Even as women continue to make great strides in areas from politics to corporate boardrooms, they are still rare in the recording business outside of studio manager and clerical positions. When Miami Mixer/Engineer/Composer Marcella Araica aka Ms Lago attended the Full Sail Production and Recording Program in her home state around the turn of the millennium, “I had a class of around 165 or 170, and only five of us were women,” she says.
“That was my first taste of seeing women being such a minority in the field. Out in the world, women are thought of us being teachers and nurses and doing blue-collar work, which I found eye-opening. After I graduated and started getting into my career, I’d talk to younger girls about what I did, they all said, ‘I didn’t know I could do that,’ and it’s because women are not educated to know what they can do. I think a lot of women are still taught to go to school and eventually become mothers, have our children and that’s the end of the story.
But I think there’s an opportunity for women to do all the things that they put their minds to, do them as well as men do, and also achieve what we were put on this earth to do, which is to bear and raise children.” She should know. Not only has Araica (pronounced “ah-rye-ka”) established herself in the 12 Years she’s been out of Full Sail as a top Engineer, Mixer and Composer—with a glittering client list that includes Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Britney Spears, Madonna, Pink, Duran Duran, Usher, Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, among others—a few months ago she also became a mother for the first time.
*mixonline.com
