I've loved music my entire life, and I'm blessed enough to have a family with excellent music taste. My grandmother held a huge collection of vinyl albums, ranging from Marvin Gaye to Miles Davis to Carlos Montoya and hundreds more; my dad continued her legacy by keeping the collection and adding thousands of CDs of every genre. On top of this, my mom and her family have always more Spanish music than I could keep track of. I have heard and am a fan of almost everything: Funk, Jazz, Hip Hop, Soul, Rock, Cumbia, Alternative, Reggaeton, Classical, Gospel, Regional, Norteñas and more. My music collection is enormous and I try to make playlists for every "event" or activity I can--I brush my teeth listening to music, I make food and clean listening to music, I workout listening to music, I drive and walk listening to music, I relax listening to music, I even watch sports listening to music.

I consider it such a crucial part of who I am, and as I dive back into my library of music, I am transported to different points in my life--all I feel is an essence of who I was or how I felt at the time. In high school, once I had a phone and began listening to my own music, I traveled back into the meadow of excellent music from my childhood. In early high school I listened to Nas, Wu Tang, Outkast, Dogg Pound and other 90s/2000s hip hop groups. As I moved on in high school I began appreciating R&B more--songs from Mary J Blige, Erykah Badu, and Lauryn Hill brought me back into my childhood home, cleaning the house with incense burning on a sunny day! Around this time, my music library moved farther and farther back in time--Rap, mainly Nas, dominated my life as a Sophomore and Junior in high school, but eventually I fell in love with old love songs from Prince, Patti LaBelle and the Isley Brothers. I felt the funk of Earth, Wind & Fire, Donna Summer, Curtis Mayfield, and Zapp & Roger. As I entered college, I would study to tunes from the 70s and 60s--The Temptations, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, The O'Jays, Al Green, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and more. In this vein, I became enamored with Blues & Jazz. I dove into the old blues/rock artists--Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Otis Redding, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry...--and all types of jazz artists, from New Orleans to big band artists--Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, Ben Webster, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, and more.

I continue listening to all of these genres and more (Most recently getting into Corridos Bélicos and Reggaeton), and I am confident this music will always be an integral part of my personality. I take inspiration from it, study and clean to it, share it with others, and so much more.

I continue listening to all of these genres and more (Most recently getting into Corridos Bélicos and Reggaeton), and I am confident this music will always be an integral part of my personality. I take inspiration from it, study and clean to it, share it with others, and so much more.