Danita Pg has been making the rounds of the Boston R&B music scene. Singer-songwriter, business woman, and music video actress, Danita Pina- Goncalves can be found just about anywhere in the city. Although she is primarily an R&B singer, she has been known to experiment with all kinds of modern sounds.
Danita, who goes by her professional name Danita Pg, has had rappers rapping around her lead vocal and she has had producers putting down beats to music she has written and recorded. She has also been called into studios to sing to music other artists were recording.
Danita’s local R&B singles have been getting attention for the last five years. Her latest tunes include “Tough One,” “Superwoman,” and “Can’t Get Away.” “Tough One” has a funky bass line that many will find hard to resist.
“’Tough One’ is a tough one, actually, to talk about right now,” she said. “The original record belongs to a friend of mine. I heard it, and I was like, ‘OK let me write onto it, let me write onto it‘. There were complications with the production, so I had to have it reproduced with another artist who’s really known out here in the Boston-New England area, O’Mega Red. He actually reproduced that song and that version will be going on my album. That version will be up for iTunes, on sale, and that version is slowly leaking into radio right now.” The song can heard on Touch 106.1 FM in Boston.
Aside from O’Mega Red, the singer has collaborated with music scenesters Millyz and D Lopes. Danita’s most promoted single at this time is “Can’t Get Away.” She is working toward releasing an album early summer. On March 8, Danita will release her video for “Can’t Get Away” during a performance at Club Estate in downtown in Boston.
If Danita’s name sounds familiar it’s probably because she has appeared on Community Auditions after entering competitions in other east coast cities. She has also performed in local clubs Church, Quincy Marina Bay, Felt, Castillos, Foxwoods, Club Samba, Sammy’s Patio, and numerous private events.
Danita was raised by a mother who was a musician and a performer, giving her an inside view of recording studios at a young age. She was also exposed to very mature music and able to appreciate it at a young age. School talent shows were par for the course when she was growing up.
Danita grew up listening to Whitney Houston after her godmother brought her Houston cassettes. “Being young, watching movies like The Bodyguard and The Preacher’s Wife, she was just everywhere in the 90s,” Danita said. “Those were some of her strongest years. She was in movies, getting awards, coming out with so much good material, music and collaborations. The quality of the music was just so great and everyone wanted to sing it, so that’s what I was singing.”
Danita grew fond of her contemporaries as well, Lauren Hill, Boyz II Men, and Mariah Carey. Currently, She has been getting into Beyounce. Danita developed her knowledge of songwriting by drawing from her surroundings, always listening to music. As a child, it came naturally.
“When I heard music being around a lot of recording studios, I’d say, ‘Hey, let’s do a song‘. I would just write whatever comes to heart. That was my adolescence. Now that I’m in my early 20s, it’s more of a demand. It’s more of a studying now. I’ll study what’s currently out and try to contribute my style with what’s current and being demanded.”
Her earliest experience turning a song into a video came in her adolescence. She wrote and recorded a song called “Take It Slow” and director Jay Williams made it into a dramatic romance video.
“We didn’t follow up on it as much as I could have,” she said. The song was inspired by not wanting to move too fast in a relationship. “People want to move a little bit faster than what you really want to do. In that sense it’s where I went with this song.”
The single was played on 94.5 FM Launch Pad and it got Danita into the Middle East night club. “Everything was happening so fast at the time,” she said. “I was really young. I wasn’t really so much in control of what was happening. But the people that I was working with were like, ‘Oh, you have this song. Let’s have it performed here. Let’s do this. Let’s do that.’”
Danita enjoys writing as much as singing. As a songwriter, she can be internally expressive. “It’s kind of like a diary sometimes,” she said. “I get to be very expressive and be able to connect with people who are going through similar things. That’s the majority of where my writing comes from.”
Other times, Danita will be in a studio working on a recording, and she’ll given a producer’s beat and she’ll put a melody to it. “I’ll just go based on the feeling of that production, that beat,” the singer said.
Danita doesn’t play an instrument, but she can hum a melody to musicians so they will know what she wants. She has a friend who plays guitar and piano. “We’ll get the main melody on an instrument and we’ll build on that,” she said.
Her songs from recent years included “Messing With My Heart,” which inspired her with its beat, its current sound, and she wanted to do a female vocal version. “Some people like the male aspect. There’s always two sides to a story so I thought I would add that portion to it,” she said.
Danita once recorded with a rap group named D.C. Fam, being the their only female vocalist. She sang on their song “Kool Kidz.” “I did start with them. It definitely was a start. It opened up other doors and other curiosities,” she said. She wrote for them and she also sang what they brought to her.
Another one of Danita’s past youthful recordings, “I’m On One,” is a popular remix that has been on local radio for a while now. Her other old recording, “Traffic Lights,” is still popular in local music circles.
Although she’s been popular on local radio for a while, Danita wants to take her music far beyond her native Boston and New England. “I definitely have a whole lot more of United States areas to go around,” she said. “I want them to know who Danita is, love my music, and just sing and continue to grow with it, develop a brand, a recognition, then seek out other businesses within that.”
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