S U N A H spoke with Aida Shahghasemi, The Cedar’s former Marketing and Communications Manager, about their background, their Cedar Commissions project, and what they hope the future holds. Read the entire interview here.
Cedar Commissions Spotlight - Hassan Shahid
Photo taken by Peter Jamus
HASSAN SHAHID
CEDAR COMMISSIONS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEWS
Over the next few weeks, we’re featuring the six artists of the 2020-2021 Cedar Commissions (taking place Friday, March 5th, Saturday, March 6th, and Sunday, March 7th) in a series of interviews on our site. The Cedar Commissions is a flagship program for emerging Minnesotan composers and musicians made possible with a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, these artists have been composing, exploring new ideas, and assembling teams of musicians to bring their work to fruition. Over the three nights of The Cedar Commissions, audience members will hear music inspired by the process of finding beauty in mental illness, stories of the Portuguese diaspora, evolution of the Hmong language, Black Muslim American fatherhood, addressing personal traumas, healing through Bomba, and so much more.
For our fifth spotlight interview we will be highlighting Hassan Shahid. Hassan is an acoustic guitarist, singer, and songwriter. For the 2021 Cedar Commissions Hassan made a project titled “Songs For My Ummah: A Black Muslim Father’s Exploration in Vulnerability.” This project explores his relationship to his emotional world through reflecting on his experiences being Black, Muslim, and a man. Hassan spoke with Shasa Sartin, The Cedar’s Marketing and Programs Assistant, about expressing vulnerabilities through music; his relationship to writing music; and confronting racism in the Twin Cities.
Photo taken by Peter Jamus
“I feel like, especially in society, you can go through things and you can’t really have nobody to talk to, but I can always talk to that pen.”
Shasa Sartin: Your work for the Cedar commissions is titled "Songs For My Ummah: A Black Muslim Father's Exploration in Vulnerability." So is being vulnerable with your emotions something that has been natural for you or is it a challenge, like something you have to work on?
Hassan Shahid: I think being vulnerable is definitely something that has always been natural to me. I think I just came from a household that always focused on the inward, spiritually wise. I grew up in a Sufi Muslim household, and if you know anything about Sufism it's all about spirituality itself and a lot of introspective on behavior, so I've always been always pretty in tune and in touch with my emotions. Not always expressing them. But yeah, vulnerability is something that I've always been able to practice, always. It just wasn't until I picked up my instrument, that I found the time just to be able to channel those emotions into an actual, tangible thing that I could grow with and through that.
Hassan with his family members. Photo Courtesy to Hassan Shahid.
Shasa: As a follow-up question, you said that you've been used to being highly introspective, turning inward and reflecting on your emotions, but not always expressing them. It sounds like making music has been an avenue for you to engage in the step after being introspective and being really inward. Could you speak to that?
Hassan: Yeah, definitely, I think my music has definitely been a tool for me to healthily — like a healthy outlet to be able to deal with a lot of my emotions: let it be irritations or frustrations or just obstacles and not really knowing who to turn to. I feel like, especially in society, you can go through things and you can't really have nobody to talk to, but I can always talk to that pen. And I think it was a tool for me to just be able to process some of my emotions and feelings in a matter that wasn't unhealthy. And this has been a blessing to be able to now be able to talk about this because I know a lot of people who go through mental issues and obstacles, chemical dependencies, and that's their outlet of being able to deal with it. And mine, through the grace of God, it's always just been the pen, and music, and the guitar. I feel like it's definitely been a healthy outlet for me.
Shasa: One last follow-up on that — you keep referencing “the pen,” and so you're talking about the act of writing music. Do you often write songs and poems before you start to make music to go with it?
