Today we’d like to introduce you to Adrian Mejia.
Hi Adrian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Adrian Mejia, an artist and filmmaker from St. Louis creating music under the name Zonzin. I started creatively through filmmaking and directing, so storytelling came before music for me. Learning how images, pacing, emotion and perspective could change the way someone feels eventually pushed me toward sound.
Music became another way for me to build worlds. I started teaching myself songwriting, production and the technical side of making records, while bringing in the things that were already part of how I saw the world — film, design, technology, English and Spanish, and my own experiences growing up between different influences.
Over time, those interests stopped feeling like separate disciplines. That became the foundation of Zonzin: an artist project where the music, visuals and ideas are all connected rather than treated as separate pieces of content.
Right now, I’m introducing that world through La Primera Signal, my first project as Zonzin. I think of it less as simply releasing songs and more as sending the first signal of what I’m building. It establishes the sound, visual language and perspective that I want to keep developing as the project grows.
I’m still early in that process, but that’s also what makes this stage important. People are meeting Zonzin while the identity is actually being formed, rather than after the story has already been written.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. One of the biggest challenges has actually been that people are only now seeing a side of me that I’ve been developing for years.
Music was my first real creative endeavor. I started making music in 2020, before most people knew me for filmmaking or directing. The difference is that filmmaking became public first. People could see that work, while music was something I was developing more privately in the background.
Because of that, introducing Zonzin can feel like starting over publicly even though I’m not starting from zero creatively. I’ve spent years learning songwriting, production, music theory and how to translate emotion into sound. There were a lot of moments where I could hear or feel what I wanted to make, but I didn’t yet have the vocabulary or technical ability to execute it.
Filmmaking eventually became another part of that development. It taught me about composition, pacing, atmosphere and how to build a world around an idea. Over time, I realized I didn’t need to choose between those disciplines. Music, film, design, technology, English and Spanish could all exist inside the same identity.
That’s what Zonzin represents for me, and that’s why La Primera Signal feels important. It isn’t the beginning of me making music. It’s the first time I’m really letting people into a world that has been developing since 2020.
So in a way, the challenge hasn’t only been learning how to make the work. It’s been learning when to finally reveal it.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a recording artist and filmmaker working under the name Zonzin. My work sits at the intersection of music, film, design and technology, and I’m interested in building a complete world around the music rather than treating each discipline separately.
I’ve been making music since 2020, and that process has pushed me to learn much more than songwriting and production. I’ve developed hands-on experience with mixing and mastering, which has given me a deeper understanding of how a record moves from an idea to something finished and intentional.
One of the skills I value most is adaptability. I learn new systems and workflows quickly, so instead of becoming dependent on one way of working, I’ve been able to move between different environments and tools. I’ve worked across DAWs including Pro Tools, FL Studio, Logic Pro and Ableton Live, and each one has changed the way I think about creating, producing and finishing music.
That same mindset carries into filmmaking, design and technology. I’m naturally interested in understanding how things work, then figuring out how I can use them creatively. Because of that, I don’t really see myself as someone who only performs one role. Writing, production, engineering, visuals and technology all inform the final work.
My bilingual identity is another important part of that. Moving between English and Spanish influences the way I think about rhythm, language and communication, and it gives me another layer to explore within the music.
That combination is what I’m most proud of with Zonzin. I’m building an artist project where the creative and technical sides aren’t separated. La Primera Signal is the first introduction to that approach: music, visual storytelling, language and technology functioning as parts of the same world.
What sets me apart isn’t that I know every tool. It’s that I’ve learned how to learn quickly, adapt to different creative environments, and use whatever tools are available to communicate an idea clearly.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that not everything has to make sense immediately.
I started making music in 2020, but for years most people knew me through filmmaking. There were times when I felt like I needed to explain how all of those pieces connected — music, film, design, technology, and my bilingual identity — before I had fully figured that out for myself.
Eventually I realized that clarity comes from doing the work long enough. You don’t always discover your identity by thinking about it. Sometimes you discover it by making things, paying attention to what keeps showing up, and allowing those patterns to become your language.
That has shaped how I approach Zonzin now. I’m less interested in forcing something to fit a category and more interested in building something consistently enough that the identity becomes undeniable.
La Primera Signal is really the result of that lesson. It’s not me saying I have everything figured out. It’s me being confident enough in the direction to finally send the first signal.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yozonzin
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ZUsFoiVQCRU7CEkqllBXz
