Exclusive Photos: Going After A Wild Dream in Cuba
Hi Lionheart,
I have been thinking about comfort zones lately because I am currently in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign, which is confronting and so uncomfortable that it took me over a year to just get up the guts to launch it.
At this point, we are at 25%, and though this is a huge undertaking, it is one of the best risks I have ever taken.
Another risk, which serves as a prototype for following your heart in your life, is my Cuba story:
Not long ago I did something I never imagined I would’ve done. I booked a solo month-long trip to Cuba to dive into the unknown and challenge myself to see if I really could go after a wild dream.
An experience of a lifetime unfolded and showed me that you can create whatever you want in your life.
Now, let’s back up a bit and get the full story of this trip. It’s about turning rejection and failure into a triumph of claiming your own fate and creating something that's BEYOND what you could imagine.
If we meet our funding goal for the electro pop album, Little Secret, at $18,000, additional funds will go towards the mixing, mastering, and release of Cuba Diaries. Here's the story...
This is me right before deciding to make this trip to Cuba. I'm a bit embarrassed by this photo. You can see my hair's scraggly, my eyes look tired, I'm bloated from drinking a lot of alcohol to numb my anxiety, and I'm simply burnt out.
You see, Lionheart, over the years, I thought I had to be a starving artist to have integrity. I romanticized the rags-to-riches story and created that for myself, even though I came from a nice home, was fortunate to be given a world-class education, and had been performing professionally in theater, opera, and pop music since I was 7 at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, amongst other venues.
Along the way, I became a people pleaser and was afraid to do what I wanted. I dabbled but never committed. It wore me down emotionally. I was smart and capable, yet I still didn't think I was enough.
I trained to be an opera singer at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I didn't know what I wanted and I thought that if I learned how to sing opera, I could sing anything.
I was in opera school by day and living a different life at night - I performed in musical theater productions, was involved in electronic music parties, art + technology festivals, indie music scene, world music and jazz concerts, and circus lofts. Yet, I always had one foot in and one foot out of the opera program.
It just wasn't me and I couldn't gain emotional and professional traction. I could never land a role in my conservatory productions, even though the head coach from the Metropolitan Opera once ran down to me from an audition panel to tell me I had something special but that I just wasn't ready yet. This was my life rope that I held on to.
I gave EVERYTHING I had in my final semesters to try to fall in love with opera. I was going through a vocal technique issue during my final recital and the head of the opera department told me to do the composer and myself a favor and never sing his music again. They failed me.
After graduating, I stumbled upon an opportunity to work on a vineyard in the south of France. I needed to get away. I cried every time I opened my mouth to sing for a year afterwards. I let someone's cruel comments crush my identity and self-worth.
I came home and knew in my gut that I couldn't give up; I needed to sing. I found an audition ad on Craigslist for a Gypsy jazz band looking for a singer who could sing in French for a Christmas gig at the French Embassy. I learned a few songs that day and landed the audition that night. The gigs kept coming in and they paid, so I went with it.
That was seven years ago, and I was finding small successes that built upon each other. I built myself up again to become a full-time professional singer in New York City, which was my childhood dream.
I won an Artist-in-Residence position at the Music Center at Strathmore. I landed a fully hands-on apprenticeship as an audio engineer at a New York City music studio that serviced platinum and emerging artists. I later was blessed with patronage for my art, went to France to live in a Gypsy caravan and sing and study with the world’s greats in Gypsy jazz.
Yes, I worked tirelessly and DID experience successes performing my original music at the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, and the Rainbow Room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and won awards for my music, but mostly I felt like I was watching others achieve their dreams as I watched from the sidelines.
I denied myself so many experiences. I made myself live at the poverty level at one point. Lost and confused, I moved in circles without making major progress towards my dreams.
The final straw came about in October 2016 when I was invited to join one of my mentors to go see a pianist friend of ours perform at Jazz at Lincoln Center. My mentor knew I was stuck and confused.
At the concert, I saw a singer perform who was good, I knew I could deliver the same performance, if not better. Yet she was up there performing and I was again on the sidelines.
Through my mentor, I even happened to know the booking agent of the venue. I could try get a gig there with my all-star Rainbow Room at 30 Rock Gypsy jazz band. I asked my mentor about getting me a gig there. She declined, knowing I was lost and confused and that that wasn't wasn't my DREAM. Ouch.