Hassan: Honestly, it's a very organic process. Sometimes it's the guitar riff and then the music comes or I write it out and I just find chords to go along with it. And then the music comes after playing, through repetition. It really — it's an organic process it's different every time. There was a period in my life, I used to take the bus every day to work, and then also take the bus to a school program that I was attending, and I had a lot of time where I was on a bus, so I would write and journal every day, and a lot of that was just more just my thoughts on a day-to-day and let it be what I seen, what I felt, but through that there was a lot of poetry that kinda came from that. And I have a couple of songs that kind of emerge from that. There's been times where I'm just sitting in my house, I'm just strumming three, four chords, and then it's like a very memorable event from that music comes about. So it really just depends on whatever the situation is that kind of creates the music, it's not just writing or whatever else. There's a lot of different avenues that go with it.
Hassan performing with his guitar. Photo Courtesy to Hassan Shahid.
Shasa: Can you speak about your experience working on this project throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?
Hassan: Yeah, I mean, it was a blessing, I think, to be able to have... I think I would have benefited a lot from more of the program if I was able to connect with some of the artists and work with them and watch them grow and develop, I think it would have been a little different. Just because of the isolation period and not really having the ability to connect with artists the way we want to, just because everybody is so separated, and also I was trying to social distance. But towards the end of my project, it definitely came together and I had all my music and I had all the songs there, but I just had to make it more musical, so I did a lot more collaboration pieces over the last couple of months. And after doing that, I just wish I would have done more of that earlier. But I still feel like in terms of representation, I think I gave them my all and I'm pretty content now, but I'm looking back at it and get some of the feedback from individuals about the actual project, but it's just trying to figure out if people are gonna actually be able to take in what it's actually there.
Hassan: I don't know, it was difficult. Just with everything going on, there's a lot of emotions, I've been up and down. With just George Floyd, to burnings, to self-isolation, people dying... It was emotionally very draining, trying to create music. But I tried to just create music that hopefully that people can really feel my true emotions, and the intent of it is that they can have healing through the actual music and lyrics itself, and I just did that for hopefully just by being vulnerable and try to be raw with that.
Shasa: I grew up in Southwest Minneapolis. That part of the city was really not racially diverse when I was growing up, and I was hyper aware of the fact that I really stood out as a Black woman. So I'm curious if you could speak to what part of Minneapolis you grew up in, and then also could you talk about your experiences growing up being Black and Muslim in whichever part of Minneapolis that was?
Hassan: Yeah, so growing up, I kinda grew up everywhere in the Twin Cities, I mean, I think I was born in Saint Paul, but I grew up in North Minneapolis. I went to Lincoln Elementary School. I grew up in Brooklyn Park, to Fridley, to Columbia Heights. I went to school over South Minneapolis over at Roosevelt. I just kind of had a lot of experiences of just the Twin Cities. I mean being Black and Muslim, I think I was very sheltered from a lot of things that are influences of what, maybe, most people dealt with just because I came from conservative Islam, and my mom just would not let me go out the house unless she knew exactly where I was going and also just did a really good job. I was very sheltered. It wasn't until I got to, actually, high school and just taking a bus from Columbia Heights and to South Minneapolis that I actually started to have more just interaction with society and whatnot.
Hassan: So yeah, I grew up over in the Twin Cities, and it wasn't until high school that I started to see some of those things that you spoke about. The separations of people. My mom always told me people are racist and stuff like that, but she always did a pretty good job of just having me inside the Muslim community. So I didn't really see much of that. And then when I went to college, you start to really just start to see those lines are really divided. Just the way that people look at you. Back then, I had dreadlocks, I was kind of just like the hippie guy, free spirited, but I think I got more of a taste of just how racism works as I started to have my own experiences with it.
Hassan when he was a college student. Photo Courtesy to Hassan Shahid.
Hassan: I mean, Twin Cities is definitely like, they say "nice nasty." You know, they smile in your face, but they don't really care too much or invest much of anything inside of you. I don't know, it's kind of hard to explain, but yeah, I don't know.
