Jessie Reyez: The Strong Voice We Didn’t Know We Need.

druzzi 2 Comments

If you are a casual listener to pop radio you have probably heard the song Figures. However, do you know the artist behind the smooth and powerful melody, Jessie Reyez? This brilliant and blazing woman was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, by Columbian parents. Her father taught her how to play guitar at a young age and in high school she started writing songs. When she was seventeen, Jessie endured her first real breakup and poured her emotions into her writing and music. She has written about the pain and hurt she experienced and how she wants to reciprocate it but doesn’t. Although never going through a harsh breakup, listening to these songs makes me feel like I have. The vibe and mood combined with her well written lyrics allows me to connect with her experience and connect it to myself. In addition in some of her songs, one can see her strong personality, and how she is an individual who cuts negativity out of her life and carves her own path.

Reyez has a raspy voice that can change from a low smooth sound to a soulful high pitched ring. Some may find her voice annoying and others will listen and hear an exposed and organic god-like sound. Her songs are poetic and her decisions of where she sings low to high makes each song powerful. In the song Apple Juice, the rhythm she created and the words she sings makes you want to sway and shout out the lyrics. Jessie Reyez’s songs can vibrate through your whole body and her words make you feel understood and connected. Her recent EP release, Being Human In Public, is a raw depiction of her emotions. I 10/10 would recommend listening to it in a car with the windows down and driving over a bridge. Shouting the words is also encouraged.

Jessie Reyez creatively writes her songs while staying true to herself. She adds artistic flare with her unique voice but also by incorporating her true feelings although they might be judged. In addition, on her recent EP album, she has a song Sola, sung and written in Spanish. Although in another language, an individual can easily infer it is Reyez by not only the sound but her style and message. I cannot speak or understand Spanish but Sola is one of my favorite songs by her. Her emotion and melody make me feel pain and love. I like to close my eyes and sway when listening to the soft and bold piece.

Reyez has attracted fans internationally through her feminine bops and powerful responses about life. She has been nominated for many best new artist of the year awards and has won the Juno Award for Breakthrough Artist. Her followers have escalated to one million on instagram in the past year, and she will continue to grow with special character.

Reflecting on Musical Women on International Women’s Day

Julia Leave a comment

In honor of International Women’s Day, I am reflecting on the women in my life who have guided me through musical journey.

First and foremost is my mother. Whenever I tell people that I am a musician, they’ll say something like “I used to play piano but I hated practicing and quit. I wish I had kept going!” To that I say, “me too!” I wanted to quit basically every single day when I was in middle school. If it wasn’t for my mom forcing me to practice, I definitely would have quit. She drove me to all of my lessons and rehearsals, paid for instruments, summer camps, and private lessons, and she had to endure ten years of hearing me squeak away on violin and viola. My dad was also instrumental (ha) in my musical development, but it’s International Women’s Day so the man can wait.

Two out of the three main viola teachers in my life have been women. Thanks to them, I have glowing examples of what it looks like to be a professional woman in music. Through their guidance and cautionary tales, I have become a strong musician and an ally to other women and girls in the industry. With their help I have been able to heal the injuries I sustained from playing. I have always had the freedom to show emotion during my lessons, and even cry if I had to. Learning to play an instrument puts you in a vulnerable position and some days you can’t just leave your feelings at the door. I am forever grateful for their patience and skill.

My best friends are female musicians. We didn’t all become friends in the same place– some at music camp, some at music school, some in high school. We’re spread out across the globe. Each one has played music with me. Each one has provided me with moral support after a bad audition or in the midst of an identity crisis. Every day I feel like I’m talking with one of them about the screwed-up climate of the music world: what we want to change and how we’ll change it. We also help eachother forget about music when things get too tough; remind ourselves of the value in living a balanced life. They inspire me to be a better musician and person, and I wouldn’t be myself without them.

The Appeal of Visual Surrealism

jushutch Leave a comment

Have you ever seen a work of art that looked like it came from another dimension? As if it was a fragment of your worst forgotten nightmare? Most likely it is a surrealist work of art. The Surrealism movement began around the 1920s, and culminated with famous artists such as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte, just to name a few. If you don’t recognize those names, I guarantee you aren’t the only one. Although Surrealism was a significant movement in the art world, it has remained relatively fringe to pop culture. Its avant-garde style is not as palatable as other art, and as a result, it takes a certain curiosity and taste to explore. However, it is by far my favorite art movement; not only has it produced some of the most visceral and intriguing works of art, it also evokes an entirely unique feeling in the viewer.

