Pedro Mustard: A Voice for Nostalgia
Pedro Mustard is thirty-one, an artist based in Port St. Lucie, Florida. His stage name might sound like a playful joke. Still, it carries his history: “Mustard” came from his favorite color, yellow, and his obsession with the condiment he put on everything. Friends eventually baptized him Pedro Mostaza, which later evolved into Pedro Mustard. Behind the humor, though, is a story about migration, resilience, and the search for a space where his voice and vision can truly be heard.
From Mérida to Florida
Pedro grew up between the Andes and his country’s flatlands, surrounded by the everyday rhythms of Venezuelan life. Music entered his world almost by chance: his mother hosted exchange students from the United States, and they would bring records — jazz, swing, and blues — that sounded nothing like what he was learning at school. At seven years old, he was already captivated, listening to Ella, Sarah Vaughan, or some Missouri student’s mix of old vinyl.
But music wasn’t nurtured in his classrooms. Pedro remembers escaping classes to sneak off to choir, piano practice, and anything that would bring him closer to the sounds he was falling in love with. His family, struggling financially, saw music as a hobby at best. Yet, for Pedro, it was a calling. By university, while half-studying graphic design in the ULA (between protests, power cuts, and the chaos of Mérida), he was already working with bands like Nanda Jazz and Mr. Blues & the Blue Chasers, performing across Venezuela and confirming that music wasn’t a pastime—it was his life.
In 2017, he left Venezuela and landed in Florida. Like many immigrants, he started from scratch, cutting grass, waiting tables, cleaning toilets, while trying to finish the first EP he had begun recording back home. Today, he balances a day job in graphic design for the county with late-night hours recording in what he calls his “closet studio.” It’s not Broadway or Nashville (yet), but it’s his creative space.
A Sound Anchored in Nostalgia
Pedro describes his music as “a wink to nostalgia.” His songs aren’t just melodies; they’re emotional time capsules. They revisit places, moments, and heartbreaks with a tenderness that is both soothing and painful. “It’s like therapy,” he says, a way of revisiting the past, finding closure, and turning personal history into universal feeling.
So far, his only official release is Fire—a song that breaks slightly away from his usual melancholy. With hints of cabaret, 1950s pop, and playful blues, it remains nostalgic yet with a lighter, cheekier touch. His influences reveal his taste for powerful female voices: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Amy Winehouse, Adele, and Lianna La Havas, among others. They all share an ability to transmit vulnerability with strength—a trait Pedro seeks in his own work.
For him, heartbreak isn’t just a source of pain; it’s also fuel for creation. “Lastimosamente, that’s the source,” he admits with a half-smile. The longing, the melancholy, the bittersweet—those are the textures that define his sound.
Designing Emotion
Music isn’t Pedro’s only form of expression. His background in graphic design also shapes how he presents his work. For his first EP, he let the songs guide the visuals, creating a simple, black-and-white aesthetic that was vintage-inspired and deeply personal. “It was a challenge,” he says, since he doesn’t enjoy being in front of the camera.
However, the project required his presence, not just as a musician, but as a storyteller whose face had to embody the music.
That balance between design and music, melancholy and playfulness, nostalgia and hope, defines Pedro Mustard. He is still searching for the right stage, perhaps in Tennessee, perhaps somewhere else, but what remains constant is his need to share that “wink to nostalgia” with the world. Because for him, music is the proposal he wished he had seen in the Venezuelan scene: vintage, soulful, and unapologetically his own.
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