“I would miss out on connecting with people culturally because I was worried about how I would sound [in Spanish]… Now, I challenge myself to do it, even when I’m scared,” she says
Isabel Olive is fully embracing who she is. On Friday, Olive’s band Half Gringa released its third album Cosmovisión, in which she pays tribute to her Venezuelan identity while looking inward.
“One of the themes of this record is perspective, and I wanted to show that through lyrical phrasing,” Olive tells Rolling Stone. “I wrote what felt correct to me and my experience, and I hope that listeners with a similar cultural experience recognize themselves in that.”
When she made her identity-exploring album Cosmovisión, she approached it from the unique perspective of someone who grew up in a Venezuelan American household in the Midwest. Olive says she recently took an online course with organization Spanish Sin Pena to improve her speaking, but also to “heal some of the psychological wounds that can occur with assimilation as a child.”
“I found that nearly everyone else in the program had a similar experience,” she explains. “I used to pass up chances to use Spanish in everyday situations and miss out on connecting with people culturally because I was worried about how I would sound, that I was going to make a minor grammatical error and that it wouldn’t sound natural.”
“Now, I challenge myself to do it, even when I’m scared — especially if I know I’m talking to someone from Venezuela because there are many who have come to the U.S. in the last several years,” she adds. “I want them to feel welcome, and I want them to know there are people in the diaspora here who are supportive of them and this very difficult move they’ve made.”
Cosmovisión — featuring “The Kármán Line,” “Supervisión,” and “The Optimist” — marks the musician’s third album as Half Gringa following 2017’s Gruñona and 2020’s Force to Reckon.