Plaza (Piazza) – Giorgio de Chirico

Imagine being a kid again, playing hide and seek with friends. You’re in a small cupboard, the perfect hiding place. You hear the seeker count down, and eventually they shout “Ready or not, here I come!” You can’t help but laugh on the inside: thinking about how they’ll never find you, and how impressed they’ll be when you win. Gradually, however, the darkness of the cupboard intensifies, until it’s as black as oblivion; a dark, empty void. You have no sense of time; it has wandered into the darkness and gotten lost. Has it been seconds or minutes? Maybe even hours? You can’t hear anything; no voices, nobody wondering where you are. The claustrophobia starts to set in as the cupboard shrinks. It’s hard to breathe, there’s not enough air. They’ve forgotten about you, they’ve stopped looking hours ago. Panic and anxiety run through you like electricity, you can’t stand it anymore: you have to get out. You burst out of the cupboard and take in a breath, like a drowning man breaking the surface. You hear voices coming towards you and suddenly your friends are there. They can’t believe you hid in there; they say they never would have found you. You won, but you can hardly enjoy it.

Son of Man – Rene Magritte

For me, surrealist art evokes that same feeling. A mixture of anxiety and some primal fear of the unknown, just like being in a dark, claustrophobic cupboard. I think this feeling comes from the unusual color palettes that surrealist works share, the strange juxtapositions and oddities that defy reality, and some third thing that can’t be explained, but is linked to the unexplored subconscious of the viewer. Surrealism is based on the concept of the dormant subconscious, and surrealist artists attempt to explore it through art; the result is a small glimpse into the bizarre and sinister underworld of our minds.

Atavistic Ruins After the Rain – Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was especially known for his unique method in conjuring strange images. He would often sit in a chair and begin to fall asleep while holding a metal spoon. Right when he fell asleep, the spoon would drop from his hand and startle him awake. He would then paint the surreal images he had seen before slipping into unconsciousness. When looking at his works, I often feel like I’m in a waking dream: nothing quite makes sense and everything is a little off. It’s like waking up from a vivid dream that you can’t remember, and then realizing you’re still dreaming. You jolt awake, and you can’t stop wondering if you’re actually awake this time, or if you’re still dreaming.

(Image Credits: Google Images)

How I Listen To Music

Fareah Fysudeen Leave a comment

The closest thing to music in my young life was the recitation of the Holy Quran. My family was not particularly inclined to art or music or performance in the conventional sense, but we relished the joy of listening to what we believed uplifted the soul and the mind. We knew, listening to those words, that they held meanings and messages far beyond what our thoughts could conceive; we didn’t understand the Arabic, but trusting that the melodic recitation held more than mere pleasantry gave it a feeling of earth-shattering importance.

Growing up in a religious household, I was also taught what was beautiful was inherently meaningful– art which held only carnal delight was wasted in frivolity and irrelevance. The most powerful and beautiful things hold messages, meaning, morality; they transcend time and place and people and belong to a narrative greater than ourselves, and reveal truths delicate, yet universal. This definition fit perfectly into our conception of Quran recitation, as we believe it was speech ordained from God himself.

All the other music we listened to– old Indian songs my dad would play nostalgically, reality singing competitions my mom sometimes watched, or the fad pop music that weaved in and out of our lives– was hardly relevant. It was mindless entertainment.

Only a few years ago did I really challenge the notion that what I heard was mindless or meaningless. Of course, the Quran kept its pedestal, but all manmade art begged me to reconsider its value. I have always loved stories, and storytelling, and writing– I believe it is as embedded into my identity as the blood in my veins. And for the first time, I discovered musical theatre and learned that music could tell stories. I learned it could fill me up with anticipation, deflate my senses in sadness, burst sporadically into joy and fear and anger. I learned it, too, could tell a form of the truth.

I think it was sort of destined for me to fall in love with an art form that breathed words to life and life to stage. I had read more books than I could remember, befriended more characters than friends in real life, and so the theatre felt real to me. I also couldn’t help but marvel in the multifaceted art forms that clashed in its creation, to give it meaning and depth beyond which could have ever been conveyed in a single medium. Even just the musical aspect of it was indivisible from all the other elements: acting, lyrics, stage design, costumes, plot, characterization. The music was literature personified wordlessly.

