Born in Buenos Aires, Mariana Masetto is a musician, singer, percussionist, writer and teacher. She has released four albums and a single: La Bumbunita, 2010; Soy libre, 2012; Mientras viva yo iré cantando, 2014; Ela e o mar and Narciso, a 7" vinyl, 2016.

 

Soy libre was nominated Best New Folklore Artist Album at the 2013 Carlos Gardel Awards, and Best World Beat Album at the 13th Independent Music Awards. In 2015, her song “Solcito” was nominated Best World Beat Song at the 14th Independent Music Awards. In 2016, her song “Jaguar del monte” was nominated in the same category at the 15th Independent Music Awards.

 

She is the author of the book Our Voice Has a Body, which expounds her very own singing training method drawing on yoga.

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Through her music, Mariana invites us to discover a whole acoustic universe, bursting with new timbres, textures, nuance, and old, ancestral sounds gathered by her with the aid of the discipline instilled in her by yoga over her years of practice and perfection.

 

Using her voice, the cuatro, and percussion instruments, Mariana Masetto emerges with a repertoire of traditional popular songs from Argentina, Latin America and the world. In her latest albums, she has also included her own compositions.

 

Ever since her early years, Mariana Masetto has approached art with a very personal devotion. She studied dancing, visual arts, and finally music, where she found percussion as a starting point that allowed her to accompany her singing through rhythm, something that was familiar to her after years of listening to her brother’s drum playing.

 

In early 2003, while she was studying body expression at the National University Institute of Arts, she met Vivi Fortugno, who encouraged her to approach singing and percussion professionally. At the same time, while studying drama with Norma Lichtenstein and Daniel Perissé at La Voltereta, the stage gave her the final nudge to want to perfect herself as an artist.

 

Masetto started taking singing lessons with Vivi Fortugno and, later, with Teresa Musacchio, as well as percussion lessons with Oscar Linero.

 

Over the course of three years, she specialized in folk rhythms with Mariana Baraj. Keen to delve deeper, she attended workshops taught by Naná Vasconcelos, and berimbau, Afro-Brazilian percussion, and batá drums workshops with Ramiro Musotto.

 

She studied harmony with Juan Pablo Arredondo and perfected her singing with Mirta Braylan, while taking drum technique lessons with Carto Brandan.

 

In 2006 and 2007 she was a stable member of the percussion, singing and dancing company Tamborelá, ‘drums in the hands of women’. With them, she toured the country and took part in several prestigious events, such as the 3rd National Percussion Festival at the Auditórium Theater in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires.  

 

She formed a duo with guitar player Emilio Cervini, who showed her the cuatro as a texture that was then new to her, later to be adopted by Mariana as a companion in her musical journey. She completed her first yoga teaching training course, having practiced yoga since her childhood.

 

In 2008 she started studying the voice as related to yoga in initiation lessons and practices taught by Silvia Nakkach. She continued to further her research of Latin American rhythms, and attended traditional Colombian music workshops with Freddy Henriquez. She took singing lessons with Flora Yunguerman for four years, and musical language and piano lessons with Enrique Norris, who was later to invite her to participate in the recording of his triple album Tríptico. He was also a guest musician in Mariana Masetto’s debut record La Bumbunita, and had her perform in Norris’ trio plus Cosmonautas’ live presentations at the IFT Theater. During that same year, she took masterclasses with Colombian singer Lucia Pulido, and met Maricel Villamonte at the workshop A Converging of the Body and the Voice.

 

Seeking to further her mastery of rhythm, she took up lessons with Facundo Guevara, who was her teacher for two years and inspired her to record her first album, La Bumbunita, at estudio.ar. The album was eventually featured at Feidi, the international independent label market. The impulse to record proved so strong that Mariana decided to call her independent label Bumbunita música, an emblem of her fondness for the singing of birds, nature and music.

 

In 2010, eager to delve deeper in vocal training, she started training with Eugene Rabine’s method. Since then, she has continued to attend masterclasses and workshops each time Rabine visits the country. She mastered the method studying with Maricel Villamonte.

 

In the same year, she furthered her knowledge of African percussion in lessons with Luis Agudo, and took up her second yoga teaching training course, delving deeper in anatomy, postures and yogi philosophy.

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In 2011 she trained as a reflexologist.

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In 2012 she became a certified yoga teacher from the ISY Higher Yoga Institute, and took Iyengar lessons to further her understanding of the articulation between the body and singing. 

 

In the same year, she released her second album, Soy libre, whose artistic production she shared with Ariel Gato. She continued working with Gato to give birth to her new record in 2014, Mientras viva yo iré cantando, featuring her own compositions, touching on nature in direct awareness of the universe and her own feelings.

 

Also in 2014, she attended pandeiro workshops with Celsinho Silva and singing workshops with Paula Santoro in the framework of the 6th Choro Jazz Festival, in Brazil.

 

In 2015 she took Iyengar yoga lessons with Hugo Cárdenas and attended workshops with Fernando Sanchez Lynn, Raya Uma Datta (India) and Lois Steinberg (US). She took part in the 7th Pedagogical Gathering for Singers conducted by Renata Parrussel. She attended pandeiro workshops with Leo Rodrigues and production workshops with Egberto Gismonti at the 7th Choro Jazz Festival in Brazil.

 

In 2016 she released her fourth album, Ela e o mar, and her first book, Our Voice Has a Body, an approach to singing through yoga, drawing on her experience recording her albums with artistic producer Ariel Gato, author of the foreword to the book.

 

In the same year, she fulfilled her dream of releasing a 7" 33 RPM single vinyl, with the song “Narciso” from her forthcoming album La Curiosa, and two songs from her previous record, Ela e o mar: “Jaguar del monte” and ”Cuando la mar, la mar”. She attended the workshop Awareness of Emotional Impact on the Body at the Argentine School of Eutony, taught by Dr. Alejandro Odessky. She took composing lessons with Jean Garfunkel at the 8th Choro Jazz Festival, in Brazil. She attended the international Iyengar yoga seminar led by Carrie Owerko (US).

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In 2017 she attended the workshops We Are Energy — Aware Contact in Eutony in Traslasierra, Córdoba, Argentina, Treating in Eutony, Modules 1 & 2 at the Argentine School of Eutony with Dr. Alejandro Odessky, and The Healing Voice, with Jill Purce in London. She mastered her song “Encuentro” with Ariel Gato at the Abbey Road Studio with renowned mastering engineer Miles Showell.

 

She continues to do research in the fields of singing, percussion and yoga as an integrated method, which she also draws upon in her own teaching practice both in private lessons and workshops.

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