What’s this “sagradose” you speak of?
What’s in a name, really?
Like when I see the words “Depeche Mode,” I am not thinking about what that means, though the meaning is pretty cool. Instead, those words elicit thoughts of the characters in the band, the music that shaped my experiences while coming of age, the sound, the look, the vibe, the catalog.
But sometimes it is different. As an artist, your mission, your “why” is clear… or at least pointed in a specific direction.
When I met Amy, a few months later we came up with the name Universal Sines for what we thought at the time would just be live music yoga. I create the set and setting with music to support the main character, Amy, of those experiences. I was researching the power of frequencies to heal. That research reminded me of what I’d known, that music–all sound, actually, is made up of sine waves. The name was a play on “universal signs,” but it has now taken on a whole new meaning.
Fast forward a year, and I’m joining a cohort of bass music producers-in-waiting to learn from one of my favorite producers, Savej. The program is the Ancient Future Collective, combining the voices, instruments, and teachings from ancestors with electronic, head bobbing music. I say that listening to Ancient Future music is like Flintstone vitamins; you get the vitamins and it tastes good (in theory).
Day 2 after I joined the cohort, Amy asked, “So what is your producer name going to be?”
Me: “I hadn’t thought of that.”
But I started. I was drawn to Spanish words knowing that we would be living in Panama, even if temporarily. Mono, meaning monkey, has incredible symbolism and the tie to the jungle sound. I had a short list of combinations with mono and other words. Amy suggested “mago,” which means magician. While I love the word, it felt like I was thinking of myself as a magician. And, at least to this point, I do not.
Meantime, Amy was re-launching her site, Journey to You, with a new brand and purpose. She is a sacred plant medicine guide, so I was seeing that word “sacred” a lot. And it was sticking to my ribs like a Thanksgiving feast.
Sagrado. That’s the Spanish word for “sacred” when it’s describing a masculine subject. Sagrado. Something + sagrado. Sagrado + something. I wanted it to be more than just “sagrado.” To uniquify it.
One day I had my pal, Nico, over to show him what I’d been talking about, this new Ancient Future, bass music thing. And trust, it was all new to me. So I’m showing him a super early track, and explaining the things. Then I told him I’m trying to lock in to a producer name. I think I shared “Tono Mono” (tone monkey), or Mono Sagrado (sacred monkey), and Uno Dose (one dose), which has the added clever touch of sounding like “uno, dos,” a familiar pattern even for most English speakers.
Nico says, “It’s too bad you couldn’t do something like… sagradose.
Eyes wide, I turned back to my laptop and checked to see if the URL for sagradose.com was available. It was. ✅
I quickly checked to Spotify and those places to see if there were artists named sagradose. There were none. ✅
I replied, “Duuuuuuude… I think you just named my producer project!”
I love it. I love it not just because of the ✅s above, but because of the aforementioned rib-sticking situation. It resonates with me. But most of all, I love it because it’s simultaneously my cool-ass producer name AND something I want to become.
I am SAGRADOSE.
And I am becoming SAGRADOSE.