Looking back, I was being guided away from a direction that wasn't my path. Something had to change.
I started taking massive action. I won a grant to lead songwriting workshops with senior citizens, and I applied that money to investing in business coaching. I started the process of doing the inner work on reclaiming my self worth and redirecting my life.
I applied to renowned international music residencies that I desperately thought would give me validation.
I gave my all, yet I got rejected from all of them.
The residencies selected established global artists, and I simply wasn’t there yet.
I was deeply disappointed by the idea that again, I gave everything and still my dream was beyond my reach. Then it hit me.
The only person who could ultimately recognize my worth was me.
No longer would I let someone else’s validation determine my fate.
I decided to make my own residency.
I'd had Cuba on the back of my mind. I LOVE Cuban jazz and the idea of going there seemed like a magical, beautiful, and hazy dream.
I didn't have money; I saved a few hundred and a friend generously offered me a loan with a repayment plan.
I put that "no one's ever done that" vision into action and found myself flying into Cuba three months later for an adventure of a lifetime.
I took Cuban piano and percussion lessons daily with master musicians.
I went into deep reflection and challenged my limiting beliefs.
As the days unfolded, I would paint while watching the water lap up against Havana’s famous Malecón sea wall and in my bedroom at La Estancia.
I became friends with locals, improved my Spanish, and learned the rich history of Cuba through its people. Sometimes I’d wander the streets of Havana, meeting musicians at art galleries, restaurants, and hotels and having impromptu jam sessions and performances.
Feeling inspired to further explore the country and myself, I traveled with a four-generation family to the UNESCO World Heritage countryside of Viñales.
A grandmother and her granddaughter received me in their home in a tiny remote camp on top of the most incredible and unimaginable mountains.
Hanging on a sparse wall of their guest bedroom was a love poem. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, and this grandmother and granddaughter unknowingly nourished my broken heart as I sat with them on their sunny porch and turned it into a song, which is now on the album: Si Tu Corazón.
A Cuban cowboy brought me down into the tobacco valleys on horseback and I rode towards a rainbow in the distance, stopping to visit the tobacco farmers and smoke cigars.
Upon returning to Havana, I wrote songs on my Cuban home’s balcony overlooking the Malecón.
I came up with a chord progression and a melody and set some lyrics in place inspired by Cuban poetry I came across in the countryside. I strummed the guitar and sang the melody out into the streets, and a family across the way stopped what they were doing and listened from their kitchen table.
They stood in the dark by the laundry blowing on the lines, the lights of their kitchen illuminating their silhouettes, their faces turned to the music like an August evening breeze.
A filmmaker friend, Steve W. Thompson, happened to travel to Havana at the same time with his film and music crew and invited me to collaborate with Cuban hip hop artists on an album and a documentary film. This led to a performance with Cuban rapper Karen Kmanwey at Havana's premier and coolest cultural venue, Fabrica de Arte.
I later took myself for the first time in my life to a white sand beach overlooking crystal green waters. There, I wrote out my vision for my songwriting and performing while sitting under palm trees and diving into the effervescent sea.
It came back to that feeling of saying yes to myself.
I kept with my Afro-Cuban piano and rhythm lessons every day that I was back in Havana.
My right hand was playing one rhythm while my left played another. It was so consuming that I started dreaming this exercise. It soon dawned on me to turn it into a song and to record the music that I’d written in Cuba.
I had just enough cash on me to make it happen. As a US citizen, I wasn’t able to withdraw money and had to live on cash that I kept on me. Hell, I didn’t even HAVE money to withdraw. I wasn’t sitting on a pile of cash - I just knew that I had to make this album in order to transform this dream into something tangible.
Life is too short to not show up for your dreams.
There I was, making arrangements in broken Spanish and hiring a six-piece Afro-Cuban band featuring some of Havana’s award-winning musicians to record this new album in the state-of-the-art studio of one of Cuba's most famous singers, Pablo Milanés.
What I realized with all of these experiences is that I was able to make my wildest dreams of creating an artist retreat in Cuba come true. And the result was greater than I could ever have imagined.
I never dreamed that I would make an album!
I say this to you so that you continue to stay open, trust your intuition, and know that anything is possible.
Much love. Wishing you inspiration and expansion, Lionheart.
XO ALARKE AKA MARY ALOUETTE