Hassan: It goes deep into how people interact with each other, how they value, how they look at you, how they perceive you before they actually speak to you, just how they treat you versus how they treat other people. Especially, you see it inside of settings whenever there's youth involved. How they treat white youth versus Black youth. And how they do more policing inside of certain environments where if it was a bunch of white students, it wouldn't be like that. I seen that growing up and inside the high schools myself, also just within working with youth as well and advocating for them, I would see how they would treat my Black youth that I would be advocating for. So it's definitely there, but it's more just very undertone racism. It’s more like "we just don't want them being loud," or whatever else it is, or "we just wanna make sure that everybody else feels safe and comfortable," but like what are you trying to say? This is supposed to be a place where everybody should be able to be seen as equals, and it's not the case most of the time.
Shasa: Can you speak to some artists that you really like to listen to that have impacted your relationship with music? And just in general, some favorite musicians that you like?
Hassan: Yeah, I really like Kid Cudi. I think he's, emotionally, just had all these breakdowns outside of his music that you see that he goes through and it translates in his music. And he doesn't make happy music all the time. Or it's blissful but it's blissful in a way that like, he's just like accepting of certain realities. I appreciate that. Just that diversity in terms of his emotions. He took breaks from his chemical dependencies and then he jumped back into smoking again. But allowing that space for you to know, to accept, that there's room to grow. Other artists that I like... you know, they vary. I like music that is meditative. Usually I like instrumentals. The reason I started doing a lot of music is 'cause I was struggling trying to find music of substance. I love tons of music. I think Kid Cudi's is pretty cool. I love Jack Johnson. I love Ben Harper. Bob Marley's cool.
Hassan with his son. Photo Courtesy to Hassan Shahid.
Shasa: You're a father and that's an important part of this whole project, including the title. Would you be willing to speak about your relationship to your father and how it informs you assuming the role of a father?
Hassan: I know my dad now, and I knew him back then, but his role in my life was very minimum, let it be his... Whatever his situation and his story is, my dad wasn't around. My mom was a single parent and I did have step-fathers, but I didn't have that privilege to have a father who was there. And I think now, how it affects me now, I really do try to be [in] my child's life, and I had deal with a lot of systemic issues that prevent me being able to be involved because the way that our infrastructure of the system within the Twin Cities is built, and probably nationally, it's not really built for the favor of men. It’s built towards... taking the men outside of the equation, and that's how you are able to sustain a lifestyle. So, it's very difficult for me being a father because I constantly find myself having to fight. And I don't really like fighting. I'm usually a very free flowing and [I] just kind of navigate around it, but I find myself constantly having to fight with my co-parent as well with the system to validate me as a father, because honestly, it's easier for me not to be a father, than it is to be a father, and I think that's a reality that I have to wake up every day. All I wanna do is just be there every day from my son, and I'm not given that option.
Catch Hassan Shahid’s performance of “Songs For My Ummah: A Black Muslim Father’s Exploration in Vulnerability” premiering online on Sunday, March 7th as part of this year’s virtual Cedar Commissions. Tickets are on sale here.
Cedar Commission Spotlight - Farrington Llewellyn
Photo taken by Peter Jamus
CEDAR COMMISSIONS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEWS
We're featuring the six artists of the 2020-2021 Cedar Commissions (taking place Friday, March 5th, Saturday, March 6th, and Sunday, March 7th) in a series of interviews and presentations on our site. The Cedar Commissions is a flagship program for emerging Minnesotan composers and musicians made possible with a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, these artists have been composing, exploring new ideas, and assembling teams of musicians to bring their work to fruition. Over the three nights of The Cedar Commissions, audience members will hear music inspired by the process of finding beauty in mental illness, stories of the Portuguese diaspora, evolution of the Hmong language, Black Muslim American fatherhood, addressing personal traumas, healing through Bomba, and so much more.
Farrington “Farr Well” Llewellyn
Multi-Media Story Teller
Farrington’s Biography
(Text is reflected directly from Farrington’s website.)
A picture of constant evolution, Farr Well - aka Farrington Llewellyn - is a hip-hop artist with a striking sense of self-awareness and purpose. Based in Minneapolis, Llewellyn has built a platform through their music that speaks to all walks of life and encourages acceptance, understanding, and the betterment of humanity. Perpetually peeling back layers and spurring renewal through self-reflection, Llewellyn shines the spotlight on Black identity, activism, gun violence, and most recently, mental illness, through their unique soundscape of eclectic hip-hop.
