Karina Daza
Sometimes great ideas are born from a desire to prove someone else wrong. That’s a cheeky and reductive — but not not accurate — way to describe how Karina Daza formed Musicana, a collective of Latin American musicians in Nashville.
Daza says she was inspired to form Musicana in 2023 after struggling to book gigs with venues in town, even places she had already played at as an opener, and was told each time that Latin music just doesn’t sell.
“It lit a fire in me,” says Daza. “I was like, ‘You know what? This is bullshit.’”
The pushback coincided with Daza defining herself as a Latin musician and embracing more of her roots in her art — she’s a New York City Latina of Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage. More specifically, she calls herself a “tropi-folk” artist who blends Latin music, jazz, pop, soul and R&B.
Daza moved to Nashville from New York in 2018 after falling in love with the city during a single 24-hour trip. She was a graduate student in Temple University’s music therapy program at the time, singing jazz for fun with a school group, and the university invited her to perform at a conference in Nashville. After the gig, Daza explored the city and was surprised to see so many working singer-songwriters at one time.
Daza assumed she would be a music therapist by day and occasional performer by night, but Nashville showed her she could make a real attempt at being a professional musician. In what is likely a common experience for many Northeast expats, Daza found that her friends and family expressed a lot of confusion at her move, especially since she wasn’t a country musician.
Karina Daza
Daza eventually linked up with some Nashville artists who wrote songs in Spanish, and it spurred a new direction for her sound.
“Something just clicked,” she says. “This is what was missing. I feel like my music should sound like I speak, which is Spanglish. It’s not only Spanish, it’s not only English, it’s just a mix — that bicultural identity, which is so much of what defines me.”
She found a niche for herself in Nashville, which brought in more opportunities. Among the highlights are her collaborations with genre-hopping, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno. Moreno produced Daza’s 2021 single “Mujeres Will Riot,” a response to the killing of U.S. Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen, as well as her 2024 EP Viajera, where Moreno also features on “No Pasa Na.”
Doors were opening, but she struggled to book stages. Daza had already talked with fellow Latino musicians and songwriters about creating an “emotional support group,” but as she grew more frustrated, the idea evolved into the Musicana collective. The first event was an all-Latina writers’ round at City Winery in September 2023 to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month. The inaugural show, featuring Daza and Nashville-based musicians like pop artist Elia Esparza and country singer Alyssia Dominguez, sold out.
Karina Daza
Daza wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that first show, but she says more and more people — including folks from outside Nashville — have expressed interest in getting involved.
Musicana also parallels Daza’s musical journey in a way. Similar to the way she embraced her roots as a songwriter, she tried to rebuild a version of the community she had in New York. “I didn’t have a music community there, but I did have a Latino community there,” she says.
Daza is vocal about social justice issues and immigrant rights in her music, and hopes Musicana can rally more support of Nashville’s Hispanic community. She says one of her key collaborators in Musicana is a DACA recipient who, concerned about the threat of harsh immigration enforcement by the Trump administration, decided to leave Republican-dominated Tennessee for New England.
The early weeks of the new Trump regime have been exhausting and disheartening for many progressives and habitual news consumers, but Daza says she’s at her best when there’s “a challenge to rise to.”
“I know we’re all tired right now, and I feel like that’s by design,” she says. “That’s a whole other conversation, but I hope more people are encouraged to use that as fire and to just make art in whatever, even if they’re not professional artists. … Making something beautiful, making art in general, is an assertion of human dignity.”
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