Rock Mafia Studios has also brought Bahari a fan base. “We practice songs that we’ve already got, play instruments live, sing together and then we have a few hours where we record something that we’ve written or write with other people.” “On a daily basis, we come together at the studio and run through our sets,” Carr said. Monday through Friday, the team comes together from two in the afternoon through the evening in order to accomplish whatever it can. The creative control between the entire team is shared.” “Especially as teenager girls, we are not pressured at all. Throughout the process of forming the band and their single, Bahari signed a joint contract with Rock Mafia Studios, which acts as the music producer, XIX, a management team, and Interscope, the label. “Wild Ones” was all that it took to convince Rock Mafia Studios’ producers Antonina Armato and Bahari manager Simon Fuller that the band would work well together. It should be wild to be real but in our society, that’s what it is.” “There’s the people that go with society and we turned against that by trying to get into an industry that’s so difficult,” Sartini said. The three sing together throughout “Wild Ones” to convey the message of what “wild” truly means to them. While Panzarella plays the bass as well as pads, or a sound synthesizer, Carr plays the keys and Sartini plays the guitar. It’s a very raw song because each of us are on our own instruments. “That one just came out and we came up with the harmony and recorded it. “We wrote ‘Wild Ones’ in 20 minutes,” Panzarella said. The ocean is symbolic and has shaped all three of their lives, according to Carr.Īfter forming the band, writing “Wild Ones” was the next step to getting Bahari off the ground. Soon after deciding to become a band, Carr, Sartini and Panzarella decided to name it “Bahari” after the Swahili word for “ocean.” As a Kenyan native, Carr is fluent in Swahili. “And when it came to who would be the final band, Rock Mafia all saw it, too.” “There were other girls there, too, but we just clicked,” Sartini said. Rock Mafia Studios, which has produced songs by Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, was holding auditions for a new band. Sartini was a freshman at Mira Costa High School, Panzarella was a sophomore at Marymount High School, and Carr had just moved from a boarding school in South Africa to pursue singing as a career. That movement began two years ago at Rock Mafia Studios, where Carr, Panzarella and Sartini were all working on individual musical projects as self-taught musicians with dreams of being a part of the entertainment industry. A lot of people want to be a part of the new movement that we are making.” “It’s been very secretive for the past year and a half until we had all of the legal stuff on our side, but we’ve had people respond from Turkey, Canada, Russia and Kenya.

“The response to our single is so exciting,” Panzarella said. The Bahari Instagram has acquired over 11,000 followers. 9, the single, which features all three women singing and playing instruments, even attained a spot as number 67 on Canada’s iTunes pop chart. 30, Bahari released their first single, “Wild Ones” on iTunes, sparking an immediate international response and marking their debut as a band. Within the past two years, Manhattan Beach residents Sidney Sartini, 17, Ruby Carr, 17, and Natalia Panzarella, 17, formed a band called Bahari, wrote over thirty songs, signed a joint contract with Interscope Records, and even recorded in the same studio and bonded with pop star Selena Gomez, all while keeping it a secret–until Dec. The cover of Manhattan Beach band Bahari’s single, “Wild Ones.” Photo by Brian Bowen Smith

Natalia panzarella