Llewellyn first established their musical artistry in the lunchrooms and playgrounds of their younger school days, participating in freestyle battles with other kids. It wasn’t until they took home the prize for a city-wide freestyle competition 4 times in a row at the age of 15, that they was established as an up-and-coming phenom in their hometown. Mentored by the owner of a clothing boutique in the local record shop, Llewellyn began to build their music career by recording mixtapes, playing shows, and touring whenever they got the chance. Rising through the ranks, Llewellyn has built a considerable music resume within the span of the last 15 years. They have opened for Flo-Rida and Blood Raw from Young Jeezy's record label USDA, as well as international artist and Hip-Hop pioneer Rakim. Llewellyn has had over 200 performances in over 50 venues in the Twin Cities and has taken their music global with performances at Hojoya Festival in Hakozaki, Fukuoka and the famed Alfie Jazz Roponggi in Tokyo, Japan. Collaborating with several artists on various projects, their music has been featured on several releases and was placed in the Greater Twin Cities United Way Documentary on food justice in North Minneapolis - With Appetite For Change. Needless to say, Llewellyn’s music resonates with people worldwide, but it’s their message that encourages intimate connection with their art.
Creating the musical persona ‘Farr Well’ from their first and middle name (FARRington LleWELLyn), Llewellyn embodies the constant evolution they is taking both personally and within their music.
“It seemed like all I'd ever done was say Farewell to realities and parts of myself that don't serve me anymore. I had been exposed to a lot of realities, subcultures, and identities; it became clear that my persona was something that's forever evolving,” says Llewellyn.
With their new moniker representing that perpetual idea of saying “farewell” to your past self, Llewellyn set out to reinvent themself by creating meaningful music that would spark conversation and radical evolution in others.
One of Llewellyn’s most notable projects is the Black Identity Series which set out to find clarity around the issues they struggled with as an African American growing up in a neglected city and experiencing the deaths of friends from school due to senseless gun violence. Llewellyn began interviewing African American people and showcasing different perspectives to show the spectrum of Black identity on any given topic. They then used these narratives to coincide with their music to ignite deep, yet healing, conversations on the intersectional struggles some fail to acknowledge. Llewellyn’s 2019 album He’s Got A Gun specifically talks about the toxic influences of gun violence, while their unreleased 2018 album For My White Friends tackles the concept of bringing people together at a time when identity politics and binary thinking is rampant.
Their work of telling stories through music and film allows Llewellyn to be a community leader in holding safe spaces for healing and hard conversations. This continues with their newest project Hard Pill To Swallow (released in July 2020). Coming to terms with their Bipolar diagnosis, Llewellyn is opening the door for conversations on mental illness and generational trauma. Documenting their life from 2015-2020, the six song EP is an up-close and personal view of their mental health journey that in turn, encourages people to work through their own hard life experiences. The story of an activist/organizer from North Minneapolis who confronted things that are hard to accept and found clarity and a new sense of purpose, Hard Pill to Swallow shows Llewellyn sharing their personal experiences with drug misuse, gun violence, trauma, and mental illness. “I think that by being vulnerable about my experience with Bipolar and Depression, I can help normalize it; especially in Black communities and other places around the world with little to no awareness. My hope is to encourage those who can't speak about it. A lot of people who manage mental illness don't feel comfortable talking about it publicly,” says Llewellyn.
Farr Well explains, “Hard Pill to Swallow is my new album but it’s also my new blog, podcast, and conversation series about things that are hard to accept. Coming to terms with my bipolar diagnosis in 2018, I’m opening the door for discussions around mental illness and generational trauma.”
