Alarke Oaxaca Travel Diaries, and Music and Fashion Adventures

Hi Reader,

I just got back from a weeklong vacation in Oaxaca, Mexico, and it was incredible: the food, culture, history, crafts, everything. I went with my parents, and we ventured with local Zapotec guides into small artisan villages and visited pottery workshops, woodcarving villages, textile weaving homes, quesillo artisans (delicious cheese, and the place where they recently won the Guinness World Record for largest quesillo (cheeseball of this style) in the world, markets, the Tule tree (widest in the world), petrified waterfalls, and the ancient ruins of Mitla and Monte Albán. We feasted on mole, chocolate, and even chapulines (grasshoppers).

I love chance encounters and all things artist studios and fashion, and on my first day, I just so happened to walk into the artistic studio and store of a local Oaxacan fashion designer whose shirt I bought in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur. It was a good sign that the trip would go well.

I stumbled into this quaint fashion & design store. Immediately, I recognized the print on these clothes and *had* to ask.

See, I'd bought this shirt in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, in November. I love this shirt and had learned that it was made by a designer who was an artist in Oaxaca.

It turns out that the shopkeeper, Alejandra Torres, IS the designer and artist! She generously gave me these two prints she was working on to convert into new items.

Of course, I bought the matching shorts to have a set. Here, Rocket and I are back home in Mexico City, putting the look together.

Little did I know that this same pattern from this brand, Hombre Necio, was featured in @themetstore from the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

→ Watch Little Secret

Two unreleased tracks: Little Secret & Straight Signal Remix (opera x acid house 🤯)

→ Watch the full live set

Three new coaching videos on YouTube: finding your music genre, discovering your natural singing voice, and five stage presence secrets. All part of a series on developing your artist identity from the inside out:

Speech singing technique demonstration & guidance

→ Watch & learn this amazing vocal technique exercise

Some of my favorites that I use in my own songs and artists I produce

→ Watch 5 songwriting tips to instantly write better songs

ASK ALARKE

A question I came across recently:

"I have a classical background, and I've ended up in electronic and experimental music. I'm frustrated that I don't have a more singular focus — genre-wise, audience-wise — but I also wouldn't give up anything about how I exist in the scene. How do you hold both?"

This is one of the most honest questions I hear, and I hear it often.

The frustration you're feeling isn't a signal that something's wrong with you. It's a signal that you've been trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The world told you to pick a lane. Your work told you that you're the lane.

My opera training is in my house music. The breath control, the phrasing, the understanding of how a room receives sound — it's all there, underneath the 909 kick and the chopped samples. It never left. I just broke out of the trap thinking it was an unresolvable problem.

The artists who stand out aren't the ones with the most singular focus. They're the ones whose collision of influences creates something that didn't exist before. That's not a scattered identity. That's your actual advantage.

What's worth examining is whether the frustration is really about focus, or about not yet having language for who you are. Once you have that language, the "scattered" parts start to look like range and depth.

Have a question? Reply to this email and be featured in the next Ask Alarke post!

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT SUPREMESOUND.LIFE

Free Live Workshop: From Scattered to Stage-Ready

Thursday, April 30 · 10am PST / 1pm EST / 7pm CET

The Ask Alarke question above is exactly why I'm running this workshop. So many artists I work with have the talent, the range, the years of study, and they're stuck because they can't see how it all connects into something coherent and bold.

In this free live training, we'll work through how to find your unique voice and brand, both literally and figuratively, build an artistic identity that actually connects with an audience, and turn those scattered influences into a magnetic live performance.

It's free. It's live. Bring your questions.

Also available:

· 15 Songwriting Tips (free) — practical tools for your next writing session

· Stage Performance Quiz (free) — get a custom performer profile + drills tailored to you

· Guided Vocal Exercises (free) — warm up like you mean it

Creating alongside you,