Nouveau Africana - A Magazine For The New African Woman

A messenger?
A soldier?
Integrity?
Passion?
Determination?

All these things and more, she’s been in love since she was seven years old.Coerced to commit to the piano, she fell in love for the very first time with music. A refurbished baby grand piano in the bayous of Louisiana became the instrument which she used to know her friend like no other. Music has been many things to her since then. It has been her therapy, during tougher times in her personal life “music has somehow been for me a cathartic process of me, of self healing and preservation” It’s now become her passion, she is a full time artist and she wants to share with the world. It is now her mode of self expression and the medium through which she sends her message. Music is her passion and is what she knows she’s meant to do.

The journey for her in music has not always been a harmonious one, she has had some ups and downs, from being offered recording contracts from major labels and sharing the stage with an impressive list of contemporary artists to nearly quitting for a year. Additionally she was being told to sex up her image and her message because it was too different.

She has that gumbo yaya, a blend of different cultures, nothing typical in the music industry. Her birth name Yewande was too different, it’s Yoruba and she wears it with pride. Her look is multi-ethnic; she’s a strong, independent African-American woman from Louisiana. Her voice is jazzy yet blends itself to any other genre of music just as easily.

Refusing to be classified as one thing, one genre or one image, she has forged ahead. Created her own different sound, her own label and kept her integrity and her pants on in the process and people have accepted and welcomed her the way she is. Her sound is out of the box, she has coined the term alternative soul, a blend of blues, soul, and rock. “Like a Nina Simone or Tracy Chapman, surrounded by a Janis Joplin or Lenny Kravitz. It’s all the warmth and the goodness that your grandmother gave you, surrounded by the spanking that our mom gave you to set things straight.” She wants to be an artist that represents all people and it seems to be working.

For more information about Yewande and to listen to samples of her music visit: www.yewande.com

Yewande: Yewande is a soldier. At least lately that’s what I’ve been feeling. If you had asked me last week, I would have said messenger. I feel ultimately that’s who I am as an artist. I do feel as if I were given a divine gift of word and voice and music and message to somehow make a difference in this world. If you had told me a couple of years back, that it would be this difficult to be different in an industry that is just oversaturated with superficial talent and images and artists. There’s nothing that you could’ve told me that would ever prepare me for this fight and I’ve become a soldier. And I had to, not but by choice, but because I guess I was meant to do so. I’ve never been an artist, I’ve never been a person that’s been able to accept compromise for a dollar and compromise for fame.

I can’t go out like that!

Yewande: Ultimately I guess what my music stands for is, ultimately I want to be able to make a difference, I think that music is one of the most powerful mediums that doesn’t require you to understand the language, the words or for you to come from the same socio-economic background, I think we all are human. All of humanity pretty much shares the same experiences, and the same desires and passions in life. To be in love, to be successful, to be happy and you know my one greatest message in all of music is that no matter where you come from, because there are a lot of us who come from circumstances that we don’t have any control over, but no matter where it is that you come from, it’s all about where you’re going. And that person that you want to become in life. I think that somehow there’s a parallel for me. I came from very meager beginnings where my mother had to buy my clothes from thrift shops, after she left my father. I think somehow in my music, I have always tried to find a resolution to making things better.

Yewande—Soul mother is here

Who is Yewande?