She’s generated success
Jay Som
Age: 23 Lives in: Oakland
What she does: Melina Duterte, who goes by the stage name Jay Som, is a multi-instrumentalist and producer who recently released her first proper studio album, “Everybody Works.”
Career highlights: An earlier collection of demos, released on the music sharing website Bandcamp under the unassuming title “Untitled” (later repackaged as “Turn Into”), grabbed the attention of tastemakers online such as Pitchfork, SPIN and NPR Music; leading to a deal with the Polyvinyl label for “Everybody Works.”
On the brink: A lot of people tend to overlook Duterte’s lo-fi bedroom pop because they see her stage name, Jay Som, on the label and make assumptions.
“They skip listening to my music because they think I’m some guy who makes hip-hop music,” the Oakland singer-songwriter says, calling from a tour stop in Atlanta.
She plucked the moniker randomly from an online baby name generator, indicative of her casual approach to her work. Raised in a musical family in the East Bay, she got her first guitar at age 8 and moved on to trumpet at 9, picking up other instruments over the years and honing her recording skills along the way.
“It was all self-taught,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder where I got my motivation from. It’s just natural curiosity. I was always motivated to get better.”
On Thanksgiving 2015, feeling encouraged by her friends — and maybe a little tipsy — she uploaded nine tracks she had recorded at home onto Bandcamp.
That first set of plaintive demo recordings became “Turn Into” — a set of “finished and unfinished songs” — released in 2016 on the independent label Polyvinyl, earning her a spot on a female-fronted indie rock tour with Mitski and Japanese Breakfast.
“I feel like there’s a certain amount of luck,” Duterte says. “I’m at a place where I was working hard and I was willing to spend more time getting to where I am now. I thought this whole thing would happen in five years. It’s been shocking how easy it’s been to get certain opportunities.”
Her latest release was made in three weeks, with Duterte performing all the instruments and producing all the material, pulling together her dreamy vocal melodies and harmonies with fuzzy guitars and synthesizers.
“I definitely had more of a clear and intentional idea of what I wanted the album to sound like,” she says. “I was listening to a lot of throwback jams.”
Now she’s on tour, performing Friday, Oct. 20, in San Francisco, and finding new fans around the country singing the songs back to her.
“It’s so strange,” Duterte says. “We were in Toronto and for ‘Baybee’ I stopped singing the second verse and the entire crowd started singing. It truly made me cry.”
A musical home: “My brother and I grew up into a very supportive family of music and arts,” Duterte says of her parents, who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. “My mom was always singing. My dad used to be a DJ, so there were records everywhere. There were a lot of mix tapes around the house.”