Realma- Ariadna Vrljanovic-Zhao- Hidden side of @realma_music 🎹🔮
Polymodal artist & performer 🎨🤸🏻
UKC graduate in film & drama 🎬
Interview conducted on March 18, 2021
By Dan Locke
A microcosm of a bygone era in cinema, Realma’s jazzy single ‘Wandering’ perfectly encapsulates the style and drama of the film noir genre. Nonetheless, the song is a tribute to both old and new, incorporating modern whimsy and charm whilst maintaining classicism at its core. To reach this point, the music followed an unusual creative journey.
Alongside the animation, another highlight is the live performance video with a notable jazz ensemble and string quartet shot at the Belgrade club ‘Dim’, known for its unique industrial appearance and a sense of underground culture in the city. Further additions will include a Pina Bausch inspired dance theatre video, as well as a comic booklet.
Realma is thrilled to be delving further into the music world with a single that explores a whole new angle of her interests and insights – ‘Wandering’ introduces yet another distinct realm in her musical universe. Keep an eye out for her next two singles later this year, which will further emphasize the unique divisions of her musical persona.
What is your upbringing?
Ariadna: I am half-Serbian/half-Chinese. I was born in an industrial mining town called Bor in the southeast of Serbia, but soon after moved to Lanzhou, a city located on the banks of the Yellow River in Gansu Province in Northwest China. Coincidentally, both environments are characterized by extensive pollution, a topic that has always been inescapable for me. Before I started primary school, I moved to Beijing, where my childhood was filled with puppet shows, operas, films, and theatre performances. Recognizing that I was artistically inclined, my parents signed me up for various art workshops for children in Chinese painting, dance, calligraphy, poetry recitation, and similar activities. After the SARS epidemic, I moved back to Bor and continued to explore my artistic tendencies under a different, Western tradition, whereby I started theatre and modern dance classes, classical drawing, and oil painting, as well as classical music, studying violin, guitar, and piano, as well as music theory, counterpoint, musical form, harmony, composition, etc. In an ironic twist of fate, as it happened once already, after my Film and Drama BA degree at the University of Kent in the UK, I abruptly returned to Bor once again due to another pandemic, this time SARS-COV-2.
How did you discover music?
Thinking about it, music has always been just something hugely intuitive in my life. If you ask my family, they’d say I’ve been very reactive to any rhythm or melody since my earliest childhood, and so, they’ve signed me up to start studying classical music at the age of 7, moving on to train in Western counterpoint, harmony, musical form, composition and orchestration, which I’ve really enjoyed. At the same time, my parents always played popular music at home too, ranging from pop, country, rock, jazz, etc. On top of this, as previously mentioned, I grew up in two distinct cultural environments – China and Serbia, where I listened to many folkloric/ethnic forms of music. So, honestly, I’d say it’s always just been an integral part of who I am.
How did you start to write music?
From as early as I can remember, I just always made up melodies, whether it was whistling tunes or tapping rhythms that seemed to just come out of thin air – music would just always come to me intuitively, like an imaginary friend singing into my ears. In fact, I always found composing easier than learning any piece of music, as I would often just drift into improvisation, rather than interpret was is exactly already written. Thus, I sometimes struggled in the classes where I had to memorize music. However, during uni, I actually wanted to go into acting instead, but with the pandemic, as I had a traumatic police mishandling upon arrival and an exaggerated self-isolation period of 28 days, the music seemed to be the only thing helping me escape my dark, scarily lonesome circumstances, and once again as an imaginary friend sang into my ears – this is when the idea of Realma formed and started taking shape.
Describe your music.
