TRIYA LOVE’S STRUGGLE THROUGH LIFE'S LABYRINTH ON AND OFF THE RECORD
“Mon Mari” is a confessional, but not acoustic, affair
Life is hard. There’s no sugarcoating it; dayto-day living can be a grind, especially if you’re struggling with self-acceptance and actualization.
Finding and staying on that pathway to embracing yourself is at the core of “Mon Mari,” the new album by Albany alt-pop artist Triya Love.
Released in mid-may, the album’s origins date back nearly a decade and are wedded (literally) to the first steps Love took toward self-love.
“It started in 2012; I got a tattoo on my right ring finger,” she explained. “It was an act of commitment to myself and love for myself. I thought it made that
(love) happen, but selflove is a journey, and
I’ve been through a lot since that tattoo.
“The fact I made the album is a sign of self-love coming to fruition,” Love continued. “I had to filter through a lot of material, just sifting through years and years of poems and unfinished songs, and meticulously editing them. It was definitely a journey of self-discovery.”
With the exception of one track, the entirety of “Mon Mari” was written, performed and produced by Love. While Love honed her musical chops singing and playing at local open mic nights, “Mon Mari” is very much not an acoustic-based singer-songwriter affair. It’s rooted in beats and digital technology. To bring the album to life, she had to learn an entirely new set of skills.
As a high school student, Love was torn between art or music. She chose the former and graduated from Skidmore in 2018 with a bachelor’s in fine arts. In 2019, she had made the decision to pursue a master’s degree.
“At the very last second, I decided I wanted to study music,” Love recalled. She enrolled at Schenectady County Community College and studied digital beatmaking. Selecting that particular field of study was born of necessity, as Love had been forced to put pursuits in that sonic milieu on the back burner for several years after an amicable breakup with her then-boyfriend left her without a producer.
“The reason I studied digital beats was that I wanted to break out in the pop scene; all my idols were females who made pop,” she said. “For a few years, I didn’t make that kind of music. It was like, ‘OK, I don’t have a producer anymore; how am I going to make music?’
“I decided that if nobody’s coming along, I’m going to have to do this myself,” Love stated. “I can create the sound myself. It goes with the theme of self-love, ‘OK Triya, can you be your own producer?’”
The intensive coursework at SCCC paired nicely with her past studies of music theory and composition, giving her the foundation to answer that question in the affirmative. With those tools in place and a desire to finally organize and document the backlog of material she had penned, Love was ready to get to work.
But first, she had to get in the right mental space to create. Once she did, “Mon Mari” came together in a blur of activity.
“I struggle with mental health issues, and because I struggle so much, it can be hard to be productive,” she said. “There was a lot of healing before I could be practical and create a finished project. I’m really grateful now that I’m in a better place and have the ability to be more pragmatic.
“I had to filter through a lot of material, just sifting through years and years of poems and unfinished songs, and meticulously editing them. It was definitely a journey of self-discovery.” — Triya Love
“There’s a spirituality, when you’re in the creative mode it’s the best place you can be and things sort of make itself,” Love added. “There’s this whirlwind of creativity, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, one thing came from all of this. I have no idea how I made this!’”
Love isn’t quite finished with her creative whirlwind. She’s writing a play entitled “Bipolar: The Musical” and learning piano in order to provide the musical accompaniment. Completing and bringing the play to the stage is an essential next step in her continued effort to achieve self-love.
“I struggle with mental health, specifically bipolar disorder,” she said. “It’s autobiographical and the next part of my self-love journey, even way more personal (than ‘Mon Mari’).
“I haven’t really had enough self-acceptance, it’s something I’ve struggled with, and it’s something other people struggle with too,” Love continued. “It’s been really intense, sometimes I have to distance myself, but there’s something to be said about turning adversity in your life into artwork. If something (bad) happens, don’t react in anger; turn it into art.”