It all started when…

Honestly, I never wanted to pursue music professionally. I really didn’t. Even though I had no experience being in that business whatsoever my instict was always against that path. I remember friends would ask me to sing for them during recess and people would ALWAYS tell me: “You should pursue a music career. My answer was always “no”. As if my heart already knew that the music business would break my heart in so many ways.

I sort of slipped into it. I remember at a young age day dreaming to one day being able to sing with Gil Semedo and Nichols. In my universe, I knew that I was dreaming veeery big, but I never forbade myself to do so. I guess I didn’t like the limitations that came with dreaming small.

It was the most surreal experience to one day having this little dream manifest in it’s strangest form. Crossing path with THE Nichols felt very surreal, but I knew that I had manifested THAT into my life. Even when presented with this immense opportunity at hand I still didn’t sweat because music was more therapy to me than anything else. I guess Stephan ( Nichols) saw that in me when I performed at his concert. He saw the love I had for music.

Fast forward, I fly out to Paris, record an entire album in one month, released it 2 months later and the humongous wave this project initiated was incredible. I remember riding the bus and getting texts from Nichols saying: “This shit is blowing up! You are everywhere!”. It felt unreal…and very virtual. Meanwhile in my little bubble (somewhere in Germany) I was just a regular girl who was going to Architectural School whose music is being played on the radio in Portugal, France, Cabo Verde and even the West Indies.

I didn’t really care for the fame, but I was baffled to see how far my music traveled! How many people connected with me through my craft, something I used as a form of therapy was touching real peoples lives and that SHIT was the most amazing feeling!

I wondered why my music was transcending so far and resonating with so many ppl? I realized, besides the quality of my work there are really not many female artists out there. Those who were successful were ALL produced by a man. Including myself. So I’ve always been supportive of other female artist because I understood the struggle that came along with it. The industry always tried sneaky ways to pin us female singers agains each other, but I knew not to fall for it.

While navigating this business I had to always deal with scrutiny and BS from the music world that was run by men. There was only so much my heart could take. From not making one penny from my first album, to having other ppl discredit me as an artist, to selling my body of work to other musicians to retaliate. I felt heartbroken and utterly betrayed. It didn’t stop there, the cyber bullying that went along with that was definitely what pushed me over the edge to give up on pursuing this music path. I always wondered though, would that have happened to me if I was a man? Why aren’t there more laws to protect artist from all this greed that dominates this business.

During my hiatus I was out of music but I was there as a listener. I observed that these structures still existed. Female artist would appear and disappear. All depending on their lable’s discretion. Very rare did you see female artist going independant and taking matter into their own hands.

In my absense I learned so many lessons. Further being outside “THE GAME” gave me the opportunity to realize what was wrong with the industry and sort of gave me a new perspective on how to tackle this problem.

If the market is controlled by men and we still don’t have a proportionous amount of female artist that means, the same men are keeping some women out.

Why signing up to be part of a lable and not doing it yourself, you ask? Well, I am guilty of that myself. It’s just so much easier to have someone handle everything and you just have to show up and deliver. At the time navigating the unknown was scary and I wasn’t curious enough to experiment and explore that path of independency on my own .

Now, as a mother, business woman and wife to a successful business man made me realize, Yes, I can do this on my own. Don’t get it twisted it’s a scary place and you may not even know what you are doing or whether your approach is the right way, But I had to learn to trust the process and I am so glad to have taken this leap of faith.

The rewards I got from having gone through this experience is priceless! And I would love to see more female artist empower themselves do the same as their male counter parts. Produce yourself! Go independent! Trust Yourself and Your capabilities! Women in Kizomba have a huge POWER that we have yet to conquer and in the wake of social media being a powerful vehicle and technology having advanced and streamlined all the steps and processes to publish your work yourself. All YOU need is Courage, Creativity and Capital.

This is why I want to start this movement: #womenpowerkizomba.

Do it yourself! And I would like to call all the female artists in the kizomba world to join this movement of empowerment. A space where we can share ideas, exchange knowledge ad experience. Kind of a sorority where we encourage and uplift each other. Some haven’t realized the power WE have as females in this market. But in my view having empowered women in the field will make Kizomba far more powerful than it has been. And perhaps the idea of crossing over to the global market wouldn’t seem far fetched if we had more independent female artists in the game.