We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cindë a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cindë, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I think my present brain is best developed right now to undergo a creative career. I’m not sure I’d even know how to properly do anything for myself if I didn’t spend my early 20s in artist management learning all the ins and outs of the music BUSINESS. My creativity has always been there, I’ve never really had a scarcity complex with writing songs or making up guitar riffs, There’s always a new experience to be had and a new song for me to write. Spending what’s considered an artist’s ‘prime’ (late teens/early 20s) project managing for other artists showed me the ropes, tested my limits and truly taught me I can literally do anything. Those were my first big wins and also where I made my first mistakes. so I always keep those lessons in mind when releasing my own music now.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an Alternative Emo Pop artist from Toronto! I started writing at around 7 years old and I realized I wanted a tool to enhance the experience so I started playing guitar and bass when I was 12. I was inspired a lot by Green Day, Blink 182, Weezer, Avril Lavigne, Slipknot, Nine Inch Nails and my broken home haha. Since then, I’ve written countless songs for myself and many other artists, ripped some legendary stages like Nathan Phillips Square, Yonge-Dundas Square, The El Mocambo, The Rivoli, Celebration Square, and been nominated for Best Pop Performance at the 2023 International Portuguese Music Awards!

As a songwriter, I’ve always been super honest in my lyrics, even if it means highlighting the worst parts of myself. I think the best art shows a little ugly and people really resonate with the truth, especially if its someone else admitting a mutually shared ugly truth on their behalf. I like to think of my my lyrics as a vessel for that feeling. Alongside my own artist career, I work with a collective of artists to help release their works and write/pitch music for TV and Film. Considering my extensive artist management experience, I feel its not only an asset and benefit to my own career, but it helps and elevates the community around me who’ve helped bring my vision to life. I love being able to have answers when it comes to release plans etc. and not feel like a deer in the headlights if I have to handle business on top of the creative part.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding thing is having a full room of people sing your lyrics back to you… even to unreleased songs!!! Over the last few years I’ve built a growing community that comes to my shows religiously. They mosh, they sing along, they jump around with me, and we ALWAYS have a good time. I call them my Bruthurs and I make sure to leave everyone better than how I found them, except my exes they get absolutely dragged hahahahaha its super fun for the crowd. I love meeting people after the shows and hearing how they connected to certain songs and hearing their stories too. Bringing people together over laughter or pain, especially those who’ve always felt outcast by the rest of society makes me really happy and gives me a lot of purpose.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Creative output is very rewarding but can also be very emotionally draining if you’re not taking care of yourself. Unlike working in a corporate field with binaries, statistics, concrete numbers and metrics – the quality of our work isn’t solely based on how many numbers we put up, its mainly dependant on evoking a feeling – big numbers are just a by-product of the song’s resonance with people. Whether your music gets really deep lyrically or not – Imagine for example, you’re working with an artist on a break up song, or writing a song about a troubled childhood – that’s a whole borderline therapy session that requires deep emotional labour to acknowledge those feelings and translate seemingly unique intimacies into something for people to universally understand. To come home after a long deep session like that and then go through the daily emotional work of your personal life and relationships becomes exhausting really quick so it’s important as creatives that we recharge and really take time to do nothing and collect ourselves when we need to. Our creativity will flourish as well as our relationships and overall lifestyle.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamcinde/
• Twitter: @iamcinde
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/cindeeedasilva
• Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamcinde

Image Credits
Jared Brookes Daniel Dorta