Very rarely does one come across an artist so completely sure of themselves and their capabilities. Sparklmami, the musician and visual artist born Ariella Granados, said it took her a while to become comfortable with the idea of releasing music — but a quick listen to her debut album, “In This Body,” challenges that notion. The album is a fully formed record with heart, with songs carrying genuine stakes that invite listeners to float along the deep, shimmery planes of her intuitive, improvisational, jazz-inflected songwriting. It’s a delightful listen and a personal excavation of memory as much as it is music.
World-building is central to Sparklmami’s music, and it always has been to Granados’ life. One touchstone is Chicago’s Super Mall.
“There was just something about it that felt super dreamy and romanticized to me,” Granados said of the mall. Although not a Chicago native, Granados spent a great deal of time visiting family in the city as a child and has vivid memories of trips there. Seeing the influx of objects felt creative to her. “Going to the Super Mall, in a way, felt like entering a different world, and I think that feels similar to the world-building I’m doing in my music,” she said.
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Granados grew up in the Pentecostal church, which she considers her formal introduction to music. There, she sang in the choir and played in a band with her cousins, traveling to different churches on the weekends under the direction of their youth pastor.
“I didn’t always think of that as anything, but it was actually very formative for me: learning what it meant to share musical space with others, and the specialness of getting to do that with my cousins, people I grew up with. So that was the foundation of music in my life,” Granados said.
Eventually, she left the church and stopped singing, associating her voice — and music in general — with that religious space. She moved to Chicago at 17 to attend college while living with family. Even then, it took nearly 10 years for her to return to music.
Granados regularly attended Shawnee Dez’s open mics, though she never participated as a musician until a one-off session in the post-pandemic years, when she finally built up the courage to sing.
“It was fully improv. It was a jam,” she recalled. Dez called her up. “I said, ‘No, I’m scared.’ But she said, ‘Just do it.’ So I said, ‘OK, (expletive), I’m gonna do it.'”
Although she was nervous, the audience was receptive, and those first sparks of inspiration eventually led her to meeting Eddie Burns, a collaborator who worked with Granados on early versions of the music. The two quickly locked in and realized there was something special. One of those early tracks, titled “quisiera,” eventually ended up on her debut.
Music became a more serious pursuit during an artist residency with Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Granados often told people she was making an album, but no one really thought anything of it.
“I think I always knew I wanted to make music, even when I couldn’t fathom myself actually doing it,” she recalled. “Once we started to see that this was something, we had time to sit with these songs, play them live and then record them. That’s when it locked in. That’s when I knew this is happening.”
It was her trust in her intuition, her collaborators and spirit that led her to this new art medium.
“I was navigating being an artist, being the first artist in my family, being first-gen, and feeling misunderstood or unseen — maybe because I don’t meet certain cultural norms,” she said. “I also think I was, for the first time, actually having the space to process my lived experience and to let go of what was no longer serving me.”
When one is young, when they lack agency or independence, they take on what’s been given to them. Old narratives or cultural norms become the standard. It was through music, however, that Granados was able to release such energy and come back to herself, remembering who she is through her voice.
Yet that doesn’t mean this was merely a shedding of the past. If anything, Sparklmami’s album is a testament to the beauty of her legacy. Among the influences she cites are Mexican telenovelas, the Telemundo show “Caso Cerrado” (a source of inspiration for her “Dr. Laura” character on the album), her family’s immigration history and their time in Chicago, from Blue Island Avenue to Whittier Elementary to, yes, the Super Mall.
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“The world I’m building is informed by my family. That’s 1,000% true,” she said. “I think they’re also referencing my subconscious, probably relationships I’ve experienced with other people, or just people in my life. But it feels freeing because it’s through a third perspective, in a way.”
The result is an album that is quite easily one of the best of the year, not just for Chicago artists, but in general, across the country, period. Sparklmami, along with collaborators such as Burns, William Corduroy, Alec Trickett, Josh Jessen and Kenneth Leftridge Jr., has created a grounded record rooted in the past, memory and how the spirit of community helps shape us into the people we were always meant to be.
As Granados looks toward the future, she intends to continue honoring spirit in the things she makes.
“I hope it brings people whatever it is they’re seeking, that it can bring people what it’s brought me,” she said. “Making music has definitely served as a vehicle for healing for me. Things can be healing, and also sometimes deep and heavy, but it also gets to be fun.”
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.