Getting Started

THE ROOTS

Where are you from?

I’m from kind of from everywhere my mom moved around a lot right before she got pregnant with me and right after so I’d either stay with family in Africa or France or travel around with her. I was born on the 6th of May, 2000. I’ve been to school in Djibouti Africa, Paris France, and lastly the U.S, I would move around a lot and even when I moved to New York with my mom we still moved around. Our first home was on the west side of nyc on 25th street between seventh and eight then Grove street on the westside in chelsea after that was 46th street between 2nd and 3rd then we moved to brooklyn in carroll gardens and theeeen greene street in brooklyn after that we moved to 2 different places in staten island and that’s where I am now so I’ve been in a lot of different environments. I now live in a house in staten island so traveling to school and anywhere else I need to go is a bit tedious and the travel time is pretty gruesome when the weather is not a clear day but I do like my home and love the space we get to have the people in the city don't really get to enjoy plus the view to the sunrise and sunset over the water. Music for me has been pretty all over the place I’ve grown up in a lot of different places so different genres of music have always been around me. No one in my close family was really into music and no one really sang. My step-father actually heard me singing to “Hit The Road Jack” by Ray Charles and decided to put me into vocal classes and from there I learned theory and the basics of piano for about 6 years of my life and since then my love for music has just taken off. I did ballet, tap, & african dance  at Alvin Ailey also for a few years so I believe that helped with my rhythm and understanding of counting music so I still tend to get a bit mixed up with the 1,2,3,4 and the 5,6,7,8.  

The internships I’ve had were;

Housing Works bookstore at the cafe

Bank Street College as a TA

In both of these I learned how to interact with people. In the Bank Street internship I learned how different people learned and methods to get them to understand without out telling them the answer or making them feel bad about not knowing the answer.

With the cafe at Housing Works I met so many new people. It was such an amazing experience being able to see the different lives of everyone and the different people coming in. Also I learned how when me and my co-workers played music the mood shifted and would everytime a new genre would play. I’d come in early and as time went by and depending on the day of the week and the weather we would see new people or the regulars that came in every day at the same time and got the same thing. They would comment on the music or give recommendations for what to play.

I’m working on so much more music than I expected to be working on. I go to The Door a non-profit organization that helps teens and also has an amazing music community. There I’m learning about how to make beats and freewriting and bouncing ideas off of each other. When I was younger I would write but not seriously or towards any goal and I ended up stopping for a really long time but once I started MAD academy and joined The Door my love for music and making something my own was instilled in me. I’ve only really performed once since my 7th grade talent show and it really was nerve wracking.

I have  really bad stage fright so being able to get up on stage after some time and being able to sing well was a really big accomplishment for me.