Today we’d like to introduce you to Jose Rico.
Jose, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was born in a family of musicians, so from a young age, I had access to many kinds of musical instruments and musical genres.
I naturally started to learn to play drums at about 10 years old. It was my uncle who taught me, and then I went to keyboard as my grandfather suggested.
At school, I learned to play the flute, and at home, I started to try to teach myself to play guitar and to write lyrics.
I got into a punk rock band as the singer; nobody else wanted to do it.
I got the idea that I could probably be a singer, so I started practicing.
I kept practicing drums, keyboard, guitar, songwriting, singing for years, and at the same time, I was fantasizing with the idea of being an actor; I used to read stories about the superstars.
I’m not a very social person, so I used to have lot of free time to read and to watch movies; then I started writing my personal ideas and stories, hoping to create a book and a movie script.
I didn’t follow my dream of studying music as I always heard you can’t make a living from it, so I got into business school; I didn’t make it there, and went to psychology school, that one I made it till the end.
Still, I was practicing at home, reading and watching stories, most of my time was allocated into it; being a star was always my main goal, not school, even though I always have had good grades.
Years keep passing, and I keep learning and loving music and people’s stories more and more every year, so I finally decide to give it a try before it’s too late.
I take songwriting, acting, music composition master classes, and I look for opportunities in San Diego.
I got into a short film, and that opened more opportunities in more projects; the classes and practice worked, and I composed my first music album at home, I am working on a second one.
I consider myself a beginner in everything I do; there’s always someone better and so much more to learn.
I have huge dreams and reasons to make them true, I have goals in psychology, singing, songwriting, composing, acting, business, philanthropy, and more that I wish to fulfill, and even though life gets tougher, I will keep working on my goals as much as I can, I want to see how far I can possibly go, and I want to help the world be a better place.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road; life throws you challenges all the time; it’s hard to try to do something and to not being supported as you expect by family, friends, acquaintances, strangers; you get sad and mad, you question your abilities and your value as a person, especially when younger, and I actually had depression when I was in my 20s.
It’s tough to work on a project and to fail, to not know how to do things, to spend time reading, watching, listening, learning, practicing how to do something; it’s tough, tiring, sometimes boring, you get headaches, you don’t sleep well, you sometimes feel lonely when you focus too much on projects and forget about living and balancing life, it’s tough when you try many times through the years and keep failing, you feel like giving up even though you know you have more opportunities.
Sometimes is not only the artistic obstacles, it’s also the personal life situations, and sometimes these situations are really hard, and sometimes they come one right after the other, but you try to take it all and turn it into something that you can share with people, something to make them feel listened and understood, something that helps you to connect with their soul.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I actually currently work at a school with kids with special needs, and on a side, I work on my artistic journey.
I am known by different people for different reasons. I chat with people from many countries, and I am connected with some of them because of traveling videos I used to make; some others know me because I used to post on social media videos and pictures of me trying to do different things; some others know me because of singing videos, and more recently because of my acting and music composition journey.
I am proud of all of my accomplishments even though they are not huge; I like that I kept pursuing my dreams and that now I am now part of a couple of film projects, and I am proud of the music composition album I did as there was a time when I thought I was not going to be able to do any of this.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
As I have heard and read, the industry is having a lot of changes, in part due to COVID, to streaming, to social media, to people being able to get their own equipment has caused the industry to work in different ways from the norm.
I have also heard that cinema it’s having a tough time with people preferring to stream from the comfort of their own place; not spending on candy, popcorn, sodas has made the cinema to have less income.
Producers are experimenting or just being financed by private streaming services, which sometimes gives more freedom and time of creation really, less known people are having a chance at big projects, some of them due to internet popularity and people demand for them on the screen.
Less talented people make it big, less big stars are seen on the screen, more franchise and recycled material keeps coming, but people ask for it, so the creative and talent side seems to suffer sometimes, the economic side keeps working for some people.
Overall, I believe this is part of a process; new things will come, great actors, great scripts, innovation, experimentation, everyone will ask for more and better, good things will come to the industry thanks the people who have been in it for a long time, to the ones that are recently coming from other industries with new ideas, and to the ones that already know and have great experience in the industry.
Contact Info:
- Website: imdb.me/Joserico
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/jose_rico_ramos
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoseRicoRamoss
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/Thericolife
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2jJUAzO3EJcwiGLxXpTPZy?si=Bbkwn817SZayHr-a1eJsgA
Image Credits
Mpro
Kat Liao
IQB productions
