CSULB student finds her voice, releasing new music and directing a music video

Patty Ramirez didn’t sing in front of anyone until she was 19, never feeling comfortable to share her music.

But now, Ramirez, known as Pati Delmar, is a musician with a new single released in January.

Delmar, currently a Long Beach State student, has always been drawn to the entertainment industry. Though she has always loved singing and writing music, she lacked the confidence to share her art and searched for creative fulfillment elsewhere.

According to Delmar, being one of the only Latinas throughout high school made her feel hypervisible and discouraged her from being open about her ambitions.

Yet, every venture Delmar pursued had some glimmer of music involved. In high school, she played the clarinet and continued to write music for herself.

Initially, Delmar’s plan was to become a detective, and she attended West Virginia University to pursue that goal. After entertaining that major for a short time, she quickly found out that a future as a detective was no longer the right fit.

“This [didn’t] feel right anymore,” Delmar said. “So I decided to, kind of, pursue audio because I figured I’d be close to music but I still didn’t have the confidence to actually do music.”

Once she left WVU, Delmar had to reexamine her plan and decided to attend the Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood, where she would earn her associate’s degree in recording arts as well as make valuable connections that would prepare her for an eight-year-long career as a production assistant in the industry.

Delmar has worked on major shows such as “The Voice,” “Grownish” and “Blackish” until the coronavirus pandemic. In March 2020, the film industry halted, and Delmar, once again, had to recalibrate her trajectory.

According to Delmar, her experience in the film industry has helped her creatively as a musician and refined her ability to “see the story.”

“If anything, it made me a better artist in general,” Delmar said. “I think of creating content, in general, not just music. It has significantly helped my storytelling abilities.”

Delmar is a first-year transfer student majoring in business management at CSULB.

With her business degree, she hopes to return to the film and music industry in a new way and be a “voice for women” on sets.

“I see all these things that can be improved, so that’s why I’m back in school,” Delmar said. “The plan is to use a business degree [to] come into corporate for productions. Most of the people that are running the show have never even been on set before.”

Though quarantine forced her to reexamine her place in the film industry, it also gave her the opportunity to devote time to her first love, writing music.

Growing up, Delmar was drawn to artists who told “honest” stories like Selena Quintanilla, Etta James and Julie London. When writing, Delmar finds inspiration from her own life and relationships, but also finds joy through giving a voice to other people’s stories.

“It’s always been about the music first and everything second when we’ve worked together,” Kennedy Hollows, musician and friend of Delmar’s, said. “To see where she is at with it now, to her coming out with solo songs and directing her own music videos, is such a beautiful thing and just a testament to her vision of where she wants to go and how she wants to go about it.”

According to Delmar, she “missed being creative” and discovered that two of her friends shared that sentiment.

The trio decided to start a collective production crew called Opiasol Collective. Their first project was creating the music video for her new song, “I Could Be Your Only.” According to Delmar, they enlisted her boyfriend and two more friends to be actors and the “all girl crew” took a concept, shot the video on her iPhone and turned it into a fully produced music video.

“When it was done I was like, ‘I just made a music video,’” Delmar said. “It was so crazy to me because I had always been on the assistant side.”

The music video for “I Could Be Your Only” was released shortly after the song’s January debut. Delmar is working to release her first album, independently, before graduating in spring 2022.

Delmar brought her hand to her face, laughing as she recounted her return to music.

“You just write without thinking for 20 minutes, and it just relieves tension,” Delmar said. “I finally felt the support I always needed to sing. It’s my own way to be creative and kind of like therapy too.”