Today we’d like to introduce you to Luya Moreno.
Hi Luya, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Ever since I was a kid, I loved Art and Music. I took as many art classes as I could and sang to myself… But I never truly believed in myself, not until college where I then went through a transformational mental-health journey. I needed to survive being a student, so I joined student radio and started taking creative classes as well, I loved it. I became a journalist, a music nerd, and even began producing my own music and releasing it on Soundcloud. Being creatively free was keeping me alive. Hierba Malita was born.
When COVID came, I was in a band with my friends! After I graduated, instead of getting an environmental engineering job, I used my 2 other certificates and focused on teaching art with the Mexic Arte Museum and DJing as Hierba Malita. I also gathered some of my fav girlies to create FLWRPOT Collective.
I just kept putting myself out there as a DJ, and dreaming big with my bestie Ale. We got grants for FLWRPOT, which only motivated us to go harder. I met my friend and producer Woot Noot, and we started making music together. As I began to find my sound as a DJ, I got booked to do Boiler Room! Eventually my original music with Woot Noot and my DJing career took to me to London where I performed a few times.
I’m now fixing to go on my first tour as DJ Hierba Malita, while releasing a bunch of music with my friends as “LUYA.”.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Life in general is not a smooth road, to be honest. Our upbringing, our childhood really has a lot do to with the roadblocks that we face in adulthood.
Mental Health is so critical to our success as creatives. If you have a tendency to make yourself small, how will you ever allow your talents to be seen? If you have a terrible relationship with money (because money = power = fear), how will you ever value your work highly and get paid for it? If you have boundary issues, how will you create healthy professional dynamics with the industry around you? Its all connected, and it is all important.
For me personally, once I moved out my hometown, my body really began to proccess everything and it almost killed me. Deep down, I didnt want to give up yet, so I did a crazy thing and signed up to study abroad in Japan. Shout out to the grants and university because it was this experience alone that changed my life for the better. I didnt pass the mental health screening and in order to travel, I had to take university-mandated therapy. This helped me open up to my mentor about my mental health struggles and David switched from career coach to life coach in order to help me handle the transformation, for I was being reborn!!!
Back to the real me. But it has taken years and I am still working through a lot of the roadblocks. I just refuse to give up. Giving up in my dreams is like giving up on life itself. I refuse to give up.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Most recently I like to call myself a Cultural Experience Architect. I am a DJ. I am an Art Educator. I am an Event Producer. I am a journalist. I am a singer and a visual creator. I am an artist, through and true.
I am mostly known as Hierba Malita. Your emotional support DJ since 2019. Porque Hierba Mala Nunca Muere.
I am most proud of my personal journey. Coming from poverty, to be able to reject the stability of an Engineering degree was CRAZY, but I chose myself. I chose to live. Instead of looping into familiar generational curses – I am fighting them. I am a full-time creative, and I didn’t have to compromise to get here. No savings, just a lot of determination and a great mentor. I created the concept for FLWRPOT, went after it fearlessly – and now me and my bestie run it together.
Now I get to travel the world, showing people music that I find while also sharing my personal creations.
Anything is possible, for anyone at anytime.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Some Words of Wisdom:
You aren’t stuck. That’s just the state of mind you’re comfortable in right now. It is when you are so determined to change things, so committed that you must follow-through with urgency… That’s when things change. When you stop letting fear rule your life, and finally allow love to lead. You aren’t alone no matter how hard you try to be.
Some Words to Promote Self:
My goal is to activate something innate within everyone with my creations by combining two distinct but symbiotic energies – the frequenciy to feel and understand, and the frequency to release and pave a new way forward. How? Music. The messages, the stories, the way they intersect with sound and frequency. The way it reaches our bodies. The way our bodies know to move, to jump, to stretch, to feel the beat.
Its healing!!! And together? We are unstoppable!
Pricing:
- Email me to schedule a consultation for DJing, Events, Art Workshops, or more.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://HierbaMalita.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hierbamalita/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hierbamalita/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hierbamalita
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/hierba-malita
- Other: https://lahierbamalita.substack.com/