Who I am as an individual strongly affects my relationship with art and music. I am a writer of poetry, of novels, of spoken words, of short stories, and music and cadence affect and enliven my written experience. I love musical theatre, and that deepens my appreciation of music as storyteller. And in my personal definition, the greatest music tells a story– it is threaded in a larger narrative and reveals a truth about our shared existence. I realize now that all art and performance must be held in a revered position. We must believe in its holiness, as my family did with the Quran, and trust that it shows us, above all, what it means to be human.

The Protective Reflex

sarahshu 1 Comment

She extended her hand across my chest as she slammed on the car brakes. Umi (Arabic for mother) always did that every time she  she braked really hard. I’ve always wondered why but never got around to asking her.

One time I did. “Why did you put your hand in front of me like that every time you brake hard, Umi? I’m wearing a seatbelt”, I asked just as she pressed the brakes a little roughly. Her answer was based on experience.

Umi told me, once when I was small, I sat at the backseat as she drove. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, as lots of children back then didn’t. And she hit the brakes really hard as the car in front suddenly stopped. Inertia had me in its grasp, and I tumbled forward right into the shotgun seat. “I was so scared, you were so quiet after”, she said. I wasn’t hurt or anything but I quietly stared back at her, in shock.

Thats when I knew her reflex was more than just one. It was her protecting me, to make up for the time she didn’t. I heard her regret in her voice and just like any mother, she wished she did more to protect me, her precious child, from that sudden jolt.

I was touched, deeply.

vegetable soup and the game telephone

druzzi Leave a comment

It is day 2 of break. I am currently at my grandparents, listening to Italian music(on Alexa because they are cool), and watching my grandma cook me vegan options for dinner(vegetable soup). We talk about things going on and every so often she will say things like, “You can’t have ham either right?”, “No milk?! What do you drink or even eat then? Almond milk, that’s disgusting.”, or “Can you have cheese? Oh my goodness what am I going to give you for lunch then?” I am sitting at a nearby table as we talk, typing away on my computer about things on my mind.

My post(ramble) today is about one of the subjects on my mind right now, history. Enjoy!

History is one of the most significant topics to be educated about and don’t get me wrong I love history but it is without a doubt one of the weirdest concepts to me. We need to know about our pasts in order to learn how to create a better future but I am always curious if what we are taught about history is the truth.

As a kid, everyone plays the game telephone. Someone starts off with a saying and everyone whispers into the next person’s ear what they heard. By the end something like “chicken noodle soup” can turn into “fruit of the loom underwear”. I used to love it because I enjoyed how each time the original saying got altered in some sort of way. With history books, media, and news, I am constantly interested if it is created from a continuous game of telephone and if the only people who can seek the actual truth are the individuals who were involved in the event.

In a conversation with my uncle yesterday, he began to ask if I knew that before the horrible Transatlantic Trade occurred, that poor people from multiple countries were the original individuals to first work in the colonies. I told him I had known that and he told me he had just discovered this. This discussion began me going off into a spiral of what I have and have not been taught. All the little events or even secrets not contained in documents, on file, and unable to be taught to anyone. Or the stories recently discovered, taught to the younger generation but not to me. My deepest concerns and curiosities are about all of the things the first Americans did on the colonies and what people have done to less evolved cultures that I don’t know about or will never know about.

A couple of weeks ago in my Art History lecture, my professor explained how in many famous artworks cultural appropriation can be found. In Pablo Picasso’s, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, one can easily see the five nude prostitutes he had painted but if you were to look at their faces what would it remind you of? We were told that Picasso studied many African masks and he had been inspired by them to paint these women with faces like the masks. In previous art history classes I was taught that his form of cubism created these faces. This was the first time I was educated about how he had taken someone else’s culture and profited off of it by making it look like his own style. I wondered how many other artists had done this and how we could ever find out if we didn’t have a direct link.

I would count myself as a student or rookie in learning and talking about stolen cultural identity and other topics relating to examining history. I believe no one really questions our history but rather if they do in conversation, they shove it away quickly because it is confusing. I have done this multiple times because looking at history under a lens is difficult and sometimes leaves me with unanswered questions. I think in the future many should question what is truthful and try to gather all the information we have to connect the dots of our past. Although I don’t know much about this topic as you can probably tell, this doesn’t stop me from being interested about it and branching off into thought about it, even when my grandma is cooking me soup.