Ferera is an established artist, singer-songwriter, engineer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer, who has written, arranged, and engineered music for other artists in varying genres, and she has worked as a session musician in a variety of contexts while also creating her own original cinematic pop songs.
Select career highlights include composing, “Lighthouse,” for the film documentary Swim For The Reef that was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France, and recording vocals for various commercial jingles, including a national advertisement for Old Navy. Ferera has also been a featured guest performing live on radio and on television in the Austin, Texas region. To date, she has released two albums under previous artist names, and two recent Ferera Swan singles.
Ferera Swan just dropped her new cinematic pop single “To Say Goodbye,” with an essence of Kelly Clarkson in her vocals and Christina Perri in the music. While she utilizes ambient sounds and chiming guitar sounds, creating an ethereal space, it’s juxtaposed with the heavy lyrics of adoptee grief. She emphasizes the reality for many adoptees: no matter how fulfilling their home lives may be, there is a constant sense of loss and being unwanted by the one who brought you into the world. The ambience of the music creates space between the listener and the song, much like the way adoptees feel within their reality.
Ferera shares, “we grieve our mothers, families, our roots. I believe it’s in allowing ourselves to hold grief and gratitude simultaneously—the integration of both—where we can truly discover healing.”
Ferera’s openness and vulnerability within her music to her own adoptee experience, which started at the age of 10 when she used music to ask questions and cope with finding out she was adopted. “To Say Goodbye” is about the pain, grief, shame, reunion, and generational trauma that lyrically comes from a place of strength and self-awareness that Ferera fought from years of pain and confusion. She’s even changed her name to reflect her Filipino-American heritage and the identities of her birth parents. In doing so, she is celebrating her cultural identity and acknowledging her painfully complex birth story. “It’s easy to dismiss people’s pain, but it takes a kind of bravery to be curious,” says Ferera. “‘To Say Goodbye’ is an invitation of empathy: May we have the courage to empathize with another’s grief that we will never understand; that in doing so, we may discover deep empathy for our own.”
You can find Ferera Swan via:
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