Camila Cabello Writing Original Songs About Immigration Experience

Former Fifth Harmony singer Camila Cabello is writing solo music about her immigration experience from Cuba to America.

CAMILA CABELLO WRITING SONGS ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Cabello was just six-years-old when she and her mother left Cuba, flew to Mexico, and crossed the border into the U.S. on a bus. All they brought with them was a backpack. The pair moved to Miami and Cabello’s father joined the family a year and a half later.

Now, after leaving successful pop group Fifth Harmony, Cabello is painting a picture of her immigration experience through music and lyrics. She wants to give the world a positive spin on a subject seen in such a negative light these days.

“Right now I’m in the process of writing about our whole journey. I want to make a love song for immigrants,” she told Glamour. “That word, immigrant, has such a negative connotation – I can just imagine all the little girls who have dreams of coming here and feel unwanted. It inspires me in my music to do my best to give (them) the light that I have. I want to be what people think of when they think of America – a person who, no matter what her first language was or what her religion is, can see her dreams come to life if she works hard enough.”

“I started bringing my CDs to the YMCA after school; I’d ask for the boom box and go play my music in the corner and people would come over,” Cabello recalled of her childhood in America. “And I created a little YouTube channel doing covers — I must have posted 50. Even though I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, this is so bad,’ music was the thing I was passionate enough about to get over being shy. After seeing a One Direction ‘tips on auditioning for The X Factor (USA)’ video, I asked Mom if I could audition.”

And her mother relented. She got picked, along with Ally Brooke Hernandez, Dinah Jane Hansen, Lauren Jauregui and Normani Kordei to become a girl group in 2012.

Cabello’s mother, Sinuhe, is very proud of her daughter. “I have never met someone who can confront her fears in the way she does,” she said. “I can tell she’s terrified, but she doesn’t stop. She always asks me, ‘Do you think everybody knows?’ And I’m like, ‘No, nobody can tell.'”