Meet Aviana And The Pure Root

 

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aviana And The Pure Root.

Hi Aviana And The Pure Root, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started performing at a very young age, maybe six years old. My mom put me in all kinds of dance programs and even a beauty pageant as a kid, I was always performing, recitals and such. As I got older she started making me sing, first with the church choir, which I hated and then at little events around town-school talent shows, my mom’s own events that she hosted on behalf of SG Magazine, which was her Black teen magazine she owned, and even on TV once for a local television kid’s club show. I had really low self-esteem and was teased a lot for how I looked and just bullied for being different so you can imagine how much I despised being on stage at the mercy of people’s gaze and judgments. I hated the sound of my voice and I had really bad stage fright where I would shake uncontrollably, hold back tears and damn near faint right there on stage.

My mom was relentless though, she just really saw me as this little star, someone who was supposed to be on stage, so she constantly forced me to sing. She would make me look in the mirror and say ten things I liked about myself, she really worked hard to make me feel loved and to convince me of my own beauty. When I left for college at Howard University, I kind of tucked that whole idea of singing and performing in my back pocket. It wasn’t for years, a whole two degrees later and at the age of 27 that for some reason, me on a stage popped back into my mind all of a sudden. I had just finished my Master’s degree at NYU. Stressed out and completely depleted, I booked a one-way ticket to Europe to “find myself” and to live life on my own terms. I eventually landed in Paris and decided to try to book some singing gigs, on the pretense that I was an artist from America. I managed to book a few things, sing at a few cabarets, open mic nights and even with a band once.

These appearances usually ended in embarrassment as my old stage fright came back to rear its ugly head. I decided after that though that it was my purpose to sing and be an artist, so when I finally came back to the states, I decided to pursue it. I lucked up on a mentor at some point who started teaching me guitar and I started doing open mics in my hometown of St. Louis. My Uncle Charles gave me voice lessons, while my Great Uncle who is a classical music composer by the name of Joseph Hull, gave me music theory lessons. I started writing and composing my own instrumentation that for some reason started to come so naturally to me. When I moved to LA in 2019, I put together my first band and started performing around town as the lead vocalist and guitar player. And in 2020, I put out my first EP PROPHECY, which was a dream come true. Now, I’m furthering my craft by going to school (again) but this time for music full time at Santa Monica College. I’m working on my next album and looking forward to getting back on the stage when the world opens up again.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Music has by far been the most complicated path that I’ve taken in my life. I think because I feel as if I started late on this journey, that it always feels like I’m in a rush to be great like I’m too old not to have the skills that I think I should have. It’s been a constant fight to overcome my own internal doubts about myself, my voice and my guitar playing. I have moments when I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I feel paralyzed by fear, but I have to just keep pushing forward, you know. I know that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, so I have to choose to be who I’m supposed to be every single day. I have to give myself grace. I have to learn how to enjoy the journey.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m Aviana And The Pure Root and I am an artist, musician and composer. I sing and play guitar and I’m known for performing live and putting out conscious and spiritually involved music. My interests lie in Afrofuturism, unity amongst the Diaspora and raising the vibration on the planet, getting back to being in alignment with nature, root and ancestral healing. I put it all in my music, you know. Like, even concepts about love, I try to talk about it in terms of a deeper, spiritually mature kind of love. I think what makes my music different is that I try to speak about the concepts that mean the most to me in a very poetic, sometimes abstract, but colorful way. My music is very cinematic and I intentionally wanna pull on people’s heartstrings with my instrumentation, but, to open the heart, to expand the mind, you see? It’s for us to get closer to God, to get closer to the God inside. I want to take people higher, literally, to put people in a state of euphoria. I use it as a manifestation tool to create the kind of world we want to live in, to build new realities for Black people around the world, merging our Ancient history with our hopes for tomorrow. My intention is to create a new now.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Aviana And The Pure Root evolved from when I was introduced to a guy in Paris by a friend some years ago. When he met me, he looked at me really seriously in the eye and told me, “You are the pure root.” I was honestly kind of freaked out and didn’t understand, but he continued to just talk to me about how special I was. It really stuck with me and I tried to google some stuff about the term to see what I could find. I started finding things about ‘root’ women and how they are strong women who are healers and work with the elements and mysticism. When I moved back to St. Louis, I started caregiving for my mom after she had a massive stroke and I delved into natural healing modalities, herbs, energy work and spiritual exploration pretty hardcore. I was working to heal my mother as well as myself as I was struggling with the asthma I had since I was a child. When it came time to pick a name for myself as an artist, I thought back to what the guy I had met in Paris had called me, ‘pure root’ and it just resonated so deeply to me and where I was in my life, thus Aviana And The Pure Root was born. It evolved into meaning so many things to me over the years, my love for Africa, root healing and indigenous thought when it comes to being connected to nature and the cosmos. The ‘And’ in between Aviana and Pure Root is inspired by Prince and The Revolution.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://avianapureroot.com
• Instagram: @avianapureroot
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avianapureroot/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC9cmgcGBZtSNHWTbSqr2pA/featured
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/avianaandthepureroot
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XnhRwp8PEKcaBhRu2X9uI

Image Credits:
Susana Hornil