BREAKING: Norman musician nominated for Native American Music Award
While Hanna Andréa may be a 17-year-old college freshman, she’s hitting milestones in her music career many would aspire to achieve.
Andréa, who is Muscogee and Norwegian, released her album “Stranded in the Middle” back in August. It’s an eight-track pop album written almost entirely by herself, with occasional help from her producer, James Conner. The album and her accompanying music video for the track “Past Midnight” were recorded in Oklahoma City.
“My song Past Midnight is really fun because it has a lot of different tempo changes,” Andréa said.”I feel like each section of the song is its own little world and little separate thing.”
Since the release, Andréa’s “Past Midnight” music video, released only 4 months ago, has amassed over 2.5 million views on YouTube. Andréa said the director of the music video is also Native American, specifically Choctaw, and they played with a lot of different lighting and shapes while “capturing the feeling of the song.”
In addition, the song has secured Andréa two nominations at the Native American Music Awards for Best Pop Recording and Best Music Video.
“I’m so honored.
I think it’s so cool that I got nominated for that because there’s so many really amazing Native American artists who send in their stuff for this,” Andréa said. “They’re from all over the country and all sorts of different tribes and doing all sorts of different music genres and stuff.”
Artists can nominate themselves to the Native American Music Awards and a “jury” of judges select the official nominees for each category. Individuals from around the world, including the judges, can vote on the nominees through a form on the Award’s website.
“Hannah is not the person that immediately comes to mind when you think about the Native American Music Awards, which is incredible because the amount of diversity that the Native American Music Awards showcases is really exciting,” said James Conner, Andréa’s producer. “I have seen how hard she’s worked on the records that she writes and on the recording.
I got to see all of the process of the music video too, that was nominated and she’s just an incredibly hard worker, just almost to her own detriment. She’s forgoing sleep and hangouts and breaks and all these kinds of things to make this. And so, for me, I’m just very proud of her.”
Andréa, who first got involved in music and theater in Norman with the Sooner Theatre and the Cimarron Opera, said she gets a lot go inspiration for her music through nature, moments in her life, friends and family, and her thoughts and feelings.
While she considers herself to be from Norman.
Andréa has also spent a decent amount of time in Norway, having attended school for a few years in the country and having family there. She even has her own band and had a launch event for her album in Norway.
“Over the summer, we launched the album in Norway and a professional string ensemble there called Musikk i Nordland… They arranged my music for strings and we played together along with my band there for an audience of 4,000 people.”
Conner said she performed at a Norwegian music festival, in her family’s Norwegian hometown, and was followed by acts with millions of monthly listeners on Spotify.
“To be able to debut our first-ever project in that setting is extremely exciting and electric,” Conner said. “It’s pouring rain, but it doesn’t bother a single Norwegian. They’re out and they’re in their gear and they’re ready to have an incredible time. There was just such a rich cultural clash even in that single event from all the people who were there.”
Conner added that an interesting aspect of Andréa as an artist is the different ways she can perform — the different people, places and languages she can perform with adds a “surprise” element.
You never know what you’re going to get from a Hannah record
“You never know what you’re going to get from a Hannah record or a Hannah show,” he said. “Because she can go from Broadway to hard rock to pop and intimate singer-songwriter. So, as a producer who works with her, it’s a deeply exciting project to be a part of because it is so rich and so diverse.”
Andréa’s wide arsenal of creative talents has led to the project she’s currently working on — a one-act musical based on Shakespeare’s works and characters. She wrote the musical over the summer and it’s set to hit the stage in March.
“It’s a little bit of a full circle,” her father Ole Andreassen added. “It’s kind of started out at The Sooner Theatre … and now she’s writing a show that’s going to the Lincoln Center as a musical.”
She said it’s a play about deciding if you are going to wait for things to be handed to you or go out and make them happen. It’s about making one’s own path in life and features a mostly female cast to explore the female characters in Shakespeare.
“Music has always been a really big part of my life,” Andréa said.
“I remember when I was really little, I would just sort of walk around and sing my thoughts. I would just like improvise melodies and lyrics and just sort of sing whatever I was thinking.”
As she got older, she started to formulate more cohesive songs and started to write a pop song, eventually leading her to where she is today. Acting, she said, is “sort of the lens I try to see the world through,” because it allows her to step into other people’s shoes, helping her be empathetic towards others and have a sort of understanding of where people are coming from.
“I think that’s really important because I think that’s how you can have all the important conversations that need to be had in the world,” she said. ”You can see things from other points of view.”
She’s a very visual artist, Conner said, and her hard work and various creative skill sets are all utilized in the various projects she’s working on. He added that a signature of her work is being able to bring all these different pieces together — set design, clothing, movement, performance, song, — into each of her works.
