We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sequoia Range. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sequoia below.

Sequoia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My mother always taught me to be practical in my approach to life. Being a kid that lived in her own fantastical, creative world, I struggled to make connections with other people and to feel like I had a place to belong. I struggled to reconcile with the reality of the world I do live in, and for many years I hid inside my own mind and neglected to cultivate my outward existence. However, years of my mother teaching me what being practical actually means, how to budget financially, how to set realistic goals, how to maintain a childlike imagination in an adult world and be realistic about making dreams come alive, began to work for me. I stopped looking at her as a dampener on my creativity, and began looking to her as a mentor and an asset, and our relationship has blossomed into something much more intimate and special the last year. As a result, I have a much better grasp on my craft, and no longer feel swamped by the weight of a world that before felt to massive and complex to ever be able to accept me. Now I have more tools to make what has existed in my head for as long as I can remember unfold into a reality I can walk in. It doesn’t make it any less hard, but makes it seem more attainable and possible for me. My mother kept me on the path, and that is the only reason I am stepping into a new season of creative thinking today.

Sequoia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been a singer since the beginning. Some of my earliest memories was listening to my mother play early Beyonce and Alicia Keys, and attempting to copy what I was hearing. No one taught me, and to this day I have never had any formal training (though I’m definitely needing some now). My mother is a writer, and so I write. My music comes from something very organic, very raw and desperate and soulful, hence my name Sol. When I write songs they flow from me like blood does through the body. When you hear me sing it comes from within, from wanting it to be as pretty and powerful as possible. I just want it to be good. Objectively and subjectively good.

As I begin my career in this business, I wonder if that will shine through. I wonder if it will be well-received, or if I will be misunderstood and looked over, as I have so often felt I’ve been in my life. I wonder will anyone hear me and see a girl who only wants to do what is in her heart to do, which is to help heal through sound as it has been done for me. Through childhood mental illness, parental abandonment, financial hardship, racial injustice and oppression, abusive relationship trauma, music has been the antidote to my pain. As a young black girl who always felt too small for the world around her, every time I’m on stage I wish for someone to hear me and feel seen. For the depressed, for the lonely. For the outcast, for the weirdo. That is my target audience. People like me.

The music business is about being able to sell your image and music for following, for money, for influence. All that is important and necessary, but for me, if one person in any size audience feels like they have been sung to and their pain soothed, even for a moment, my job is an artist has been done. You can’t sell soul. You just feel it. Resonate with it. That’s all I really want to do in making my music, and so that is my branding. I make good music. For the people. I will sing a piece of my soul every time you see me, and I want to be seen for that over anything else. That’s the message I want to send to anyone who will listen to me.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

The music industry has to return power to the only reason it exists—the artist. Throughout the history of the music world, artists have been forced to confirm to the ideal, through record labels and 360 deals, and now through social media and streaming, the artist has to jump through so many hopes and conform so much for a just a chance to be heard. Now there are so many conversations around genres of music dying, because there is no longer the same amount of soul being required to influence and dictate the path that music is on. Giving artists creative control and making sure they are paid is the best thing to create a positive ecosystem for new music and new ideas to be born. As opposed to using TikTok to promote imagery, I want to see more talent being developed and more tools being easily accessible to people who wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to create.

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

The most rewarding moment for me is when I step off stage or step back from the mic in the studio and look into the faces of my people, the ones who encourage me, the ones who supported me through, and I can look into their eyes and know that I did a good job.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: _soleraa_