329: Sofia Rei
Sofía Rei is an Argentine singer, composer, producer and educator who has lived in New York for more than 20 years. And somehow, despite the fact that we have dozens of friends and collaborators in common, we had never actually met before this conversation.
I had seen her perform over the years, and I knew her primarily as this incredibly accomplished singer - somebody with serious classical training who had come through the New England Conservatory, immersed herself in jazz, and found a way to bring all of that together with the traditional music of Argentina and South America.
What I understood less about her was how interested she is in sound itself (electronic music, production, looping, effects) and this idea she calls “Folk and Futurism.”
Her new album, Antónima, takes that idea even further. It’s a record built around collaborations with women from across Latin America, and it brings together a lot of the different strands of her musical life. Antónima features Gaby Moreno, Daymé Arocena, Mireya Ramos, Xenia Rubinos, Las Áñez, Mariana Baraj, Charo Bogarín and Juana Luna.
With Sofia Rei in Brooklyn, August 2026
Here she talks about leaving home and rediscovering it from a distance, technology and tradition, teaching and learning, the strange economics of being an independent artist, and what it means to build a creative life over decades rather than chasing one big moment.