(from a report by Randal Radic: Tattoo.com. released on July 24, 2020)
Courtesy of Farrington Llewellyn’s Bandcamp page
Featuring a unique boom-bap like flow with bounce over hip-hop-trap sounds infused with pop, soul, and punk rock influences, Llewellyn is creating a soundscape that is all their own. The tracks range in mood from dreamy and nostalgic with a mellow vibe to aggressive tones, creating a musical atmosphere that is hopeful, healing, vulnerable, and emotionally raw. Talking about a tough subject is never easy but with the power of music behind it, Hard Pill To Swallow becomes a meditative listen that sparks an inner dialogue and reflection in every listener. “This album is bigger than me,” says Llewellyn, “it has the potential to stimulate the conversation around mental illness and trauma in communities where it's stigmatized. It's a ‘hard pill to swallow’ but working through our hard life experiences is the path to healing and building resilience.”
Creating music that symbolizes all types of people and the issues they face, Llewellyn acts as more than an artist, but as a social scientist dissecting society and unraveling their inner layers to find the root of what they has been conditioned to believe or experience. Constantly finding themself in self-reflection, Llewellyn’s art transcends social stigmas to find a place of renewal in sharing important stories based in reality that educate and change the perceptions of those who listen. Llewellyn’s music is more than just a great hip-hop track - it speaks to lovers of sociology and philosophy as they dives deep into the facets of life in the 21st century.
(End of direct reflection of text from Farrington Llewellyn’s website)
Farrington has been actively contributing to the Twin Cities art scene, as a musician, story-teller, photographer, videographer, and more. Their recent work with The Cedar includes photographing the musical group, Thunder Band, which performed for an episode of The Cedar Public Access Channel.
They has also released another collection called Chameleon Lifestyles Simulation, released in August 2020, shortly after their previous collection, Hard Pill to Swallow. This collection has already received considerable attention. Sao Mao and Marcus Kar produced this project while contributing in sound form through the drums, electric guitar, and bass. Deuce, from Breaking and Entering-Milwaukee , writes:
Trust, once they drop the drums, your head won’t stop moving on this one until it’s over. “Drunken Emperor”, which directly follows “Lifestyles”, doesn’t take you quite as high but comes close by aiming in an alternate direction. Again, somebody’s hooked up the funk horns on there, some quintessential Roy Ayers-esque vibraphones, and the most sumptuous ‘oohs’ this side of Lionel Ritchie. The horns themselves could’ve been lifted from Horace Silver’s band, they’re so salient and right.
For their Cedar Commissions project, Farrington is offering an installation experience called Empathy Rooms, which will use the elements of music, digital art and performance to give audiences an intimate look into the experiences of those living with mental health challenges.
Cedar Commission Spotlight - Tearra OSO
“Sometimes when we’re so hurt, we don’t even know what to say, we can just play the drums, we can dance together, and lighten our spirits...”
Photo taken by Peter Jamus
CEDAR COMMISSIONS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEWS
Over the next few weeks, we’re featuring the six artists of the 2020-2021 Cedar Commissions (taking place Friday, March 5th, Saturday, March 6th, and Sunday, March 7th) in a series of interviews on our site. The Cedar Commissions is a flagship program for emerging Minnesotan composers and musicians made possible with a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, these artists have been composing, exploring new ideas, and assembling teams of musicians to bring their work to fruition. Over the three nights of The Cedar Commissions, audience members will hear music inspired by the process of finding beauty in mental illness, stories of the Portuguese diaspora, evolution of the Hmong language, Black Muslim American fatherhood, addressing personal traumas, healing through Bomba, and so much more.
Through storytelling, dance, and music, Tearra has been exploring the narrative of her ancestry. She tells us how healing, activism, anger, humor, and joy can all coexist in Bomba. Aida Shahghasemi, The Cedar’s marketing and communications manager sat down with Tearra for a conversation.
Aida: I would love to know more about your childhood, if you don't mind sharing that, and I would love to know if you grew up around Bomba. Was your family deeply interested in music?
Tearra: Yeah. My parents, they love music. They've always loved music. My dad was DJing parties, and my mom, she knows lyrics really well, but as far as playing: no, neither of them sing or drum or anything like that. But they were interested and I really loved listening to the music that they would play. I listened to a lot of R&B like 80s, 90s, R&B: Babyface, Bobby Brown, Terence Trent D'Arby kind of stuff. My dad was more into 70s and 80s funk, so that was really fun, and then Bomba.
