How Na’El Shehade and Via Rosa Work to Beat the Odds and Achieve Indie Success
by Jeff McCord
As the Chicago duo DRAMA, vocalist Via Rosa and producer Na’El Shehade make a particular kind of electronic R&B, complex beats anchored by weighty messages of love and loss. They have built a following all over stages in the US and Europe, including festivals like Coachella. And none of it came easily.
As she revealed in their Studio 1A session, Rosa was born in Austin.
“Right across I-35. I was here when Liberty Lunch was still around. I grew up in Flamingo Cantina.”
Rosa’s parents were reggae musicians, regulars at Flamingo. In Austin until 2001, she then attended culinary school in Los Angeles, making her way to Chicago in 2010, working as a chef. But her family’s musical heritage was never far from her mind.
“I was taking food more serious,” Rosa explains. “But I would just show up at the studio. I was the ride to one of the artists that Na’El was working with. I would bring her to the studio and after like a year or so, we had a session.”
“The first session that we had was just this moment of realization that not only is this person allowing me to just create and be myself, they’re encouraging it and then taking it and turning it into something I could not even fathom. When you meet someone who can see you and understand you and then elevate what you’re doing, [that] is a very special connection. And, the fact that we were both in the food industry at the time, like I was working three jobs as a chef somewhere and waitressing, and he was running restaurants, and we both were getting exhausted from the reality that we were living in – we met at the perfect time. It was like, okay, I’m going to change my entire life to make this work. And we both did that.”
That was nearly a decade ago. DRAMA celebrates their tenth anniversary this November. Through each release they have seen another level of success, all without much in the way of outside support.
“It just keeps growing every time,” Shehade marvels. “We don’t have label support, really. So everything that we do is pretty much independent. What you see is what you get. It’s definitely a grind, but Europe is great, and it’s pretty amazing how we’ve reached fans outside of the United States. Outside of our hometowns is one thing. Outside the United States as a whole new ball game. It’s pushed us, and motivates me as a producer, as an artist, to continue to create and to push forward and to innovate. When I go to these new venues, I meet new people. It gives me ideas to produce a little differently, just being around different kinds of people, listening to a different kind of music, even on the radio there. It definitely gives me inspiration.”
DRAMA has a unique working process.
“The music when it’s first created, it’s on a basic level,” says Shehade. “You have core structure and minimal drums if that. Then we start working to build melodies, lyrics and the whole shebang. My job as a producer is how to make something better than it is. How can I give this a boost? How can I enhance this? What’s nice about Via is that she allows me to do those kind of things. I love her to write and do her thing, and then she allows me to go ahead and produce a record. A lot of artists want to be involved in every single process, but I think what makes a successful song and a successful album is allowing the producer and the artists to do their own thing, and then at the end collaborate on it.”
Yet live, the music has to be re-created, a challenge since DRAMA wants to keep things to just the two of them.
“I wanted to keep it a duo,” Shehade explains. “I come from a world where I’ve worked with bands before, I’ve worked with other artists before, and I just got exhausted from this.”
Rosa: “We don’t have to worry about either of us going and doing cocaine in the bathroom…”
“Shehade: “Or not showing up.”
All this means hundreds of hours of careful preparation, planning and pre-production. They clearly like making music. Do they like touring?
There’s a long silence. Rosa laughs nervously.
Shehade breaks the silence. “I do… I mean my craft, I’ve been a producer longer than I’ve been a performing artist. I love to produce records. I like to take something that hasn’t been altered and then really craft it and make it to what it is. And I’ve done that with Chance the Rapper. I’ve done it with a lot of artists out of Chicago. I’m a producer first and then I’m an artist number two, you know?“
“I consider myself a studio rat as well,” says Rosa. “I was in my room with headphones, just making music in the dark until I met Na’El and he was like, ‘You have the potential to be a superstar. We’re going to do this.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not going on the road without you.’ And he was like, ‘No, no, no, we could do this.”
“That was a trap,” Shehade chimes in, laughing.
“We know how important it is to tour,” Rosa continues, “to build the audience and give people the experience. But I feel like we both enjoy the making of the music, that moment in the studio when you make something and you just know how meaningful and impactful it’s going to be. That’s really the fun part. The touring is fun, but it’s hard work, though. People ask me, ‘Are you excited for the show?’ Do you get excited to clock in to go to work? I don’t know what to tell you. Yes, I’m excited, but I also know that I’m going to have to be in bed by 7:00 p.m.. I’m going to have to start running and doing jumping jacks so that I can sing and dance at the same time.”
Yet here they are in Austin, and looking at, with reasonable breaks, a good year of being on the road ahead of them. On the whole, DRAMA shows exceptional discipline for their line of work. Rosa, for example, never goes out after a show. In a way, everything depends on their work ethic.
“As artists, you have to prove yourself constantly,” Shehade says. “It’s that kind of a business because things are changing so frequently and so fast, and you have to be able to stay on par and to prove yourself to the world and keep up.”
“The labels are spending millions of dollars on artists who could never do what we’re doing,” Rosa continues. “They’re far off from us because they have the resources and the money to be seen every day. We don’t have that kind of stuff.”
“All we have is hard work,” says Shehade. ”That’s all you got. There’s no real trick to any of this. You just have to focus and work really hard and really care about what you do.”
FOLLOW DRAMA
Set List:
“As I Am” (Till We Die EP)
“Dollar $hort” (Till We Die EP)
“Billy” (Gallows EP)
Album: Till We Die EP/Gallows EP (Drama Music 2024)
Musicians: Via Rosa – vocalist; Na’el Shehade – producer, composer, keys
Credits:
Producer: Deidre Gott; Production Assistant: Confucius Jones; Audio Engineer: Jake Perlman, Rene Chavez; Audio Mix: Rene Chavez; Cameras: Michael Minasi, Deborah Cannon, Lorianne Willett; Edit: Lorianne Willett; Host: Lauire Gallardo
