The life of Andrea Vitoria, Ayvee in her musical facet, “collapsed” a year and a half ago. She abandoned her work and put aside her incipient musical activity. Plunged into a depression, she disappeared. Now, she has decided not to hide and tell her experience, explain why she disappeared. “I suffered a rape, I decided to report her and, although I thought she was strong, I collapsed. But I am no longer afraid of anything, and I am not going to hide, ”she points out. The support of her family and her friends has been essential to recover her life, although returning to music has been her true therapy. She composes songs in which she recounts her experience and claims that she can get ahead.
The objective of Andrea Vitoria, in fact, is to transfer to other young people that “it is possible to get out of the hole, even if you never fully recover.” “Many girls have approached me and thanked me for reporting, because they couldn’t. It’s terrible, but it’s a taboo subject. It is not a dish of good taste to be ‘the raped’ or, at the opposite extreme, that there are people who doubt your version, ”she explains.
This 25-year-old girl, a native of Tolosa, denounced in 2021 that she was raped by a 31-year-old boy in a place in the neighboring municipality of Zizurkil. The facts were denounced before the Ertzaintza and the judicial investigation has not yet been closed.
“I have always been a brave and very lively person, and you think that after denouncing you will be stronger, but it is impossible not to collapse in the face of events like this,” he says.
“It is not a dish of good taste to be ‘the raped’ or that there are those who doubt your version,” says Andrea Vitoria
Andrea Vitoria abandoned her work activity, both in the field of coaching like her job as a dance teacher. She also put music aside. “I studied Audiovisual Communication, but I have always danced and I also sing. During the pandemic I had started very strongly with music, after a producer from Vitoria contacted me. My first song worked super well. When I was very high with the music, very motivated, that happened. For more than a year I only wrote one letter, about depression, because I know what it’s like to be depressed, to attend therapy, not knowing what’s wrong with you… ”, she explains.
The catharsis came from a vacation with her friends, last June. “The support of my family and my friends has been very important. Also that of other girls who have experienced similar situations and who have supported me. Without that love and that protection, it would have been more difficult to say ‘I’m not hiding anymore, things are like that, period’”, she explains. Empowered and determined not to lower her gaze, the EP that Ayvee has just released, under the title Medusa, it is an exercise in self-affirmation that has had “therapeutic” value for her.
In one of the songs he addresses the alleged attacker directly. “Did you think I was going to keep quiet or what? (…). All the shit you say will come back to you ”, he sings in Basque. In her seven songs, she also talks about “drowning in tears” or feeling that all his energy has been “absorbed” from her. She sings about pain, insecurities or “the desire to destroy oneself”, but also about recovery, personal reconstruction and “come back stronger”.
Musically, Ayvee mainly does reggaeton, although he also flirts with afrobeat, dancehall and techno. Obviously, she rejects the clichés that have accompanied this musical style: “Reggaeton is not macho, because a style of music cannot be; It can be macho who writes the lyrics or who sings them. But it can also be feminist. The music itself, the style, the rhythm, is not macho, it cannot be”.
In one of the songs he addresses the alleged attacker directly. “Did you think I was going to keep quiet or what?”
Precisely, Andrea attaches special importance to a feminist perspective of her music, to the fact that her experience can help other girls who have been victims of sexual violence. “Nobody knows how to react to a rape. We have no references on how to act, nor do our families. If these songs help any girl, I’ll be delighted. It’s very hard, but it comes off. And it’s easier with help, ”she concludes.