Though it’s very hard to tell from just one song being released, with more upcoming songs, it will be evident that my music is very eclectic, polystylistic, and hence, niche. For example, the next film-noir inspired song ‘Wandering’ that I will announce soon, which will be accompanied by 3D animation, is completely different from my experimental dream pop/indie folk/ambient debut single ‘A Hint of Pink’, not to mention the following 2000’s pop Ashgrey Butterfly and slightly trippy Down the Railway Spine, which is to be published by the end of this year. It’s like each song is situated in its own story world, which resulted in the idea of Realma (wordplay on ‘realms’) – a sorceress that takes a glimpse into different worlds through songs as these kinds of all-seeing crystals. This is the more abstract explanation, but to be more realistic, with my diverse background, I think meandering into multigenre music has been very logical and natural for me. In addition to this, most recently, during my film and drama degree, I researched a lot into film and stage music, so this certainly gave my songs and compositions a cinematic and incidental edge. With all that said, while there is even a lot of dualities to find in my music, with it being both atavistic and postmodern, gloomy and empowering, filmic and life-like, I think I managed to unify the divergent themes and the influence of different musical genres under this omnipresent witchy quality of Realma.
What was your first performance like?
I actually have yet to have a live performance under the alias of Realma, especially due to the pandemic, unless we count a recent online music festival in Serbia called Femix Fest by Project Femix, a platform that supports female artists in the country, where alongside the animated music video, I also submitted a video of my performance (https://femix.info/) But to be honest, I wasn’t even thinking much of live performances due to Covid-19, focusing instead on creating multimedia audiovisual content for the project, which involves animation, recorded dance videos (teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4a7VanMnA), comic booklets and we hope to even produce mini video games. At the same time, however, I feel more and more that I miss the stage and would love to introduce Realma to live audiences and truly connect people to my music. And while we will be recording a few live performance videos – one of them at the National Theatre in Bucharest with animated projections when the time allows, it still won’t be the same as being in the moment with an audience present. So I do hope to perform soon. Now as my ordinary self, my first performance was at my music school of a violin piece when I was little, filled with stage fright prior, but turned to joy afterward. This rollercoaster feeling I’ve had ever since whenever I performed, whether in a dance, music or theatre context – something quite fulfilling and something I miss very much at the moment.
Do you belong to any to songwriters’ organizations like the International singer-songwriter association, SESAC, BMI or ASCAP?
I am a part of SESAC through IMRO – they were my closest option in order to register with Songtrust. It’s super weird since Ireland isn’t necessarily that close to Serbia, where I am currently based, but it’s what was offered to me.
What makes a good songwriter?
Good question, I never really gave this a thought. But I would say writing from the heart in such an honest way that the audience can really feel what it’s like to experience whatever the song is about, whether sadness, joy, humor, etc. Personally, I really enjoy when the music interacts with the lyrics, sometimes confirming and painting even more vividly what is being told, but at other times even debating the words in an ironic way. I also enjoy layers, so that even very simplistic things in the song have this complexity about them and vice versa. I also find it the most interesting when songwriters don’t really completely answer the question or a statement they pose, but leave the topic on this constant search for meaning, as if the song itself is left self-aware on an inhale that never finds resolution – so you can’t get it out of your head, slightly like a pebble in your shoe, bothering you a bit.
What was the title of your first original song? Did you record it?
I actually started writing popular songs already at the age of 14, though I have never recorded this earliest material. But when I recently revisited some of the songs, many did have a great potential in them to be restructured, reconceptualized, or reframed. I find it that I can’t completely let go of any of these creations and it’s great to see that, despite abandoning some of them, many were still evolving and growing within me.
What is the process of writing your music?
I think my debut metasong ‘A Hint of Pink’ actually says it all and is hence a great introduction to both my music and even my entire process of creating it. The lyrics talk about cadences and melodies seducing me, giving me passion, and becoming my obsession, which is really the entire way I compose. I start by improvising on an instrument or singing and start searching for quality within the melody/rhythm/cadence/notes/etc. that speaks to me – going back to that imaginary friend analogy, haha. And often I would find an element that directs me towards a visual narrative as well, most likely as sensations bordering synesthesia – the color pink in the title is actually the visual sensation I got from the chord progression from which A Hint of Pink was born. After that, I enter into this obsession to define the world of the song – for A Hint of Pink it was clearly a rustic environment of moon-charmed wolves. From there, however, I tend to let this world grow over time – I tend to not finish the song straight away, but let it breathe and really take me on a journey with it. It’s only later that I start consciously setting lyrics, melodic development, and more technical things like that. Though the process is not too slow either as for Realma, in one year I composed 20 songs already. However, I’m now trying to give the production time, searching for the right timbre and instruments to really solidify each song’s story world and visual narrative. And so, in a way, I like to think that I’m just bringing to life what is already there. It’s like music is an entity to which I’m giving form and a beating heart – in fact, I wrote an extensive essay at my uni about this concept of artworks as ‘bio-teche’ – life crafted through creation.
