Asian Music Review | Asian voices matter

Hopeful and uplifting!

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Welcome to Asian Music Review! Tell us a little bit about you and your music.

I’m Mary Ozaraga from Cebu City, Philippines. I’ve been a music lover all my life. For the past two years, I’ve been writing songs seriously.

I’ve dabbled in the alternative, rap, pop, and folk because I don’t limit the genre I write in. Though I started as a drummer, my main instrument isn’t vocals and guitar. My melodies, rhymes, and lyric phrasing are very much rhythm influenced.

As a songwriter, I’ve recently realized I am more of a storyteller, writing in a “stream of consciousness.”

As an architect, I was trained to be very visual. So with my songwriting, I paint images with words and melodies. But more than painting images, my songs carry more messages than art.

Congrats on the release! What was your inspiration when you were writing this project?

Released on March 21, 2023. This song is a collaborative track, co-written with Amy Berry from Scotland. We highlighted how faithful and genuine God’s love is in Psalm 139. That we realize how outrageously undeserving we are of that.

What lessons would you like to impart with your audience?

Despite our flaws, greatest shames, and darkest secrets, we are all outrageously pursued and loved by God. No one is good enough for grace. No one is too bad for grace. We are on the same level in the playing field who needs saving. We all long to be truly forgiven when we mess up. There is longing to be truly loved. We sometimes dismiss ourselves when we’ve hit rock bottom and find out that there is nothing in us worth loving.

This song hopes to share the message that there is nothing that love can’t redeem.

What is your favorite part of this body of work?

The outro. We often consider only our ideas about love and miss the bigger picture. It’s often too narrow, limited, discriminating, and selfish. Even if we are sincere about loving, we could be wrong about how we love. We may be standing in the way of love at work. Unless we see that, we will never apologize for it. Unless we apologize for it, we will never truly love.

What’s next on your journey?

If all plans push through, I’ll be releasing something really different in May. New sound, maybe even a new name. But all the same, not from my heart but His.