Bruni has had little help from others in her career. Coming from a large Puerto Rican family on NYC’s Lower East Side, she really had to hustle as a kid. She certainly didn’t get much help learning to sing.
“Because my mother was strict and old fashioned,” she explains, “I wasn’t allowed to go out. So I spent most of my free time in my room listening and vocalizing with the radio.”
When she was allowed out, Bruni remembers, “I’d go out singing in cabarets and clubs in New York, places where even I could get a booking. I booked myself and was accompanied by only a piano and drummer.”
While working the day shift in a hospital, Bruni attended college at night, majoring in English and business administration.
Now Bruni would like to get back to her Latin roots. “On my next album, I want to do a mixture of rhythm and blues, Latin spice, and funk.”
Does Bruni consider herself a “disco” artist? “No, not really,” she says. “I started out with Latin, the went into the Blues. I was always a freak for Billie Holliday, Carmen McRae, and Ella Fitzgerald.”
Bruni is writing lyrics as well as her memoirs. “I hope to write a book about the music business,” she says, “my climb up into it, and what it’s really like.”
Bruni Pagan is a woman with a lot to say, and the background credentials to enable her to say it. This talented writer will undoubtedly continue to give us a lot of her tough thinking through her music.
Fortunately, it looks like her music will become our music as well.
