Black Feminist Futures - Get Free: A Black Feminist Reunion

New Orleans, 2025

A few days before my performance at Black Feminist Futures' Get Free: A Black Feminist Reunion, I was in a rehearsal at The Village Studios in Los Angeles with a dear friend—an accomplished theater actress—who was helping me prepare. We were running through the program in full dress, and she kept pushing me to lean more deeply into the performance: to embody the work, to command the stage, to let the audience see me.

But I found myself stuck.

Not creatively, but physically. Emotionally. The studio—behind the piano or seated at the control desk—has always been my safe space. But in that moment, I realized it has also been my hiding place. It has been, at times, a box.

A box I put myself in.

Her insistence that I “step forward” as a performer—her critiques, her encouragement, her desire to draw me out—made me feel exposed. I wanted to embrace what she was offering, but I couldn’t. Not right away. I became emotional, even resistant. Because there’s a deep discomfort, especially for those of us trained to hide behind intellect, in letting our bodies speak.

And maybe that’s part of what get free means too.

We often approach freedom through frameworks that are intellectual, analytical, political—and that work is critical. But freedom is also deeply physical. It is visceral. To get free can mean, quite literally, to move. To show up. To be seen. It means pulling ourselves from the comforts of what we know—our roles, our skills, our labels—and stepping into the unfamiliar territory of who we might yet become.

That rehearsal reminded me how much of myself I’ve kept hidden. How long I’ve resisted performing publicly. How often I’ve defaulted to “the engineer,” “the producer,” “the writer,” instead of owning the artist. In fact, On Imagination was not originally intended to feature me as an artist at all. I wasn’t planning to be credited. But something happened—organically, spiritually—that pulled me into that space. I accidentally stepped forward. And in doing so, I found a new kind of liberation.

That’s what this moment is about. The terror. The discomfort. The transformation. The tension between staying safe and stepping out. That tension is not a failure—it’s a portal.

I knew I had to do something special for this.

When the organizers of this event reached out to me, I felt not only affirmed but deeply validated. This year began with the ending of a 12-year chapter working in-house as a music producer and audio engineer at a major record label. No matter how much you try not to let a job define you, when you hold something that long, it becomes part of your identity. So I was moving through the emotional tides of closure, loss, and quiet release when I received the invitation from Black Feminist Futures.

This organization has long been committed to justice and the evolution of feminist frameworks as they relate to Black American women—how we grapple with feminist tensions and negotiate our identities in a racialized America. To be invited to Get Free: A Black Feminist Reunion is an honor. And truly, the work of my album On Imagination lives within the same spirit. It uses poetry—poetic language, composition, and intentionality—as a way to create sonic healing for all people, but particularly for Black women, within the context of grief, longing, visibility, and the desire for understanding.

So I knew the piece I performed here had to be different. It had to be crafted intentionally for this audience, because of who they are. And it had to be framed in a way that made space for truth.

Much of the music I perform comes from the album On Imagination, but ironically, my own voice was not centered on that project. My fingerprint is everywhere in the composition, performance, and production—I played all of the piano and keyboard parts, most of the guitar parts, and produced and engineered every track. But the vocal performance featured the voices of Black women of distinction—Angela Davis, Roberta Flack, Representative Maxine Waters, Dawn Richard—reciting the words of poetic giants like Gwendolyn Bennett, Phyllis Wheatley, and June Jordan.

For this performance, I had to reconfigure that work. I had to find a new relationship with the material—one that allowed me to use my voice. That meant reinterpreting and reshaping some pieces so they could hold my delivery, my cadence, my truth. It was a liberating process, though not without complexity. Because the truth is, On Imagination was deeply cathartic to make, but also in many ways traumatic to release.

While I’m proud of what we accomplished, the rollout was stifled by internal turmoil and politics at the label that financed it. It left me feeling like the project had been stillborn—like it never got its full chance to fly. I also experienced heartbreak in trying to get buy-in from some of the collaborators post-release; people who had signed on, but weren’t able or willing to share in the content or visibility. And it left me questioning whether my vision had ever really been understood.

