Rita Ray says new music draws on her lived experience

Estonian singer Rita Ray is writing her new music about what she has personally felt and experienced, ERR’s Vikerraadio reported.

Ray said life had thrown her “between different waves” and forced her to grow up quickly. She has spent the past year actively creating new music after finding a producer for her next album.

Four years have passed since her last record. Ray said several events during that time made it harder to work on music, but she eventually contacted a Finnish man whose productions she had been listening to for a long time.

“He replied, we met straight away and the collaboration began. We have now been making this album for a year,” Ray said.

Ray, who recently turned 30, said that in her mid-20s she already felt at least 35. “Things happened, life threw me between different waves and I had to become an adult very quickly,” she said. She added that growing older was a privilege.

Ray will perform with Robert Linna at the Station Narva music and city festival. “The songs we will perform there are incredibly cool. Estonian music is great, it needs to be performed and kept alive,” she said.

Ray said the pressure on musicians increases the longer they delay releasing an album. She described the process of making her new record as enjoyable and said all the instrumental foundations had now been recorded.

The singer also worked in the studio with Finnish drummer Teppo Mäkinen, whom she described as legendary. “I was enchanted from the very first moment,” she said.

Ray acknowledged that working with musicians could be difficult because of her thoroughness and the clear vision she has for her music. She said she had sometimes felt in Estonia that she should stop pushing, because a musician might already be offended.

“I have written about what I have felt myself. I do what my heart tells me. I feel that this is the right way to make music,” Ray said.