Tell me about ‘A Hint of Pink’?
In addition to the above, interestingly, ‘A Hint of Pink’ started as a music theme for a short film titled ‘Complete.’, which I was a part of at my uni. The narrative was quite dark, even on a slightly horror-ish side. To highlight this gloomy vibe, I added to the main melody some of my own musical heritage from the Serbian/Chinese folklore, which made it sound even more haunting and rustic. When I revisited this material during COVID-19 lockdown, the song was extended and reframed to evoke moon-charmed wolves, since someone suggested there was a very howl-like quality to the main vocals. I find the lyrics to be the most interesting part though, as they ended up being very meta and self-referential. Since music gave me a voice again after trauma, so the words explore the process of songwriting itself, the power of which I have rediscovered in isolation – something that came out completely instinctively, giving it also this victorious note. However, I decided against lyrics in the chorus, since I believe the melody expresses what I felt after surviving the police mishandling, whereby I was put in an unsafe situation by those I trusted and held at knifepoint that I barely escaped – a feeling of surviving trauma which is beyond any words and only this melody could dare speak of. Without getting too sentimental, I am glad I could enjoy a long journey with this song since this resulted in multiple layers that can be unpacked by the audience.
Did your visions of “A Hint of Pink” chance from the beginning of the recording to the finished product?
With everything that was said, certainly not. Especially since this was the first time I ever produced a song and worked with other people on my music. Just recording on a piece of mediocre equipment in my room and working in the DAW with some free midi instruments was absolutely new to me, let alone the concept of mastering music – which I find to be both fascinating, but also so incredibly sophisticated. In fact, in the master of A Hint of Pink, some string elements got lost in the end, since just like me, my friends – Milutin Vuckovic and Aulinx, though more advanced, we’re still learning production and mastering at a more professional scale. If I ever re-release the song, I’d certainly re-record the vocals on better equipment and with better virtual or perhaps even real instruments and balance everything much better. However, at the same time, the imperfections give it something special in my opinion – I don’t really like clean sounds. Furthermore, I and the team really learned a lot on ‘A Hint of Pink’ and over this time acquired better equipment, so it was much easier to produce the next song ‘Wandering’ which after 2 weeks already got to the mastering phase. In this light, it would be great to see a bit of growth each time with every upcoming song.
Tell me about the creation of the animated music video. Did you have any input in creating the concept the artwork or storyboard?
Oh yes, absolutely. Perhaps unsurprisingly as I studied drama and film, I consider music to be like a seed of visual narratives too. So already while composing ‘A Hint of Pink’ I had this image in my head of a nymph in the lake and a wolf. A friend of mine, Lia Stefanescu, who studied film with me, helped me write a more fully-fledged story, while another friend, Katarina Kurko, helped draw the storyboard. However, in a small town like Bor, I didn’t really know any animators, until, by chance, I found out there is one who lives here and even won many awards – Mihajlo Dragas. He loved the song, however modified the story to match the music – something I really appreciate knowing the final product. This is because elements of the story wouldn’t actually work in the animation itself and were more suitable for a comic. However, not giving up on our version fully, we decided to work on a comic, right now under the working title of ‘Blossoming edge’ developed from this material. It draws from ‘A Hint of Pink’ and offers an alternative version of the story – just like in mythology there can be multiple variations for the same myth. Perhaps very suiting, since the song and the animated music video have that mythological quality themselves. It’s also interesting to mention that other than the animator and I, most people involved in Realma are based in different countries, so most things were done online for this.
