JENNIFER MASALA
Songwriter & Artist
DEBUT EP
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Music | Motherhood | Marriage | FaithIntroducing Jennifer Masala: a musician and songwriter with a passion for connecting with people through her music.
She writes about life: faith, family, motherhood, marriage, identity and the vast expanse between the hurts and highs of life.
A lifelong passion for music and expression, coupled with busy days of raising 3 small children far away from her native Scotland have made for quite the journey for the 36-year-old, who has found herself excitedly and unexpectedly stepping out into the music industry with her first solo release.Unsigned and until now undiscovered, Jennifer has been known to those around her to have had music flowing through her veins since she was a little girl. She wrote her first songs back in primary school and thrived in a variety of musical endeavours whilst growing up before studying music at the University of Glasgow and going on to complete a Professional Graduate Diploma in Education in Music at the University of Edinburgh. Her career as a music teacher was paused when she married in 2011 and set off to spend some time living abroad with her husband. Fast-forward 12 years and she’s happily settled in Germany, living the busy life of a full-time mum to their 3 small children.From growing up in a coastal town in the north-east of Scotland to adjusting to a new culture, a new language, newly-married life and motherhood, she says songwriting and her faith have remained the two constants in helping her navigate the highs and lows of life: “I wrote my first songs in primary school and continued all through my teenage and student years,” she says. “It was my way of processing the world around me and expressing things in a way that sometimes felt more acceptable and less vulnerable than just saying it out loud. I love music, I love language and there's inspiration everywhere so it all just flowed from there. Moving abroad was such a huge change for me. I suddenly had nothing familiar around me - no job, no musicians, no gigs, no church… not even a piano. I was incredibly homesick. I did a bit of a Jonah and booked one-way flights back to Scotland but God put it on our hearts to stay the course and that slowly began to make sense as we started building a life here.”
The challenges of the last few years - in particular the pandemic and almost losing her young son to a severe allergic reaction in 2020 - have played a huge part in shaping the path she now finds herself on. “The last few years have been a difficult season for me. I found myself asking big questions about life, about purpose, about identity and about God. Writing songs has always been my way of making sense of the world and processing what’s going on. I was struggling quite a lot with fear and anxiety, especially after what happened with our son. I found myself forced to dig deep down and to confront my experience and my emotions. I had to be honest with myself and seek God and his guidance through it all.”At the beginning of 2021, after taking part in an online conference aimed at young mums exploring career paths and calling, Jennifer says she had a strong sense that a new season was beginning after having been at home with her children for five years. She was accepted into The Songwriting Academy professional mentoring programme, which she says was like finding her tribe.
“I was so ready to channel all these experiences and this creativity into something new after having put my career on hold for what ended up being 10 years. I love being a mummy and I’ve learned so much over the years I’ve been living abroad. When I joined The Songwriting Academy, there was this really special moment where it felt like I was hearing my own heartbeat again for the first time in a long time. People speaking my language. A sort of re-ignition of this flame inside of me that had been dim for a long time. The TSA has been the most incredible journey of learning about songwriting, about the music industry, about people and, unexpectedly,
a lot about myself.”
Despite her passion for songwriting and composing, the one thing she says she didn't want to do was become an artist. “I had a long list of reasons why that wasn’t right for me. But God kindly placed people around me who encouraged me to reconsider, so I started recording some songs in the hope they would be a starting point for a portfolio as a writer. I had the pleasure of working with a producer called Peter Seider, who I had worked with on a couple of songs for our church songwriting project, KI Worship Collective. He was really great to work with on bringing the songs to life, and somewhere along the line during the production process, I realised I couldn’t separate myself from the songs anymore. That sort of gave me the push I needed to start seeing myself as an artist and to work towards finishing an EP and sharing my story in the hope I can encourage and connect with other people who are going through similar things.”
Parallel to working on the songs for her solo release, Jennifer is active in other songwriting and composition projects and collaborations. This year she won an award at the CREATE! Songwriting Festival for a German worship song she wrote which was released through her local church, where she has headed up the worship team since 2016. Jennifer’s debut single, Hold On, which was released on May 26th, was also a semi-finalist in the 2022 International Songwriting Competition.Her debut EP was released on October 13th and is available on all digital streaming platforms.
Follow Jennifer on Instagram and Facebook on her journey and for details of upcoming releases.