Helena San Roque
With her sea foam green Fender precision bass glittering in the blue and purple stage lights, 19-year Kayla Ramilliano gripped the maple neck and slid her hands into each note on the glossy fretboard. The venue in Salt Lake City was at full capacity. A sea of 2,5000 people in the audience with their phones in the air swayed to the beat of the sound.
But she’s not from an expensive contemporary music college like Berklee or a conservatory like Julliard.
In fact, Kayla was only a first year at the University of California, Irvine when she started her career as a touring musician.
During her childhood, Kayla started off with guitar lessons from ages 9 to 11 in a program called Kids Rock Free by Fender, but after hitting a wall with guitar, she switched to bass when her teacher offered her a position in a band, which had always been her dream.
“I was 12 when I picked up my first bass.I pulled up to band rehearsal, and I’ve never even touched a bass. I was playing it with my guitar pick.” Kayla said. “He told me that I could be a good bass player.”
Sticking with her teacher’s advice, she started playing the basslines of classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin. As she got older, she gravitated toward indie and funk.
In July 2020, she made a separate account on Instagram called “kay1aplaysbass” and started posting bass covers. Her ultimate goal wasn’t to become famous, but to see the progression of her technical skills. Every week, she would post 1-2 videos. Her first video was a cover of her popping and slapping a bassline from a “Red Hot Chili Peppers” song called “Can’t Stop.”
“I felt like Hannah Montana.” Kayla said, “ I gained like 10 followers from it. I felt like even if I only had 100 people following me, I would still put in as much effort as I’m putting in now.”
After three months, her account accumulated a thousand followers, covering songs from pop stars such as Willow Smith’s “Meet Me At Our Spot” to upbeat funk songs like Vulfpeck’s “SKY MALL.”
As her account grew, so did her drive to hone her craft. Using a Red Focusrite Scarlett audio interface and Garageband, Kayla focused on playing with the best quality sound she could achieve. Behind her smile in every video, though,lies her inner critic.
“Half of the videos that I post, I’m not happy with them to be honest.” Kayla said.
But as her fame grew, her “haters” also took notice. It’s not uncommon for women and female-identifying musicians, especially those who play male dominated instruments to come across snarky comments. Although she did not get constantly harassed to an extreme degree, Kayla did have people who made rude comments about her arms or about her facial expressions in the videos — or even about the music in her videos.
“One time this guy commented ‘your music taste is so bad, I had to scroll down all the way to get a good video.” Kayla said.
“I think of what my account could become, and I think that’s what motivates me to continue doing it. I react on my own, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter.”
While playing bass in high school, Kayla was also a hard working student, receiving acceptance from schools such as UC Berkeley, Cal Poly Pomona, before eventually committing to UC Irvine. There were many occasions where she needed to take a break from posting videos to focus on her school work.
“Sometimes my head and my heart don’t align.” Kayla said, commenting on her conflict between achieving her dreams of being a touring musician and choosing a more lucrative and stable career.
Still, Kayla focused on the people who supported her, and today her account totals to over 19 thousand followers on instagram. Still, her childhood dream to perform in a live band continued.
So, she decided to reach out to the singer Lyn Mapid, a verified pop singer on instagram with over 497 thousand followers on instagram, to ask if she would consider making Kayla her bass player. She messaged her some videos of her playing bass, but Lyn didn’t respond. But that didn't stop Kayla, who tagged the singer in a cover of Lyn’s song entitled “In My Mind.”
“She saw the cover that I posted, which led her to the direct message that I sent her.” Kayla said.
Lyn read her direct message and told Kayla she would be going on tour.
And she needed a bass player.
“One thing led to another, and I was on tour with her,”Kayla said.
There were difficulties with school and her family, but due to classes being online, her professors were able to accommodate her going on tour.
However, her family was against it.
“It really upset my parents.” Kayla said.“I’m full-filipino, so they're very traditional and wanted me to get my degree first”
In many immigrant families, there is more pressure to choose a path that is more “stable.” This is especially true for Filipino families, who often drill in the idea that careers, such as nursing and engineering, in Kayla’s case, are better worth pursuing than music. Unfortunately, this idea also contributes to a lack of diversity in the music industry
Despite her parents’ traditional values and their warnings of going on tour with a complete stranger, Kayla decided to risk it all. In January, she met Lyn and her stage crew in LA, and they drove off to Phoenix. It was a 10-city tour, including San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Chicago.
“When you’re a musician, you can’t really put something on hold,” Kayla said.
Although she was nervous at first when meeting Lyn, Kayla found her easy to work with due to them being the same age. A favorite memory she recalled was while they were going to a ramen shop in Chicago.
“We took an alley, which was like the dumbest thing ever, and we saw the fattest rat.” Kayla held up her hands to give a visual measurement—it was about the size of a Subway sandwich.
In Salt Lake City, they played at The Complex, a large venue that held 5 different performance spaces. The one Kayla played at is called “The Rockwell”, which was the largest venue with 2,500 people and 16,500 square feet. For reference, the average size of a house in the U.S. is 2,000 square feet. The energy unmatched any other city she played in: people were yelling and using their phones to record bass playing.
However, they also had some disappointing shows.
“We played 3 shows in Vancouver and it was really underwhelming. The venue had seats, and they were all sitting down.” Kayla said.
This didn’t dismay her at all; in fact, It was the opposite. The fact that she was able to go on tour with a major artist while still pursuing her studies made it clear that she could achieve her childhood dream of becoming a professional musician.
When the first leg of the tour finished, Kayla returned to UCI to finish her studies during winter quarter.
“I was really sad, but it made things more tolerable because I wasn't putting my music career on the back burner.”
Since the tour, she continued posting videos of herself playing guitar,formed her own band, and continued to tour with Lyn Mapid during UCI’s spring quarter. As of now, she is still touring and completed her tour dates in Dallas, Texas last week.
Today, Kayla Ramilliano continues to follow her heart—the same one that beats to the rhythm of her musical journey.
Comments