Antonia Vai
Antonia Vai is a Swedish/Hungarian singer, songwriter, music producer and activist from Stockholm, Sweden. Fascinated with the intersection of story and reality, of earth and unearthliness, Antonia’s songs carry poetic mysticism that go from highly personal to universally political. Her curiosity towards genre-blending and following intuition rather than staying within the conformed category of pop is what makes her music so unapologetic.
Antonia has been playing instruments and writing songs since her early childhood. As a teenager, she started recording and producing her songs alone in her bedroom. After living a year in London, and moving around in Europe, she finally released two self-produced albums at the same time, “Lovers and Prophets“ and “Dirt From When The Earth Was Flat“, in September 2012.
In 2013 she moved to Budapest and had a breakthrough on the Hungarian music scene. Known as the “bohemian soul diva”, she gained big attention on Hungarian TV and radio. Antonia recorded the album “Stories After Bedtime” in the Szimpla ruinpub, together with Swedish guitarist/producer Felix Gröndahl. The first single from the album was “The Pirate’s Waltz” and the full album was released in September 2014, on A38, Budapest.
Antonia and her band attracted a big audience on the underground music scene in Hungary. They toured the country with alternative rock band Quimby, played at MR2 Akusztik, did a sold-out show at MÜPA, Palace of Arts, in June 2015. They then released “Remember How” together with Saiid from Akkezdet Phiai, which was the first single from the EP, ‘Tightrope’, released in February 2016.
Antonia Vai released her fifth album “Ritual” in September 2017 which had a sold-out premier at Budapest’s at A38 club in Budapest. The making of the album took place on different continents, as Antonia decided to travel and create an album on the road. ”Ritual” is an alternative pop-soul album with influences from world music, recorded and co-written with musicians from Morocco, Hungary, Sweden and Brazil. The songs are versatile in styles, from the dark tango “Love Song For An Ex” to the flamenco-R&B ”Warrior Soul” or the obscure pop-ballad ”The Witch”.
In Autumn of 2019 Antonia took time off from concerts to work on new material. She went into isolation in a house in south of France to create, then went on to New York, where she created her next music video for GHOST. In 2020 she’s back with full force, with a darker and somewhat more electronic sound. Her anticipated song and video GHOST was released on April 17th.
On July 31st 2020 Antonia released her two-track single Kali’s Song together with a live music video.
