Short musical autobiography:

Virginia Maestro Díaz or Viki, as her close family and friends know her, was born in Linares, Jaén (Spain) on September 29, 1982, and since the beginning her fate was being hopelessly in love with music.

When she was 7 years old and was living in Cordoba, she found out that she liked singing at home, singing as a second voice with her mother, an amateur, along with Virginia’s father, who played guitar. 

A short time later, she discovered The Beatles via her elder sisters, Laura and Ángela. The latter learned to play guitar just the same self-taught way Viki would play later. She would soon dedicate her afternoons to sing and play to the rhythm of The Beatles.
From that moment on, she started to show an interest in a kind of music not very fashionable at the time, but which undoubtedly would mark her style: Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles…

When Viki was 12, in a few months and with a little practice, she started to compose her first songs using her guitar. That was the beginning of her songs notebook, an item that from that moment on would go wherever she went. She called it “Diary of Sensations”.

When Virginia was 15, she joined her first band as a lead singer. They used to play cover versions, like Radiohead’s “Creep”, a song Virginia got to know under her elder sister’s influence. Some months later, she and her family moved to Seville. There she and her high school mates created several bands. She kept on composing songs in her notebook, for her eyes only at that moment.

At 19 she went to University to study Education Studies, majoring in Music. There she found an environment in tune with her and what she was searching for: her own place in music business.

Later Viki started performing in bars and pubs all around Seville, be it as a member of an acoustic duet, as the lead singer of a 60’s cover versions band, or in piano-voice duets.  

Then she got interested in blues and jazz, genres she discovered in Seville clubs like Casagrande or Jazz Corner. She took part in jam sessions, and met the musicians with whom later she would create some of her bands as a lead singer: Fundación Virginia (unforgettable summers), Little Vicky (as they called her later in Casagrande) or Boogie Flu, a project that was interrupted when Virginia entered the TV show “Operación Triunfo”.

The rest is history…

P.S.: “Music, please”. “Smile, please”.
-Virginia-

Translated by womansblues

(original letter in spanish)

http://www.virginiamaestro.es/foros/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=3211