What is your favorite track on your album?
I have only released one single as of now, so there isn’t a full album out there yet. However, I am really looking forward to the next song – Wandering, which takes a look at the film-noir style jazz through a slightly contemporary lens to explore the topic of obsessive love. For inspiration, I’ve looked at multiple film scores, mostly pieces by Bernard Hermann, as well as the game soundtrack of L.A. Noir, which helped me approach the instrumentation and orchestration better. However, there are these more modern and personal touches, so the product is quite unique, I’d say. This song should be released in the second half of April. Another interesting song is the fourth one – Down the Railway Spine, written in the irregular time signature of 7/8 characteristic of the music of Balkan. The irregularity of the beat gives this unique sense of being chased, as inspired by my panic attacks dealing with PTSD. So lots of exciting stuff coming up.
What are your feelings about streaming music?
Personally, I used to stream music quite a bit, mostly because of how convenient and accessible it is to have the music I like always there waiting for me in the library on my phone. Nonetheless, once I started Realma, I found some sides of streaming quite limiting, which made me turn to radio, especially community and student radios – something very underappreciated by my generation. Honestly, at the beginning of Realma, I thought I wanted my music to be exclusively there for streaming. However, once ‘A Hint of Pink’ started getting streams, other than the numbers, it didn’t make me feel connected to those who listened and even made the whole thing a bit empty. Instead, it was the song being played on a small community radio in Melbourne, totally across the world from Serbia, which made me really feel like my song release was an actual experience with a bit of a heart. From then I started tuning into almost all shows where the song was included among incredible artists from all over the world, many of whom turned into these programs themselves, precisely at this hour when the shows aired. Unlike a playlist, the idea of which is very abstract to me, there was this somewhat live and community component going on. Also, there is this game of chasing numbers with streaming, which I really disagree with. So much so that a formulaic thing starts happening when artists just emulate what is getting the most numbers on streaming platforms at the cost of creativity. This is often to please the algorithms too, and it really made me feel distanced as a newcomer with quite some niche ideas. I also saw this interesting thread on Reddit recently, where the state of the music industry was compared to the selling of shovels during the California gold rush in the mid-1800s. Back when there was this craze to dig gold, the whole industry was thriving because economies were set up to exploit this desire to get rich quickly. Except in music, it’s maybe not even so much the desire to get rich quickly, but more than anything, get as many streams as quickly as possible. And I don’t know… I found this very defeating.
What song from the past is in your mind right now? Moreover, what is the meaning that song means to you?
Can I have three please? Haha. I don’t know why, but I always have Bolero by Maurice Ravel in my head with its obsessive repetitions of the famous theme and the snare drum rhythm, which builds in a gradual crescendo only to crash and exhaust itself. It just made me feel something so special and ethereal when I first heard it in a concert in my childhood, it stayed in my mind ever since. Then there is St. Vincent’s Paris is Burning. Perhaps not her most popular song, but I found it so fascinating – from its contemporary lens that gazes on the revolutionary era in Paris from the Romantic epoch, to the death march that transforms into a haunting waltz. Finally, Starman by David Bowie. We did a physical theatre performance at Kent, which explored the Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov’s tragic crash into Earth, and played it as a kind of end credit. It’s the favorite performance I’ve done and the song really gave it a special note to end on.
With the Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccines being released. How long before the whole world will be vaccinated against the virus. You have to remember there only has to be a 70% for Herd immunity (Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.)
First, I am not a doctor and by no means an adequate person to talk about this, but having some friends who study medicine, I would say that getting to herd immunity is much more complex and dynamic than that. At the moment Serbia is at 30 percent of the population being vaccinated, well ahead of the EU, yet despite this, our cases have actually risen because of the 70 percent who haven’t been vaccinated. Next to that, there is also the efficacy of the vaccines against the new strains that have appeared, let alone things like the AstraZeneca vaccine being called into question at the moment by the EU. There is also a political dimension to things, whereby the pandemic won’t really end until the poorer countries get herd immunity. Various circumstances play a role, though I really hope Coronavirus finally ends and the herd immunity is achieved as soon as possible.
