Music has always been the foundation of my life. My childhood was painted with ‘90s R&B filling the rooms of my home, lyrics scribbled in and out of composition notebooks, dresses dragging along choir risers and a song always stuck in my head. My parents’ love story blossomed in their middle school choir. I’ve always felt the most myself singing, and anytime I was feeling lost or having a hard time, music was there to ground me.
When I got to Ithaca College, I joined the a cappella community. At first it was exciting to be a part of this small close–knit group of friends. Yet, I soon began to realize that something was missing; that stability and joy I found in singing had disappeared. I needed to take the time to figure out why this was happening and more importantly how to get my spark back.
Then I joined the Amani Gospel Singers. At the time, it was returning to campus after a brief absence. Amani performs gospel music and serves as the only predominantly BIPOC singing organization at the college. There, I was introduced to many other great student organizations, like Musicians of Color Association (MOCA) and Black Artists United (BAU), and I realized what it is that I had been missing. Community. With my previous group, I always felt like I was on the outside looking in. As the only person of color there, it was incredibly isolating. No one truly could understand my experiences or my perspectives, and I felt like I needed to conform to fit in. At Amani everything changed. I was now a part of a community that understood the significance of our shared experiences.
I am now the vice president of Amani. That has been incredibly rewarding, but I don’t want it to be one of the only options for singers of color to perform. It is vital for there to be multiple avenues for BIPOC musicians to authentically be themselves. The desire to fill this need at Ithaca College led me to starting my own a cappella group Nuvo (New Voices) alongside Vaishali Lerner. Vaishali and I both missed singing a cappella, but didn’t want to relive our past experiences. So we put together a fantastic team — Anushka Sharma and Ella Padilla as music directors, Jaimie Kae-Smith as secretary and choreographer, Khushi Pandey as social media director — and Nuvo was born.
People often ask about the name. Nuvo is short for New Voices, which is the middle school Vasiahli and I attended. We want to be fresh new voices in the a cappella community.
Nuvo focuses on creating an inclusive space for BIPOC artists and allies to sing, and focuses solely on music by musicians of color, in the same way that there are a cappella groups devoted to female-identifying voices or all gender inclusivity. It is an addition, not an alternative to a community doing the work to learn, grow and educate themselves. This community has been incredibly supportive of our mission.
Nuvo hopes to create radical and positive change, start promoting incredibly important conversations and become an organization that can support musicians of color for years to come.
