We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Taji Israel-Cazembe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Taji below.

Taji, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I realized I wanted to do stand-up when I was 16. I was on my high school’s improv team for four years. That ignited my love for performing. I always loved making people laugh; it made me feel good. That’s how I connect with people. I make them laugh and then I can navigate a relationship from there. I took a stand-up class in 2021 because I had no clue what a joke was or how to write one. The class taught me a lot. Not only about the writing process, but the science behind comedy. You should put the mic stand behind you when you’re performing. I learned how to pull the audience in, how to keep them laughing, and how to deliver the best performance possible. That class taught me the basics.
Open mics taught me real-world situations. How to handle bombing, how to bring the room’s energy back up, and how to deal with hecklers.
I’m nowhere near done learning the craft of comedy. I’ve only started. I’m very excited to see what’s next. I won’t stop learning until I’m done, which is no time soon.

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

My name is Taji. I’m from St. Louis, Missouri. I started doing stand-up comedy in 2021 when I took a stand-up class at Helium Comedy Club. I’ve always been funny, always been surrounded by funny people, so I thought it would make sense to try and make strangers laugh. In high school, I was on our improv troupe, Undefined, for four years. I was Undefined’s best female member for two years. That was when I decided that I was going to become a comedian.
You can find me at Helium, Steve’s Hot Dogs, and the Funny Bone’s open mics every week. I’ve hosted for John Morgan, Frank Lyles, Cash Levy, Kurt Metzger, and Joe Marlotti. I’ve shared the stage with Ran Barnaclo and Chinedu Unaka before. I was a semi-finalist for Helium’s Funniest Competition of 2023.
I’ve been told that I have a distinct style, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is. I’ve been doing this less than two years, so I have time to solidify who I want to be on stage. I’m optimistic about who that girl will be.
I’m most proud of when I hosted for Frank Lyles at Helium. I’d seen him before around St. Louis, so I knew he was talented, experienced, and good. I was also really nervous to do it because I had never hosted a show at Helium before. I killed it! I’m very happy with what I did.
I want people to know that stand-up is a lot harder than it looks. And performing in front of an audience, an audience willing to laugh, it’s something I don’t take for granted. I treat the ability to make people laugh as a gift, who am I not to share it?

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Even though I’m a Black comedian, I’ve struggled with Black crowds. Every week, I would go to a Black open mic and bomb, but when I went to a majority white room, I’d kill. There’s an open mic that I go to, and the crowd is older Black people, 35 and up. I’m only 21! My parents are in their late 50s and 60s, so I had to act like I was talking to them or my older siblings. That was a challenge for me, because our sense of humor is vastly different. I’ve gotten so many different types of advice from different comedians on how to do well in that space. People have told me to speak faster, get to the punchline quicker, be more animated, ‘hood’ it up, these things that were not who I am. After I had gotten my confidence up at other open mics, I went up on stage with the words ‘be silly!’ scribbled at the top of my notebook page to remind myself who I am at my core, and did well! It was a process that took a lot of learning (a lot of falling on my face and vowing to never show my face again) and a large sum of unshakeable confidence.

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

Before I even started stand-up, I told my family I wanted a Netflix special and I wanted to see my name in lights. Now that I’m in the industry, I still want a special, but there are more streaming services available for me to shine. I’ll be happy with a Max, Hulu, Prime, YouTube, Tubi, Crunchyroll, Comedy Central, Peacock, WWETV, whatever. I’ve discovered that I’m good at writing and enjoy writing, so I also want a couple TV shows. I have monthly goals of going on stage without my notebook, or having more fun on stage, which I have been doing, so congratulations to me for that. I suppose my big goal for right now is to have a completely new fifteen minutes by the end of 2024.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @srirachataji
• Other: TikTok: @tajilol

Image Credits
Anthony Shafer, Malayka Walton, Raymond Murphy-Cazembe