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Flashmag December 2018 www.flashmag.net
I never thought about the “business" until my career really began to grow and I realized art and business must work together. My heart still has the first and last say though.
Was it planed was it something you dreamed of younger?
It wasn’t planned, but it was definitely something I dreamed of.
If you have to name some artists who have inspired, you in this way who will you name?
Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Sade… the list is long.
And how do you think those artists have influence your style?
They’ve each encouraged me to be unapologetically myself as a vocalist, performer, and writer.
Why did you choose Jazz music to express your art?
I didn’t choose jazz. I chose freedom. Jazz is just the genre that my work gets placed in but, while I’m influenced by the genre, I am a storyteller more than anything else. I just want to tell honest stories freely. One of the things I love about jazz
is that it implicitly demands improvisation/freedom from everyone on the bandstand. So, yeah, my journey as an artist has been one long stretch of trying to be free
You had a bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and African studies from the University of Illinois. Before attending Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where you received a master's in performance studies. How the academic path you took, influenced your art?
I will say that I feel as though both of my degrees were the beginnings of my now creative process, especially my last two records that were more ethnographic/anthropological in terms of my research and writing approach. I’m still just trying to archive the ways in which we perform our own humanity, which in many ways were my first questions about myself when I began studying. Anyone who knows me understands that my music is in pursuit of those same questions, only they are no longer about myself and more about the world around me.