas and sometimes sang the theme songs. She's gone on to collaborate with the likes of Jason Mraz and Mars Volta's Omar Rodríguez-López, and she's even appeared as a cartoon, lending her voice to the Spanish version of the 2009 animated feature 'Coraline.' Shortly before heading to Austin for her second SXSW appearance, Sariñana chatted with Spinner about her unusual duet partners and the theme behind her Grammy-nominated debut album, 'Mediocre.'

You started singing at a very young age. How did all that come about?

I was also an actress when I was young. It was all pretty much connected. The first thing I did was musical theater when I was, like, 7 years old. Ever since then, I never really separated those two.

For me, they were both hobbies, both things that I did after school. I needed to get good grades so that I could keep doing them. In music, I just started singing here and there, in different plays and different musicals, and maybe a theme song for one of the soap operas I was in. When I was 15 or 16, I decided to start studying music because I really enjoyed it. I went the academic route and I started studying. I had a band for a while when I was 15, which was sort of a jazz-funk-fusion band. Then I started singing jazz standards at bars in Mexico City and slowly started incorporating my own music, and it developed into what it is now.

Your Grammy-nominated 2008 album 'Mediocre' centers on the dullness of suburban life and '50s stereotypes of women. How did this idea come about?

'Mediocre' -- not sure how you say it in English -- I was sort of obsessed with that word and that concept. It was the word that was going through my head when I approached the art director. He came up with this concept of the '50s woman who never really aspired [to] that much or questioned herself, or if her life was the one that she was meant to lead, or if it was just a path that society had carved for her. And that's how we came up with the concept of the record. But it was more of a collective concept... I said, "This is what mediocre means for me, and I want you, as the art director to give me your take... What does that word mean to you?"

Have you played at SXSW before?

I played it in 2009. I was a part of an NPR World Music show. That was the only time I was in the festival. It was only one show. This time, we're doing more showcases. I'm really excited.

I wish I had seen more of the festival, because I arrived that same evening and I left the next morning, so it was pretty rushed. But I'm really excited to see a couple of the bands that are playing this year

Do you play many show in the United States?

I've actually done three tours in the U.S. I played Miami. I played Washington. I played New York, Chicago. I've done a little California tour and I played a lot of Texas shows and Arizona, too. I've been to Austin two times already. I love Austin. I could live there in a second. I love it so much.

You recorded a duet with Jason Mraz for the Spanish version of his hit song 'Lucky.' How did you guys meet?

It was not as romantic as the actual song [laughs]. It was more like we were introduced at a label party, and the label thought that it was a good idea for Jason to do a Spanish version of the song. And then I met Jason, and Jason liked my music, and I was like, "Yeah, lets do it."

Jason was really nice. He was really open to whatever I wanted to come up with in terms of the song. So he let me do all the translation work, and he also let me change the melody if I wanted to. He was really, really open about it -- really supportive. I'd never done something like that before, where I had to translate something. But, in the end I was really happy with the result.

Another one of your regular collaborators is Omar Rodríguez-López from Mars Volta. Did you guys meet through a label also, or was it more interesting?

I met him on a plane. That's the real story. We're really, really insanely close. It's just natural [to work together]. Omar is a very collaborative person, so he likes to bring in anyone that is around him. Anybody that is in his life that he admires and respects and loves, he wants to involve them in his project. He's an insanely prolific person. So it's just natural for us to just write music together.

I think that when you collaborate with people, their music might seem so different from yours, but it shares the same principles. Sometimes they can pull stuff from you that you're not experimenting [with] or exploring in your own music. I think that's really necessary if you're an artist, and you want to keep discovering yourself and reinventing yourself and learning about yourself.

I see that you did voice-over work for the main character in the Spanish version of the movie 'Coraline.' How did that come about?

Universal Pictures. They were looking for someone who could overdub the movie for all the Spanish-speaking audiences, and they called me. The producers thought of me. I had never done it before, ever. I'm a big fan of animated films and I was a big fan of what I had seen and heard of 'Coraline.' It was just the perfect animated film to be involved in. And it was so much fun. I had no idea it was gonna be that much fun. It was like one of the most amazing times that I've had in a project, simply because you're acting, but everything is so unreal. It's so much fun.

It was amazing to see what my voice did to the character. It sort of gives it life, in a way, but it's completely different to what Dakota Fanning did in English. It was two different voices, two different characters, but it's the same person in the same story.

Catch Ximena Sariñana's SXSW Sets on Thursday, March 17at Habana Bar Backyard (708 E 6th St.) 8:15PM, Friday, March 18 at Prague (422 B Congress Ave) 10PM and Wednesday, March 16 at Radio Day Stage Austin Convention Center (500 E Cesar Chavez St. Exhibit Hall D) 2PM.

Watch Ximena Sariñana Video for 'Mediocre'