We recently connected with Suzziah Odambo and have shared our conversation below.

Suzziah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today 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 parents are the biggest blessing to me. They have honestly done so many things right; one of them being that they took a risk investing in my music career. I come from a society that doesn’t show as high a regard to art as it does academics. There’s so much pressure to perform well in school and have a career that is more academically oriented; and in a way, they are right. Their concern comes from a genuine place. Art is a difficult career path with no guaranteed way of having financial success and most artists struggle to make ends meet. This is the fear my society tried to impose on me and it worked for a while, but I knew deep down that I was a much better artist than I was an academic. Don’t get me wrong, I did well in school, but my interests were elsewhere. My parents knew this too, and they encouraged me to pursue that instead of faking interest in other things. I remember my father taking me to my first ever studio session when I was 14 years old, showing up to my performances and random open mics in questionable places, and his biggest investment being my music education. My parents denied themselves a comfortable retirement so I could pursue this dream. Their support is foundational for how I approach my career. Like I mentioned before, art is no easy feat and every now and then there’s the temptation to give up. It can also be very daunting and discouraging if you don’t feel like you have the support you need to continue in it, but my parents’ consistency always gives me the push that I need to keep going. Even if my music doesn’t matter to anyone else, it matters to them, and that’s enough for me.

Suzziah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Suzziah Odambo, I’m a musician from Nairobi, Kenya currently based in the United States. I’ve been working professionally as a singer/songwriter, and recording artist for close to 10 years now. My journey began back home where I developed a strong interest in arts and entertainment at a really young age. I always wanted to be where the art was; be it dancing, acting, singing, and even painting. I was always drawn to it. I began doing music professionally at 17 years old when I released my debut single ‘Take My Hand’, an EDM song that I wrote when I was in high school. I’d say my career took off after that. I released a couple more singles, did a lot of performances, and even released an EP in 2019.

In terms of my sound, that is always in discovery. I enjoy making all sorts of music and experimenting with genres. My cultural heritage has a heavy influence on the sounds that I’m drawn to so my music has strong African elements with a little bit of everything else in it. Currently I’m working on some new music that I’d like to release pretty soon and the genres vary from RnB, to Neo Soul, to Afro fusion, with a gospel focused message. I made a decision during my time in school when I was taking a break from music, to write and create from a place of personal experience; and my faith in Jesus Christ is the most personal and important thing to me, so I write from that perspective.

And it’s also just fun. I don’t always take myself too seriously and I hope that translates to what people will hear.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That my purpose is not what I do, it’s who I do it for.

I had to unlearn what I was taught about purpose. It felt like my purpose was my career, and that’s how many of the people around me viewed their purpose as well. Purpose is directly attached to our sense of identity and so I couldn’t see myself doing anything else and being happy or fulfilled. It would mean that I wasn’t doing what I was created for (which for me is music), and the thought of that gave me anxiety.

How all this happened was by being at Berklee College of Music, surrounded by a multitude of extremely talented individuals and feeling very lost. I realized I didn’t share the same affection as they did for music and I felt like an impostor. This was very disorienting for me because music is what I knew to do well. But God freed me from that. He taught me that my purpose is Him, and what I do is an assignment. Assignments change all the time but the purpose stays the same. So I could be doing music for a season or for my entire lifetime but my sense of identity remains unshaken because it’s in God.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I do believe that we’re all creative people, it just looks different from person to person, and we actually have a lot more in common than we realise, especially entrepreneurs. But in terms of the arts, what I’ve found to be something that non-artistic people can struggle to understand is that it requires a lot of patience to see any fruit from the work that we do. Now obviously this applies to all career paths, but for the artist it takes double the time. One may see an artist become popular “overnight” but that artist has been working at it for a really long time. So I’d encourage non-artistic people to be patient with the artists in their lives because their “big break” will take a longer time to materialize than most non-artistic career paths.

It’s also a very non-linear path and my job is contingent upon people liking me vs people liking a product. Most artists don’t view their work as ‘products’ but as extensions of who they are which is a very unique and vulnerable experience. If people don’t feel a connection with me, that directly affects my livelihood and my ability to provide for myself and those who depend on me. We constantly need people to financially invest in us and it takes a very long time before we get a return on that investment. Sometimes we don’t get anything.
A lot of grace and support is needed and highly appreciated.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suzziahodambo/
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/suzziah

Image Credits
Photographers: Martin Kwame @kwamephotography_ltd Kimty Dennis @kimtydennis Lyra Aoko Photography @lyraoko Matthew Muise Photography