If “Video Killed the Radio Star” do you think that the Covid-19 virus has killed live music? Do you feel the Covid-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?
I’m actually really torn about what to answer. On one hand, Covid has really harmed the live music industry with many cancellations. However, I don’t think it has truly killed live music because from my personal experience, I actually really miss the live events and all the immediacy and presence that come with that. In fact, most people I know feel the same and once the pandemic ends, I can surely see many people rushing to get tickets. However, I personally don’t know how comfortable I’d feel to stand all of a sudden amidst a large audience, so I’d go for smaller gigs first, haha. In that sense, corona definitely brought a change to how we feel about being in large crowds. However, I do see this thirst/hunger from people eager to listen to live music, eager to be in the same space and share the experience – so the spark is definitely still there.
What have you been doing with your self-quarantine? Have you discovered or rediscovered any new hobbies?
Very simple, mostly creating and it was also a great time to revise plans and slow down for a while. Prior to returning to Serbia, I was constantly traveling between Canterbury and London in order to join all sorts of drama and dance workshops with a huge fear of missing out. It was all about working hard all the time, never stopping, almost to the point of toxic productivity and continual burnout – I even passed out once and felt miserable most days. With quarantine, I finally had a bit of a time to slow down and really reassess my life goals, who I want to be, and what I want my art to be. And so Realma really came from this aspect of self-discovery, renewed purpose, and artistic ethos. So not so much new hobbies, but I got to return to music and start inventing all sorts of storyworlds through it from a very self-assured and honest place.
How can bands keep their fans if they cannot play live in front of the fans and sell merchandise to them at the show? What about Holographic concerts in our living room?
Well, this is hard to answer as I am just building an audience and actually haven’t played live in front of fans – so it’s very much reversed, haha. Though there are sides I mentioned I don’t like, social media and live streaming have certainly helped many musicians keep their presence, at least online. Still, I don’t think anything can replace playing live and I certainly don’t like the idea of holographic concerts – I am definitely blaming that on watching too many Black Mirror episodes, haha.
Governments around the world are hearing the call of thousands of music creators and included protections for the music community in the omnibus bill. In addition to extended and improved unemployment benefits and small business loans for freelance creators, the package includes several bills which the Recording Academy, its members, and the larger music community advocated for. From the Save Our Stages Act, which provided a lifeline to performance venues and promoters, to the CASE Act, which creates an avenue for smaller creators to defend their copyrighted works, Congress has ensured that both music creators and those who act behind the scenes to bring music to life are given the support they need during this difficult time.” Do you think this will save music venues?
Well, it hopefully does. Though I can’t give more comments as the situation is very different in Serbia comparing to the US. Here, a few protests by musicians have just been started as there is almost no support at all neither to them nor the venues and promoters. It’s a sad thing to navigate really.
Did you know that the Grammys MusicCares can help artist. The MusiCares COVID-19 Relief has helped thousands of music industry artists and professionals during these difficult days. This is the most recipients helped, for any single event, in MusiCares’ history. The need remains great, and these unique times remain critical for music people. It has taken a community uplifting one another to get through this pandemic, and MusiCares has pulled together a list of additional organizations and resources to further support you. https://www.grammy.com/musicares/get-help/relief-resources. Have you applied for it yet?
I didn’t know about this until this question. However, looking at it, it probably doesn’t apply that much to musicians outside of the US. I will certainly look more into it, so thanks so much for providing this information – really appreciate it.
In the past if a musician stop doing music they find a new career. For example David Lee Roth from Van Halen became a licensed EMT in NY for 6 years, San Spitz (guitarist for Anthrax) became a master watchmaker, Dee Snider (Twister Sister) voice over work for SpongeBob SquarePants.. If you can’t do music what would you like to be doing?
Interesting question. Though with Realma being an audiovisual project – there is still a lot outside of music. A similar thing applies to me – I’d definitely then go into acting, physical theatre, or filmmaking that I studied, if not that then classical painting. And if no art at all, I’d probably be an astronaut – I don’t know why I’ve always been fascinated by the universe and the space travel.
