Milagro Asi Es La Vida

The song is called
Milagro ~ Asi es la Vida and was inspired by Narada Michael Walden in his studio while mentoring my co-authors and at the time “PB&JAMMers” who were about to go off to college in Florida and Los Angeles. When Narada asked the boys to show him what they “got” they calmly pulled out their laptop and started playing some beats for him. While I was out of the way quietly allowing the boys to have their time with our PB&JAMM “Shaman”, a new beat that I had never heard before started to play and the words just started spilling out of my mouth into our small universe. Narada stopped us all and had us play that again and he challenged me to sing louder, so naturally I did. He said “There you have it, you have a hit song right there. Go out and write it”…so we did. In two weeks we completed the demo, which I shared with Narada at dinner five days before I moved to Tokyo to perform under contract for four months. He said he liked it “it wasn’t bad” and encouraged me to keep at it. In that moment I vowed we would complete not only the track itself but a music video as well, although at the time I had no idea how I would be able to finance the project. I decided not to worry about that…for now. As the lyricist I was inspired by my childhood memories of family celebrations, even during times of financial challenges or personal heartache, I was taught, that “life goes on – asi es la vida” so dust yourself off, get up enjoy the music and just keep dancing no matter what…so I try to do just that!

THE MUSIC VIDEO

As our fearless leader & director, Channing Kennedy so eloquently put it “We want this video to resonate with people about the dance & celebration called LIFE and we want it to SCREAM San Francisco! And what else “screams” SF more than earthquakes and a diverse, eclectic community of dancers and party goers?!” Channing was hired on the spot and was given total creative control over the project except for my one-and only-no-negotiations-will-not-budge request. I did not want this video to be reflective of all the other cookie cutter-like music videos out there but I wanted to showcase a video filled with vibrant, joyous, REAL beautiful people, family friends of all ages colors, shapes, sizes, ethnicities, lifestyles and backgrounds as diverse as in my real life. Just like my real life this was truly a FAMILY and COMMUNITY affair…without whom NONE of this would be possible!

A Channing Kennedy Production in association with WAAAHOO Productions

Song written by: Carmen Gonzalez, Rocco Bovo, Steven Zhu
Directed: Channing Kennedy

Produced by: Marquinho Brasil at MoonDog Studios, Alameda, CA
Engineered by: Marquinho Brasil, Brad Belknap, Jara Queeto and Andrew Leavitt
Mix & mastered by: Jim Reitzel

The Carmen Milagro Band