In 1998, when highly accomplished Information Systems Specialist Tania Mara Botelho put set her creative dreams in motion and began composing and recording as Anaya Music, she had a simple, straightforward but ambitious goal. The multi-talented Brazilian based pianist and musical visionary was passionate about using her unique synthesis of beautiful timeless melodies, orchestral new age, electronic and melodic trance influences to touch one heart at a time, collectively elevating the human spirit and creating a universal vibration of love and peace.
When she released her first albums Loveflower, 4D Eternity and All Ways, the last thing Anaya Music could have imagined was one day not only becoming an international music icon, but an equally prolific filmmaker as well. Since the mid-2010s, she has emerged as a cutting-edge force on the visual side of the music industry, with a seemingly endless array of compelling, high concept videos that have, as of May 2023, earned her an otherworldly total of 287 awards from international film festivals.
Festivals everywhere from L.A., NYC, Paris, London, Munich and Tokyo to Toronto, Bali, Istanbul, Sydney and throughout Greece and Sweden have bestowed upon her accolades in general categories (Best Music Video, Best Original Music/Song, Best Director/Producer) and niche categories like Best Mystery Video Music, Best Quarantine Stories, Best Women Empowerment, Best Anti-War, Best Inspirational video. Great examples of Anaya Music’s triumphs over the pasts few years are the three Best Music Video Awards she won in 2021 (for “Immortal,” “Twilight” and “Infinite Love”) from the Akademia Music Awards in Los Angeles, which also nominated her for Artist of the Year (2021) and prestigious Outstanding Legacy Award (2022).
“An award for me means an accomplishment, realization, a taste of joy and a way of disseminating our music with an infinite gratitude for that,” says Anaya Music. “I feel a deep appreciation now for what I am creating and producing. I am a composer of soulfulness and I can feel a deep sense of beauty when I am creating. We need to be humans full of love in order to ascend new dimensions of existence, and for me, music and these short films are the gateway, opening millions of new possibilities. It’s transcendence to the infinite, an open door that will bring us new energies of awareness and illumination, helping us to see the world in a broader perspective as humanity and planetary life.”
Anaya Music’s profound shift from composing and recording music to creating illustrative, high concept videos began in a highly organic, almost whimsical way. She was in Cannes attending and making connections at MIDEM, a trade show recognized as the leading international business event for the music industry. She was having lunch with her longtime creative consultant Suzanne Doucet and several other friends in the nearby village of Auribeau-sur-Siagne when she instinctively whipped out her iPhone and began filming their interactions.
One friend asked her, “What are you filming for?” Anaya Music’s response was meant as a joke but turned out to be more of a spoken prophecy to the universe: “I am training to be a movie director.”
When she arrived back home in Brasilia, she began manifesting those casual words immediately, editing the short movies she shot. She soon began studying and taking online courses about DIY filmmaking, digital photography and digital marketing. With her passion sparked and feeling creatively empowered, she immersed in this education for two years until she felt confident enough to start developing her own videos to accompany her ongoing output of music.
Anaya Music started writing scripts and developing film drafts and forged a key creative partnership with image design specialist Marcio Alves, who became co-producer of the videos she directed. Her partnership with Alves is the visual equivalent to her collaboration on the audio side with producer and sound designer Pedro Tavarez, who records all her music in 432hz, a frequency that aligns with the heart chakra and is created to facilitate calmness.
The composer knew that to start making her music aware of her nascent filmmaking output and make a global impact with her hybrid audiovisual presentations, she would have to think globally. She reached out to artist friends who had won awards at international film festivals and learned about the submission process. She subscribed to event platforms and as she says, “everything started happening. At the beginning, I had two to three films selected, and now that’s grown into hundreds of awards. It’s inspiring but also very humbling.”
In an industry where it seems the majority of recording artists hire creatives with years of expertise to shoot and edit videos to accompany or promote their music, Anaya Music prides herself on being an independent multi-faceted and prolific expressionist who loves to do things for herself. “It’s like a fire inside, very strong,” she says. “I have to express this fire when inspiration comes, or I can’t sleep. Suzanne told me at the start of my film endeavors that I would have to win awards to make the most impact, and I’m grateful to her for sending me the right links and helping me gain momentum.”
In the past, she used a Canon camera, but found it was too cumbersome so now she uses her iPhone, which allows her to shoot all her footage in 4K. She’s constantly capturing the sights and sounds around her, building a library of images from the windows of airplanes, out the windows of back seats of cars when she visits foreign countries (asking her drivers to proceed slowly to enable better images) and even out her window at home, from which she can capture gorgeous sunsets behind a large cashew tree with enormous roots.
“To begin the process of creating a video, I need to be very relaxed and completely switch off from the everyday world. When I am out walking or meditating, doing my spiritual practices of yoga and tai chi, I stop at certain points and images come to mind. They enter my consciousness accompanied by music, and soon I’m home playing the song and as I return to the same musical theme every day, more and more images flood into my mind. At that point, I start attending to creative and technical details it takes to create a new song and video. I consider every musical piece I compose and each video I create as my response to a hurting world in desperate need of joy and peace.”
Anaya’s insight into the fine, soulful art of impacting people’s hearts and minds using integrated approaches, media and platforms is rooted in an era of her life – long before she was a recording artist – when she focused on business and education. She holds doctorate from the Loughborough University of Technology, a post doc in leadership and a PhD in information Technologies. While working in the realm of systems analysis, a teacher friend from the University of Brasilia asked her to do a case study with his students to help them simulate creating a contract for a specific enterprise. Rather than simply lecture, she engaged them in the highly interactive activity of social drama performance.
In later lectures, and when she gave master classes, Anaya Music kept things interesting with a full integration of the students’ senses via a multi-media, multi-video approach. She developed a method that would engage the students on a deeper level, where they weren’t just listening to a speech but full participants in whatever she was presenting. One of her favorite subjects to teach in the 90s was technology of the third millennium – and the reality that one day we would be doing everything online. Later, many of her students told her she was a visionary.
“I think creating and sharing my videos helps people feel the music and my messaging more deeply,” she says. “I take them on a unique journey where I’m engaging their visual sense even as the music is affecting their bodies in positive ways. I feel I am living my purpose, as I believe I came to elevate using certain vibrations that help people transcend to higher consciousness and spiritual levels. On a personal level, the music and visuals give me a sense of well-being and improve my health even as I am impacting the lives of others and contributing something meaningful to the universe,”