When I was seven, I was invited to a Bomba class in St. Paul. Bomba is from Puerto Rico, but there was a woman here in the Twin Cities that was teaching, and so that's when I started dancing and drumming and singing, and it was a beautiful outlet for me. Growing up was kind of difficult with my family... kind of bouncing around place-to place, and not really a lot of structure and stability. But, Bomba was definitely something that I was able to escape from everything else at home and go to a place that I could channel all of that energy and really learn about my ancestors too, and their strength and resilience and this healing too. They were able to get through slavery. It was enslaved Africans that were in Puerto Rico that used their rhythms from Africa and some of their movements and also made fun of their Spanish colonizers. They used some Flamenco to really just find community and channel all of their hurt and their pain, and tell stories about what was going on every Sunday. They would do that every Sunday when they had a day off. So there was a great sense of community and something that I was able to experience and learn about as a young kid, and now I'm like, Yeah, I wanna do this more, and then also transforming it into something new.
Aida: I actually was really interested in the humor aspect of Bomba that you just touched on, I had seen a video of you dancing and I had noticed some of the Flamenco movements that were introduced in some of what you were doing. I was really curious to know more about the history of Bomba in general.
Tearra: For sure. Yeah, so the enslaved Africans in Puerto Rico created Bomba. They took their African rhythms, they actually made drums out of rum barrels that would wash up on the shore, and they would make "Bariles" with goat hide. So really, they would just use what they found to make drums, and then really the awesome aspect of the dance part of Bomba is that the dancer is improvising and the drummer has to follow what the dancer is doing. So you actually usually have two drummers at least one holding up the basic rhythm and then a "primo", which is the "subidor". They would follow the dancers movements. So really the dancer is contributing to the sound of Bomba also.
If you think about it, Movement... Playing music... That's really healing. So it was something that they could use to get through these tremendous, terrible, horrific times. So when I think about playing Bomba, I sometimes just remember if my ancestors could get through that, and they could live on and make new babies all the way to me... Like, Wow! I can use this as a tool to heal myself in my community also. Sometimes when we're so hurt, we don't even know what to say, we can just play the drums, we can dance together, and lighten our spirits and strengthen our spirits.
Actually playing the drums has been known to call on your ancestors. So I was thinking about that last night, just all of the things that we saw going on at the Capitol yesterday, it was really disheartening, and I was like, wow, I'm gonna cry it out for a minute, and then I'm gonna go play my drums, and just think about my ancestors and their strength and preserve myself. Because I think that's something that's so important that we don't always think about as activist. Yes, it's important to understand the truth and let yourself be angry, and at the same time, what can we do to preserve our bodies and our minds and our spirits to be able to get up and fight another day, or get up and be positive whenever we can.
Tearra Oso’s band, Bomba Umoya, and Alma Andina performed at a Face Forward community show at CLUES on 10/3/12.
Aida: I'm curious, if you play the drums for your son.
Tearra: Yeah. He plays the drums too. Sometimes I'm like, Oh, you just did that better than I did, was that an accident or did you know what you were doing?
Aida: Do you teach him specific patterns?
Tearra: We just let him play... Honestly, at this point, I can set a drum in front of him, and if I start drumming a specific rhythm, he'll leave the drum and come to me and try to play on top of what I'm doing. I'll play different rhythms in front of him, but he's kind of improvising at this point, which is really awesome actually. It's kind of weird because there are certain movements that we see in Bomba. One of the movements is your feet stomping on the ground, kinda like your hands do on a drum, and he does that! I don't think he's seen me do that before, and I'm like, are the ancestors just in your body or like... I don't know!
Aida: You seem to have had and continue to have a really successful modeling and acting career, and you have a background in theater. So when did you decide you wanted to delve into your musical side?
