Between the financial stability of a career in medicine and the uncertainty of music, Camila Rodriguez chose the song. Behind the bold choice of this Colombian-born artist from the south coast of Quebec are the Cowboys Fringants.
Twice the famous Quebec group had a major impact on the life of this Laval University graduate student, who interrupted her studies to record a three-song mini-album released last week.
Photo by Llamaryon/Marion Desjardins, provided by Projet Échelon
The first time was when little Camila, her sister and her parents left Colombia in 2000 to settle in a country where they knew nothing about the language and culture.
Your gateway to discover Quebec? Who but the Cowboys Fringants.
“It was the first group that we heard and recognized, especially the song Lesétoiles filantes, which had a meaningful message,” says the one who makes music under the name Milanndrea.
“My parents had their friends translate it to understand what it said. There is a version of the song that ends with “rigodon” and we listened to it all the time as a family while dancing.
His TikTok is blowing up
Fast forward to 2021, when Camila Rodriguez, while still harboring a deep love for music, was in Havre-Saint-Pierre for an internship in family medicine.
To easily break news to people close to her, she did what every young woman does these days: created a TikTok account.
One day she decided to record a short cover of the song Les Etoiles Filantes that had shaken her childhood. The effect was immediate. His subscriber count rose from 60 to 5,000. To date, his video has been viewed almost 300,000 times.
“I’ve done other covers of Cowboys Fringants songs and a lot of people have written to me saying they’ve had bad days but that hearing my softer versions of their songs gave them balm in their hearts.”
echelon
These comforting messages “gave me the final courage to send my application to Échelon,” she says.
Created in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement by rapper Webster and Ampli de Québec, the Echelon project enables artists from racialized and indigenous communities in Quebec to discover the workings of the music industry.
Cohort 2023 member Camila, aka Milanndrea, was thrilled. She wants Wyshbone, her trilingual mini-album (French, Spanish, English) that mixes pop, R&B, Latin music and French songs, to become the starting point for a musical career, even if it means a return to medicine if this is not the case Case is training. not.
Like Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, she sees herself in the future connecting these two universes, which will enable her to “come into contact with people”. Music, we feel it in her enthusiasm and her smile when she talks about it, really gets her going.
“With the release of the EP, I want to share my music with as many people as possible,” says Camila Rodriguez.
In short, she doesn’t just want to be… a shooting star.