Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amelia Ray. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Amelia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

On 3 March 2022, one week after the latest attack on Ukraine began, I had a vision of the European community standing together and shouting, “Enough is enough!” its voice frustrated and exhausted. Little by little, hope began to stand in for frustration, and the exhaustion was replaced by a sense of empowerment. Four days later, I had completed a multilingual song called “Hands in Hearts”.

I was living in Finland at the time, and I started a project called Europe for Ukraine – a musical initiative to gather musicians from all over Europe to record “Hands in Hearts”. To date, The Europe for Ukraine Band includes artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine.

I have so far been unsuccessful in raising enough funds to complete the project but I remain hopeful. I know that “Hands in Hearts” has the potential to motivate people to end violence and break down barriers.

Europe for Ukraine embraces a commitment to unity in the face of crisis. It is a recognition that our neighbours’ needs mirror our own, and an acknowledgment of our responsibility to each other. Just as USA for Africa sparked hope of a better future in an eight-year-old me when “We Are the World” was released in 1985, through “Hands in Hearts,” Europe for Ukraine inspires the promise of a stronger community, standing in neighbourly love.

https://europeforukraine.com/

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a singer-songwriter, and I’ve been making music and writing songs since childhood. I started gigging in high school, and have had several bands throughout the decades.

I write in many genres but soul-rock is the umbrella term I use to describe what I write most often. I am known for funny, acute lyrics and odd time signatures. I think what sets me apart is that I am at once familiar and unpredictable. I am a mashup expert – I can’t listen to a song without hearing two or three other songs with similar elements. My brain is constantly making aural connections. My songs are like soups full of ingredients that don’t seem complementary but that sound very good once they’re all mixed together.

I am most proud of “Hambone Says” – a song/performance piece I created that uses contemporary past aesthetic to explore U.S. racial and music history.

I love travelling, learning languages, and bringing my music to new audiences, making new friends along the way. I use my gift for storytelling to create cultural cohesion, bringing audiences together by highlighting our similarities while celebrating our differences.

I hope to continue healing the world one song at a time.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is feeling people connect with your work. Whenever someone tells me how a particularly lyric touched them or how they’ve had a song of mine stuck in their head for days, I feel seen. And heard, if you’ll pardon the pun. Making art can be a very personal, a very solitary process. Like experimental cooking, you throw a lot of ideas and emotions into a pot, mix them up, put them in an oven, and hope that the end result is somewhat edible. It is wonderful to discover that people have similar taste buds or that someone recognised that you used a bit of star anise.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Divisiveness is a problem I envision solving with my art. Because of the way I look, people don’t expect me to know certain things or like certain types of music. I used to work on cruise ships. One evening, a large family was walking past while I was playing Hank Williams Jr. ‘s “Family Tradition”. Grandpa, the patriarch of the family, stopped walking, and held his hand up to motion to his family to stop walking, too. He turned to look at his brood, looked back at me, looked at his brood and announced, “I ain’t never seen no coloured gal play Hank Williams before.”

That was when I realised music was my superpower. I’m certain that if Grandpa and his family had stuck around for a couple of songs, we would have found some more common ground. A recurring theme my work is my interest in highlighting our similarities. If people could realise how similar we all are, we wouldn’t be so divided and would fight a lot less.

I’m a hopeful storyteller. Stories have the power to change lives and bring us together, and most stories are a lot more fun when they’re sung.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ameliaray.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialameliaray/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAmeliaRay
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/AmeliaRay
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/ameliaray/about

Image Credits

Deborah Crooks
Matt Granz
Yeji Kim
Jen Clarke
Iaenzen Polímata
Edgar Toscano