From Berkley To The Beach, How Surfing Inspires The Music Of Samaria

The East Bay, from Oakland to Berkley and all the boroughs in-between, has long been a hotbed for underground musical talent. From Tupac to Too Short, Rancid to Green Day, it’s a land of punks and poets where musical purpose and social consciousness collide. And keeping in that tradition, young R&B artist Samaria just dropping a new, eight-song EP entitled “Even Paradise Rains.”

“Both of my parents were really into music. My biological mom had a beautiful voice. She was a singer as well. And my dad was in the rap scene in the Bay Area for awhile, until he decided it wasn’t for him anymore, now he’s a basketball coach and businessman. But in his younger days he was chasing after his dreams,” explains Samaria, who first started making her own music while at Berkley High School.

But Samaria had other dreams too. She dreamed of surfing.

“My dad bought me a skateboard and just like, ‘Oh, she’ll get it out of her with the skateboard.’ But I’ve just always wanted to be in the water,” she continues.

Then a vacation took her to Maui, where she booked a surf lesson.

“It was a chance to live out my dream,” Samaria says.

Surf lesson successfully completed, she headed back to California, more determined than ever to become a surfer. By this time, she was living in Los Angeles to pursue her musical career, which worked perfectly with her passion for being in the ocean. She started showing up at El Porto, and like any beginner, paid her dues.

“When I first started, I was getting hit upside the head by the board, was I crashing hard, but there was never any point where I felt like I’d never go out there again. I couldn’t wait to get back out there,” she says.

And then, as is prone to happen when creative endeavors like music and surfing intersect, a little bit of magic happen. As Samaria got more comfortable in the water and started to understand the dynamics of swell, wind and tide, her mind was free to wander.

“I didn’t really start to correlate music with surfing until I got a little better and could start reading the ocean better,” she says. “I’d be sitting out there waiting for set waves, and while I was sitting there melodies would come into my head. And I was like, wow, this is way more spiritual than I thought it was. I’m sure people out there in the lineup thought I was crazy because I’d be out there mouthing words to myself, but it was just so I wouldn’t forget it when I got back to shore.”

“In life, one of the biggest obstacles I’ve had to overcome is learning how to silence the noise because I have so much going on in my head 24/7. And for me, the minute I set foot in the ocean, I have my board, and I’m paddling out, it goes quiet. For me, surfing’s probably even more therapeutic than music. And so, to combine those two, it’s like…chef’s kiss.”

Talking to Samaria, it’s clear that her relationship with music and the ocean are now inextricably intertwined. The ocean is an escape from the studio, while the studio is a place to bring all the ideas that filtered into her head while she was in the water to life. It’s the ebb and flow of her creative process.

“You have to be really patient when you’re out there, the same way you have to be really patient with music,” Samaria confides. “I’ve been putting out music on Soundcloud since I was 16, and I think sometimes we expect certain milestones to happen a lot faster, and when they don’t, it gets really easy to think that maybe your life was meant to take a different path, but when you stick with it, when you keep working on it, eventually you’ll get there. You just gotta keep showing up and doing the work.”