Annahstasia

I’m holding many things at once. I am writing to you from Grand Bassam, Cote d’Ivoire.

My parents provided us with a very grounded upbringing. They were usually the most fabulous people in any room on any occasion anyways, so no, I wasn’t particularly seduced by the glitz of industry in LA. I saw it for what it was very early on. There were times I thought I could best its game and it was always an ever-present force to be managed. Specifically the way that every aspect of life could feel cinematic, surreal, subconsciously you were constantly consuming the narrative of the place you also lived within.That meta positioning I think is what gave me the tools to become the writer that I am today.
Some aspects of growing up in LA felt like observing your own life through a fishbowl, from the outside. I make music from a similar outside-of-it-all place. Looking in, watching and observing like a fascinated child and regurgitating poetry from the wonder it evokes. Los Angeles certainly produced the romantic in me.

That’s a large compliment, thank you. Yes, I was gifted with a beautiful introduction to soul and singer-songwriter music by my uncle. Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Bill Withers, Buffy-Saint-Marie, Leonard Cohen, Nico, etc. I was always drawn to unique voices because they felt like voices you could get used to and then you wanted to hear them all the time, telling different stories. The same stories change just because of how Nina would sing it versus Joni. I fell in love with those nuances and subtleties and spent those early years listening on repeat trying to quantify the differences.
I knew early on that my voice is unique, so most of my journey with learning to sing was focused on maintaining the rawness and tone of my natural choices. I would like to think I can defy the odds and make it in the ‘mainstream’ someday — just like the icons I look up to. It’s much more in the hands of the individual now that it ever was. The music industry barely has curation power anymore. The influence they do have, they use for the sake of selling you more stuff. I don’t think the goal has been the art for a very, very long time, it has always been about money.

To me it hasn’t been a short time at all. I released Revival independently, so it took me three years to get it from recording to release. There is so much on the back end of being an indie artist that most people don’t see. There was so much patience involved with that process. So in the times I was waiting, I was also writing and wrote so much music.
Revival may have come out only last year, but that was my only recorded music since 2020. So for me, these projects are actually four years apart, which I would say is plenty of time. I’m very ready to share.

I believe time is not linear and we are infinite beings, temporarily trapped in the present experience of this life. If you’re sensitive, you can feel many aspects of ‘time’ all at once and some call this god, or wisdom, or sight. I believe in Love as base principle of the universe, it’s a small word for what it probably actually is.
Love might indeed be a sound, or a medium like light, some type of photon we haven’t discovered yet. At the end of the day I am an artist, which means I am also a scientist. I love to play with all possibilities, I love to ask questions, I love to learn from the unknown.

It’s actually a love song I wrote about me. This is a song I originally wrote interpreting a lover’s experience of falling in love with me, from their perspective. Excerpts of things they would say and promises I’m not sure they knew they were making. There is so much purity at the beginning of love, its just an euphoric yearning that needs to be expressed. But it can twist so quickly into obsession, or fear, or things that just aren’t love. So in tracking the journey of this particular romance, I thought I would start at the beginning, when everything was just hope, just the tender desire to be a part of someone’s day. That’s Saturday.

Art’s sacred work is connection, research, commentary, debate, challenge, and memory. To be an artist is to participate in conducting life around you toward refined observations. In my own art I aim to bring people together in the spirit of remembering our humanity, our shared softness. To help people feel their heart again.

They are symbolic titles mostly in reference to A Sunday Kind of Love. My weekends are mostly meaningless because they are often work days for me. When I get the luxury of being home for a while, I try and keep my Sundays free to come back to self and reflect on the week. My real weekend is Monday and Tuesday though. Much of the entertainment world sleeps those two days.

I think that is mostly the quality of my voice that resonates as spiritual. Making music is undoubtedly a spiritual practice. Especially singing, where the whole body becomes an instrument. Sometimes when I really dig down deep, I definitely go somewhere else when I sing. It’s a nice feeling to leave your body for a little while.

My process requires ample time and I rarely meet artists I feel compelled to ask to feature on my songs, but it does happen, of course. Voices are the most specific instruments. Just like I would add horn to one song and not the another, it is the same or even more intricate a production choice with artist collaborations. I’m sure as my resources expand more, collaborations will arise naturally — it’s a matter of space and time to create.
Musicians specifically are a slippery breed, we are often travelling. That being said, I have some new collaborations coming up in the album that I am very excited to share. I also consider all the musicians I play with to be my collaborators truly. Live band music is great because each person brings something you might have never thought of. I choose musicians who have a strong sense of their own style and who have cultivated something you really can’t get from anyone else.

I am quite simple in my prep: I have some honeyed tea, I do my makeup, and then a light vocal warm up. Maybe practice my guitar a bit if I need to brush up on something. I don’t really get stage fright but I do need my proper alone time before a set to centre myself and really dive into the place I draw my voice from.

My parents are artists, so it was instilled early. I always preferred to express that way. I am cultivating many media. Spiralling upwards in mastery of each of them through time. I paint, I make images, I sculpt, I sing — it’s all the same thing for me. Modelling paid the bills for a long time. It takes skill and is creative in a sense. It teaches you to relinquish control gracefully.
I’m not quite at the place yet where I have my own consistent art-making space, but I hope there will come a time when I can have all of it at my fingertips, and wake up and follow my whims. For now, I take it where I can get it in terms of studio time and access to certain things.

An album is on the way — my debut album, called Tether, out in late spring. Followed by more touring and, who knows, maybe I’ll get into acting.