Tearra: I think music has always been something that I weaved in and out of my life... whether it was watching the movie, Arachnophobia, as a teenager and I was just so scared that I wrote a song about it, to being really interested in instruments. I was really interested in guitar, so I picked that up and just taught myself chords, looked up tabs online. One of the songs I loved was that Sugar Ray song, "Every morning," so kind of just playing around and teaching myself stuff, same with keyboards. I had [a keyboard] that showed you where to play different chords for different classical songs, like Moonlight Sonata. So I'd play around with that. And Bomba is definitely song and drum, so growing up with people in Minnesota that were teaching it, and then they would bring folks from Chicago and New York to teach us here, and we actually got to play in New York, Chicago and Puerto Rico at different events and parades and stuff. That was part of it too.
I also grew up doing flute in school, so that was how I learned how to read music. I wanted to play saxophone, but the day we went to the store, they didn't have any, and so I was like, "choose another one, girl!" I was like, okay, let me do this one. It ended up being really cool. I've just always been interested in musicality, and I think before now, I've been more led by what's happening around me instead of being very focused on what I wanna do with my time. I think modeling and acting kind of picked up more after I graduated college, actually, when I quit my job after a year. I had a full-time desk job in a bank, and I was like, oh, this is killing my spirit! I wanna do something different, and I didn't know what to do. So I was doing music, playing with different bands, but that wasn't as lucrative. So I learned about modeling and kind of started doing that. But yeah, music has always been just something that I could fall back on that would pluck at my heart strings and make me feel better whenever I needed it.
Photo was sourced from Tearra Oso.
Aida: We're certainly happy you've decided to explore more of your musical side. How did you end up working with St. Paul Slim, Toki Wright, Just.Live, and Wyclef Jean? What was it like working with them?
Tearra: That's so funny 'cause I forgot about a lot of that stuff. It was a while ago. I know Toki and slim. A really good friend, a manager, Reggie Henderson, reached out to me for a song saying that they need something better, they just needed like a hook. So I got to know them better and worked with them on some other things. And then, Wyclef, I never got in the studio with him, but I was just on a song with him because of the guys from Just.Live, so Beef Morgan and Courtney Richards, who is actually in so many commercials now! It's been really crazy, but they're amazing beat makers too. They were working on a lot of stuff and they brought me into... I can't remember what the studio is called, It's in the Depot building in downtown St. Paul, so we just worked on a lot of songs together, and that happened to be one of them.
I actually moved to LA a few times. And this last time I did, I ran into this guy. He goes by the name, DJ Rebel. He's Ne-Yo's, DJ. And I was like, You look so familiar! And he was like, "you do too! Where are you from?" I'm like "Minnesota" and he's like, “I'm Ji! I engineered your song that one time!” I was like, “dude! What?!” So it was probably like eight years later that we ran into each other, recognized each other. I'm really grateful that I got to work with Courtney and Beef. We all went to Central together. So I think that's how we knew of each other, and then really social media has been amazing because I think when you put yourself out there and you're like, "Hey, I'm working on stuff," or, "Hey, I'm positive and these are the things that I'm interested in." People can connect with that. That's kind of how we connect nowadays, which is really great.
I will say though that I have been in the studio with some awesome people in LA, some other people that are... I would say crazy. Some crazy experiences too, but the most amazing experiences, I would say, are with two people that produced some stuff for me, and one of them is John Paris of Earth, Wind & Fire. He is the current drummer, and he has been such a positive person in my life, and then the other one is Lloyd Tolbert, he has played with The Commodores... And what's her name? Sheryl Lynn. We created a project and I actually released it after he passed away last year. So we were just working on a bunch of songs and it was more like Pop, R&B stuff. But I learned a lot from him too, and he helped me just grow my vocals. Those are probably two of the most positive music experiences I had in LA, but LA is amazing! You meet a lot of people and all of a sudden you're like in Ne-Yo's studio with Afrojack, seeing how Ne-Yo lays down vocals, just really crazy out there! I met some cool people.
Aida: Yeah, it sounds like it! If you were to recommend some important music for people to listen to, what would it be?
