Antonias Vai is a Swedish/Hungarian singer-songwriter and musician. Born and raised in Stockholm, she moved to Budapest in 2013, to try her luck on the Hungarian music scene. Captivating with her unique presence, dynamical performance and raw lyrics – Antonia’s music is a passionate, storytelling journey.
Antonia has been writing songs since her early childhood. As a teenager, she started recording and producing her songs alone in her bedroom. After living a year in London, and moving around in Europe, she finally released two selfproduced albums at the same time, “Lovers and Prophets“ and “Dirt From When The Earth Was Flat“, in September 2012.
Since her move to Budapest, Antonia and her band have attracted a big audience on the underground music scene in Hungary.
In 2014, Antonia recorded the album “Stories After Bedtime” in Budapest. The first single from the album was “The Pirate’s Waltz” and the full album was released the same year. She featured at several occasions in Hungarian national TV and radio stations. Antonia Vai toured the country with alternative rock band Quimby, released two songs with gypsy-punk band Bohemian Betyars, performed at all the big festivals in Hungary (Sziget, VOLT, Strand) and played at MR2 Akusztik. In June 2015, Antonia Vai headlined a sold-out venue at the Müpa, Palace of Arts in Budapest with several musical guest artists, for example Sena Dagadu (Irie Maffia), the British/Ghanaian rapper M3nsa and Saiid from Akkezdet Phiai . In 2015 Antonia released “Remember Ho w”, which was the first single from the EP ’Tightrope’, which had its official release in Akvarium Club in Budapest.
In 2017 October 14th Antonia released her new album, RITUA lat Budapest’s most famous club, A38 with a sold out show!
The exotic-looking singer of Swedish-Hungarian descent continued searching for her calling through the frontiers of soul, folk and world music with the snapshots of this process cap-tured in the songs of her album entitled Ritual. The tracks were recorded across various regions of the world, sometimes involving entirely unknown musicians, for example, the Moroccan flamenco guitarist appearing in the intro of the video clip version of the track Warrior Soul debuting in the spring.
As far as the themes of the songs are concerned, their most prominent feature is the ancient femi-nine aura permeating them, which lends them a mysterious, yet potent nature. The motifs of moving on and starting anew and the strength needed for this pervade the entire album.
Antonia had the following to say about the concept and the tone of Ritual: “I’ve felt out of place for some time now, so I simply left Budapest and went back on the road. It was important for me to find a way back to myself and the roots which my voice and music originate from which I could mainly capture on the way, while traveling. The album turned out to be fairly eclectic, yet also intensely personal and the common feature of all the songs is that I am entirely present n all of them. I did my best not to hold myself back and ‘censor’ what instinctively came from inside of me.”
They are set to make a new clip from one of the songs on the album, entitled Mad Heart, in which Antonia will depict various female characters. She’ll don the role of a number of famous Hungarian women, who went off the beaten path during their tempestuous lives.
