Rituals of Mine: It's Not Pretty, But It's Real (But Honestly it's Still Pretty)
Musician Terra Lopez on finding a wealth of joy through creativity and the striving to 'Endure'
by Dylan Andrew Banks
Terra Lopez never knows how to answer the question “how do you describe your music?”
Luckily for us both, she mentions this before I had the chance to bring up that exact question, which spares us both the awkwardness of me asking it. Regardless, she offers some answers anyway. “Electronic” could work, but most seem to think of dance or techno when she says that. “Alt RnB” has potential, but falls short of encapsulating all the elements. Most people seem drawn to the “trip-hop” label, and admittedly, since that genre sits at a cross-section of several styles, it’s one of the descriptors best suited to capturing the music’s multivalence. But in the end, Lopez admits she usually gives in, and about her music simply professes—
“It’s not pretty, but it’s real.”
It feels an apt description — and also a misleading one. Because the music itself IS pretty. One listen to the closing track, “Rewound,” on her latest project should make that pretty apparent: delicate vocal harmonies drift across a lush pillow of harp strings and ambient synth pads while Lopez croons “have you ever wondered where your soul starts?” — this isn’t exactly dissonant and harsh. But while discussing “Rewound” Lopez reveals its inspiration: watching her father-in-law pass to terminal illness. And now the meaning of “not pretty” comes into focus: it’s true to life, honest about a reality that pulls no punches.
But there is beauty in this authenticity. And so, about describing the music we might amend: it’s not pretty but it’s beautiful. For Lopez, openness and authenticity are second nature. That’s just who she is; she can’t play it another way. And though she admits that, for a time in her youth, she bought into the whole “tortured artist” mythology, she’s now firmly at a point of her life where joy is paramount. The question for her then becomes how to express this joy, this light, without doing a disservice to life’s darker corners. Her answer, in part, comes in the form of her latest release, an EP titled Endure — an honest expression of lived hardships, and the beauty and joy inherent in the human capacity to endure. The story of Rituals of Mine, and by extension Lopez’s story, is one of endurance. From major label representation, collaborating with some of her idols, numerous personal losses, and torrents of self-doubt leading her to nearly quit music twice — over the years there was much to celebrate and much to be wounded by. In my conversation with her, I learned about the rituals of creativity, authenticity, and joy that brought Lopez all the way back from the very brink, and into the studio once more, to the “not-pretty-but-real” music she encounters within herself again and again.
It’s a cloudless and warm spring evening, and as Lopez calls me from her home, the sky outside her window is slowly darkening into dusk. Where is home exactly? For Lopez, it’s Sacramento, California. It was home at the very start, and now it’s home once again. In between these bookends was a move to Los Angeles, a short-lived stint at Long Beach State, some time in the Bay Area, and the abundance of far-and-wide wandering that life as a touring musician brings. But through it all, Lopez keeps returning to Sacramento, a city and a hometown that has left its indelible imprint on her sense of identity. So what keeps her coming back? …