What is your happy place?
I’ll answer this very simply. Making art for sure.
Alot of musicians such as Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift, Journey, Def Leppard, and Shakira have sold their catalog rights within the last year. Bob Dylan sold his entire catalog for a reported $300 million. Once you get to the age of about 70. Publishing is far more lucrative then the mechanical royalties paid to artist based on sales, airplay and streams. A good example of this is Michael Jackson brought the rights to the Beatles catalog in 1985. And in the late 80’s the Beatles Revolution appeared in a Nike commercial.
The lump sums being offered by publishing firms are more tax friendly concerning estate planning.
Do you think you would be willing to sale your back catalog if someone like Universal is will to buy everything, such as all the rights to all your songs? Another factor is mortality.
Hmmm. I really wonder. Again, Realma so far is more of an audiovisual project, so I don’t really see myself selling any rights until everything is exhausted in both contexts. Though I do have to say most songs are quite a film/cinematic, so I do see them being featured for different commercial purposes. However, with multiple characters created through our comics and animated videos, I see it more going in the direction of becoming a franchise – going more of a Disney route. I guess there are loads to think about here, I am at the moment just setting up a start-up production studio, so we shall see.
Spotify’s ‘Stream On’ event on Monday (February 22), the company confirmed that more than 60,000 new tracks are now being ingested by its platform every single day. This means people are added new tracks uploaded to its platform every 1.4 seconds.
The figure, announced by Spotify’s co-Head of Music, Jeremy Erlich, means that across the course of this year, approximately 22 million tracks will be added to Spotify’s catalog. Spotify confirmed in November last year that its platform now played host to around 70 million tracks.
Therefore it’s reasonable to assume that, by the end of 2021, SPOT will be home to over 90 million tracks. And that in the early part of next year, it will surpass a catalog of 100 million for the first time.
But still back at the beginning of the year Spotify deleted 750,00 songs, mostly from independent artists. What do you think what that could mean to independent artist?
Honestly, initially as an independent artist, I put all my bets on Spotify. Nonetheless, I realized it’s still somebody else’s platform. I used a lot of Instagram and Facebook ads in order to drive the streams, but most of it would not be returned investment. As someone just starting up, it can be very discouraging, let alone when Spotify deleted that many songs, which unsurprisingly sparked outrage. I feel like the platform is so oversaturated too that it’s become almost impossible to get noticed organically. Instead, what I’m focusing on is building a presence through other means – for example, I got featured in quite a few national magazines as Realma was quite unique in aiming for an international audience while producing audiovisual content from Serbia, where this is rare. Next to that, we are building our website right now and with the production studio, I’m really treating it all as a business and learning how to empower myself and the project, rather than competing on somebody else’s platform. And with more products being produced rather than just the music, I do think we have a higher chance of success.
Sony Music in November and Warner Music Group in December, The ByteDance-owned video app revealed on (February 8) that it has struck an “expanded” global licensing agreement with Universal Music Group. Now that TikTok is now fully licensed by all three major record companies, will you start using TikTok more?
TikTok has definitely made a huge splash in the music industry, however, I am really not used to the platform yet. For me, it’s just so fast-paced and all over the place – just too rapid, much more than even the now obsolete Vine. So until I find content that would maybe fit in with the platform, I’m not going to actively chase and force all my productivity for something that I don’t fully enjoy yet. Though one thing I might perhaps try in the future is to record some beatboxing that I’ve been doing for a few years now and that might be both fun to do and be interesting for TikTok’s target demographic. Though we’ll see where I go with that idea.
Anything you would like to say in closing
Just that it was an absolute pleasure. All questions were so interesting, as well as quite informative and insightful, making me ponder about certain things I haven’t been thinking about. Thanks so much for this opportunity, definitely my favorite interview so far. Hope you have a wonderful day when you are reading this and hope you are safe and well.
That is all – pretty long indeed.
Best wishes
