Yuna Mas is the artist name of Aline Julià.

At 52, I started writing my own music. Music is my way of telling stories. Stories about my love life, my pains, my roots as an Indonesian-Dutch-Catalan immigrant in Belgium.

As a child and teenager, I wanted to become a writer. As a teenager I sang in various bands and I wanted to become a singer. I needed the adult life of rational ambitions and reality to decide it’s never too late to return to my childhood dreams. And thus I became a songwriter.

At 53, I ended up in Studio Fandango with Jan Hautekiet (piano & keyboards), Pieter Vereertbrugghen (drums & percussion), Dirk De Groef (guitar) and Koen Vanbets (bass) after rehearsing and arranging the songs together.

I also involved my son Milos Willemse Juliá who plays the euphonium, his friend Dmitri Dijkstra on the trumpets and Barbara Pieters the sax player because I just love horns. Then finally, I met vocal producer Yannic Fonderie with whom I recorded my singing and thus, at 54 and through all these collaborations, my songs came to life.

Wow. That feels really great.

Because of all of this, because of all of us, and most of all because I’m a rookie in the music scene, I wanted a name which would capture that feeling. Yuna Mas, derived from ‘y una más’ in Spanish, meaning ‘and one more (female),’ emphasizes my fresh and humble perspective in the music scene.

Special thanks to Daniel Brandt, musician and songwriter, who gave me detailed feedback on every song.

Recorded at Studio Fandango, Spring 2024. (Thank you, Els Marivoet for coffee, great food & support.)

Yuna Mas is located in Belgium.