So when I was given this opportunity, I returned to the work—not as someone still waiting for validation, but as someone called to say what needs to be said.

During prayer and praise, I kept hearing a quiet whisper:

Say the things that are rarely said.

So that’s what I did.

And one of those things we rarely hear said in music—especially in live music performance, in front of large audiences—is a direct acknowledgment of childhood sexual trauma.

Yes, I made the decision to speak to childhood molestation in this set. And for those who may question why I would do that, I’d offer this reflection: we spent the past year turning up—literally dancing and screaming—to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” a global anthem that includes a sharp lyrical critique of alleged pedophilia in the rap industry. Stadiums full of people shouting the word pedophile in unison. We did that. We allowed that message to thrive in club environments and public discourse, as it should. But if we can do that—if we can name harm that way—then we can also make space for the victims.

We can create music that doesn’t just indict the abuser, but also holds space for the survivor.

For me, this wasn’t just about performance. It was about doing the therapeutic work of reclaiming a part of myself. In journaling on a plane, I started an exercise that became central to this performance: rewriting my past. I imagined returning to scenes from my childhood as my adult self—showing up as the hero I needed. Interrupting the trauma. Holding the child. Offering insight.

Because the truth about childhood trauma is this: the wound itself isn’t always the most lasting damage. It's the abandonment that lingers. The scraped knee is painful, but what stays with the child is that no one came. No one cared. No one offered a Band-Aid.

This performance was my Band-Aid.

The theme of the conference, Get Free, was something I took very literally. So much of our cultural focus is on external freedom—freedom from oppression, from systems. And yes, those are real and vital. But inner freedom is where the work begins. There are people living in cages who have more peace than those who walk freely every day.

For me, freedom has come through the science and math of sound. I taught myself everything—acoustics, signal flow, physics, digital theory. Engineering was not just a profession, it was a pathway to self-expression and self-possession. Losing myself in the technical imagination of sound was a kind of liberation no one could take from me. It’s where I imagined myself whole.

That’s what On Imagination is really about. The title, drawn from Phillis Wheatley's iconic poem, reminds us that even in the most confined conditions, we possess the power to dream beyond the moment. Enslaved, she still imagined. Silenced, she still wrote.

To imagine, then, is an act of resistance.

And to perform this album—now, with my own voice, in the presence of Black feminists who are building futures in real time—is to embody that resistance with intention. I may not have been heard clearly when the album was first released. But I’m speaking now.

And I’m grateful.

After rehearsal that day, I drove my friend back to her home. We had a jumbled conversation about emotions, trust, performance, and fear—some of it out loud, and some of it in the silence between us. I was trying to explain the nature of the discomfort I felt in the studio, but the words kept slipping through my fingers. I couldn’t fully name what didn’t feel safe.

Instead, I found myself getting distracted by little things—minor irritations, changes in lighting, sound levels, timing. I now see that I was avoiding the deeper feeling: that terrifying sense of exposure. Of being seen. I wanted the set to be perfect, but I wasn’t sure I wanted me to be visible in it.

When we arrived at her place, the conversation shifted. We started talking about intimacy, about critique, about what it means to really let someone guide you. It takes an enormous amount of trust to allow another person to usher you into unfamiliar emotional territory. And I think that’s what she was trying to do—hold space for me. Invite me into something new. I felt, in that moment, somewhat defeated. But she didn’t walk away. She stayed with me in it.

And maybe that’s part of what getting free looks like too.

Learning to receive love.
Learning to be seen.
Learning to trust the people who are trying to help you grow.
Learning to accept the hand that is extended, even when every part of you wants to withdraw.

Getting free is not always loud or triumphant. Sometimes it’s a quiet, tearful conversation in the car with someone who refuses to let you shrink.

Sometimes, getting free means choosing to believe you are already worthy of being held.