We recently connected with Simone Bonét and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Simone, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

There was a point when I was younger where I rebelled against music and playing in general. Growing up my parents were pretty strict when it came to the violin. I wasn’t allowed to play any sports or do other activities because I did not have the time. I had something violin related almost everyday of the week, so it was impossible to do anything else. My junior and senior year I started to disliked playing because I was immature and just wanted to hang out with my friends and boyfriend all day. I wish I would have stayed more focused, but at the time it wasn’t fun any more and I had a lot of resentment to my craft. I also whole heartedly believe that everything happens for a reason. Those short years of me rebelling is when I found my love of live music. I would go to as many shows as possible in the Phoenix area with my girlfriends and we would just dance and laugh the night away. That period of time is also where I was introduced to bands like Sublime, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, Rebelution, Iration and Tribal Seeds to name a few. I started to build a friendship with a lot of these bands when they would come into town, fast forward to now I’ve had the pleasure of performing and touring with these artists and I’m beyond grateful.

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

I am a multi-genre violinist who has been playing for 26 years, and the last 12 years professionally. I started out classically trained by Helen Brush, one of the first chairs of the Phoenix Symphony. My step dad raised me, and he came from a Country music background. My grandfather played steel lap guitar and fiddle with Waylon Jennings in a small Arizona town. So naturally my Dad wanted more than anything was for me to become a fiddle player when I first took an interest in playing. As I got older, my taste in music started to change and was of all over the place. At 14, I went with my siblings to see Kanye West on his ‘College Dropout Tour’ and that’s the night I saw my idol, Miri Ben Ari, perform the whole night with her violin. She forever changed how I looked at the instrument I had been playing the last 5 years. I would sit in my room and listen to the radio to different hip hop artists and just try and play along to whatever came on . I moved to Long Beach, CA in 2010 and the first couple months of being here I got the opportunity to perform with Tribal Seeds in San Diego at SOMA. From there it was a domino effect of me performing with a lot of big artist in the SoCal Reggae scene.

One of the many creative works I provide is the experience to elevate your special event you may be throwing. Usually you think of a violin at an event, it’s just classical music you see in the symphony. Me being a multi-genre musician, I can play to any and everything. I like to do things that are completely out of the box where it has people leaving the event in awe! Im a party people person so that comes out in my music when I’m performing. Life’s too short to be stuck up live it up!

Im proud of how far I’ve come since moving here in 2010. This city can eat you up and spit you out if you don’t have the thick skin to stick it out. There were many times I felt like I should just give up, move back to Arizona and just get a desk job or something. I had to remind myself( and still do from time to time) that God put me here for a reason. I’m performing with these artists and at these events because I am supposed to be doing this. I am fully obsessed with my craft and put my heart and soul into it every second of everyday. Being a black female musician and a male dominated industry is hard, and we just need to shine the light on more females who are absolutely crushing it!

One of the many creative works I provide is the experience to elevate your special event you may be throwing. Usually you think of a violin at an event, it’s just classical music you see in the symphony. Me being a multi-genre musician, I can play to any and everything. I like to do things that are completely out of the box where it has people leaving the event in awe! Im a party people person so that comes out in my music when I’m performing. Life’s too short to be stuck up live it up!

Im proud of how far I’ve come since moving here in 2010. This city can eat you up and spit you out if you don’t have the thick skin to stick it out. There were many times I felt like I should just give up, move back to Arizona and just get a desk job or something. I had to remind myself( and still do from time to time) that God put me here for a reason. I’m performing with these artists and at these events because I am supposed to be doing this. I am fully obsessed with my craft and put my heart and soul into it every second of everyday. Being a black female musician and a male dominated industry is hard, and we just need to shine the light on more females who are absolutely crushing it!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Now I don’t have 1 million followers, or ever close to 10k, but my followers are all organic. After that first Tribal Seeds show, I started doing covers and posting them on social media. I would do a Rebelution cover, wearing a Iration shirt, or a Dirty Heads cover wearing a Simpkin Project shirt etc. Since those bands were all in the same scene, it became my little niche. A lot of people would reach out and notice that I had these smaller artists(still just as amazing) merchandise on playing these big artists songs and they loved it. Ive always been strategic when it comes to my social media and what I post. I also would go on these bands hash tags and just go through and like and engage with their fans, which would bring them over to my page and they’d see a violin cover of one of their favorite songs from that band. Doing that also is what got attention of the artists and me being able to join them either on stage, in the studio or on tour. Im the least tech savvy person, and I will say there are a lot of times where I get so frustrated with social media, but I have to remind myself that thats the biggest way you can promote yourself and your work.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I wouldn’t say that there is one particular goal or mission I’m trying to achieve. My mindset is I want to achieve as many goals as possible. The drive has and always will be there since I started playing at 9 waking up at 4:30am before school to practice. One of them would obviously be to make my parents proud. My mom and dad invested so much time and money on lessons, orchestra camps, instruments and I would just want them to feel I’ve achieved something that they helped me get too. I just recently performed at Red Rocks for the first time in Morrison Colorado, and just seeing the excitement on my mom and brothers face when I left was something I’ll never forget. My dad passed away almost 5 years ago, and Id like to think he’s with me at every single one of my performances. He was my biggest fan and he would always boast about my playing abilities to his friends. I remember one time he made me go to the copper mines where he worked and played in the break room at lunch for all of his buddies. Him no longer being here physically, pushes me to go harder than ever. I just want to be the violinist that all the producers want in the studio for session work. I want to be the violinist that artists want to take out on tour. I want to be the violinist that takes your private event to the next level.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moniebaronie/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/p/Simone-Bonét-100063651756961/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41ggGEHS3Qvn55L1eszyAA
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@moniebaronie – Tik Tok

Image Credits
@mista.wes @cindyros_ @samscarce @petesantosphoto @brandon_pettus @marie_douglas_music