Tearra: So many! I know one of the songs... It just messes me up because I wrote a song recently and I was like, Oh no! It sounds like "Aguanilé" from Willie Colón and a Héctor Lavoe. So that's a big one, "Aguanilé". Héctor Lavoe has some awesome songs: "El Cantante", "El Dia de Suerte", which has been remixed by a lot of folks. What I'm listening to right now, which has inspired me recently is Bad Bunny. Man, I love "Dákiti", I Love "Yo Perreo Sola". I love... Even his song he did a while back when he was first starting out is "Estamos Bien", and he was talking about Puerto Rico and how they're good, even though Trump's over here throwing paper towels at us. We don't need you. We're good. He's somebody that's been inspiring to me, whether it's music or also fashion too. I really like Rosalia, she's Spanish, and her vocals are amazing also. But really, I think who has inspired me the most is probably like three of them who are all from Virginia: Pharrell, Missy Elliot, and Timbaland. So you look up any of their songs, like! The production! The musicality! All of it, so they really, really pumped me up whether I need to work out or make myself feel better.
Aguanilé by Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón
Aida: Wonderful. How do you envision the trajectory of your music going forward?
Tearra: You know, honestly, part of me is wondering about Bomberos that have been doing this all their life. I hope that people understand that I respect Bomba and how it started, and the foundations of Bomba, because what I'm doing... I've played Bomba for a long time and only sang Bomba songs that are traditional, and now I'm creating music that incorporates other instruments, that incorporates English. So I hope folks don't feel disrespected by what I'm doing. I really appreciate and respect the foundations of Bomba and the people that have taught it to me, that have brought it to today, so I hope that's understood by everybody. But yeah, I don't know, I'm really excited to see, I think with this performance, I was really focusing on activism and folks who are in the fight for justice, so I wanted to make sure I brought up my friend Philando Castile, who I went to Central with. We were in a theater class together. And then also learning about our ancestors, remembering their resilience, using their strength to strengthen ourselves, that kind of thing.
So moving forward, I do want to make sure that I'm always talking about healing, that I'm always helping people remember that we have to work on healing ourselves every day. We all have experienced trauma in different ways. Trauma lives in our body, so it's important for us to, whether it's just listen to music or move, to learn about our history, so we don't repeat it. So yeah, I do wanna continue to make music for activists and also just make music that helps people have fun and be happy too. Because we need space for both of those things sometimes we need to get serious, and we need to talk about what's going on, and sometimes we need a little break: whether it's something relaxing or something super hyped and having a party and having fun, even if it's just in our living rooms for 2020 and 2021!
Aida: That's fantastic. And what are you hoping the audience takes away from your cedar Commission's original pieces? I know you alluded to the fact that you've been involved with Bomba for a while, and you want to make sure that people understand it for what it is, and no one feels disrespected that you're taking something and kind of doing your own thing with it, but what are some of the other things you're hoping people would take away from your cedar Commission's original work?
Tearra: I hope people are moved by the drums. I think drums are so powerful, we don't even know, they just... they start going and our hearts start to meld with it, and it brings us to places that maybe we didn't know that we needed to go to. So I hope people feel empowered. I hope people find times that they can take deep breaths with us and feel safe and calm. I will bring up things that are hurtful and I will bring up things that are very empowering, so I hope people are ready for that because it's a lot... I actually, I did a piece that was a theater piece, and I put a scene in that had to do with Bomba, and the scene was actually about somebody telling me I wasn't black. And I was like, "Who are you to tell me who I am or who I'm not?" Actually 5% of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were Africans that were brought to the US, and most of them were brought to Central America, South America, the Caribbean. So you see somebody from Haiti, from Dominican Republic, from Puerto Rico. There's a diaspora here, so let's not single people out and say, If I'm from America or my ancestors were brought to America, then I'm black, and if your ancestors were brought from Africa to Puerto Rico then you're not black. Let's not make that distinction. Let's learn about what happened and really connect to each other. It shouldn't just be brown people over here and black people over here. What does that even mean? We're all humans, and we should really try to connect to each other and understand each other better, because if you're living better... I'm gonna be better too.
Photo sourced from Tearra Oso.