Life & Work with Roksana Habibi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Roksana Habibi.

Hi Roksana, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory. 
I’m not sure if I would have ever wrote a song if it wasn’t for my older brother playing the bass. My dad plays classical guitar, and he’s amazing, but I idolized my brother. He wrote songs I loved so much; I still remember the lyrics. I’d pull up a chair to his desk after school, and we’d sing his songs together. He never really fully included me. It was like I was lucky to be there, and I had to be ‘good enough.’ I loved it, though. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by musicians who were always better than me when I was growing up. With the right mindset, situations like that makes you work harder. Where I grew up in suburban Massachusetts, things like music and the arts are not seen as viable careers. I’m also from an immigrant family, which compounded the pressure to achieve a certain kind of success. I graduated college and was working in a Nobel-nominated neurobiology lab when I worked up the courage to quit and put all my energy towards being an artist. That’s how I landed in Los Angeles in 2020, just before the world shut down. 

For most of the pandemic, I would cold DM producers and artists to collaborate with. I’ve always been tenacious and willing to throw myself in the deep. I met some of the most amazing people in my life that way. Little by little, I found a beautiful network of friends and collaborators around me, and I’m still building. Above all else, I’m so grateful to be able to be here and make music every day. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There’s the obvious struggles around money and relationships that are like the foundation of any artist’s career. Mine just also happened to coincide with a pandemic and a fresh move across the country. My first year in LA in 2020 was like a fever dream. I met some of the best and worst people of my life. It’s taken me a while to say this, but I’m grateful that I got burnt badly by some early collaborators out here. I learned so much about myself, my art, and how to navigate the shadiness that can exist in this industry. Inevitably, everyone has to learn, and I’m happy that I faced some big problems when the stakes were low. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I make music about my life. I wish I had some kind of cool and pithy tagline, but really, it’s just about my experiences and observations. Most songs begin with guitar and some loud feeling that I can’t shake off. I love alternative and punk rock, but I also love jazz. Blending the two lands me somewhere in the alternative R&B Venn diagram. Lately, I’ve been really into brass instruments. They’re so boisterous and add so much life to a record. I put out a song called “Got to Your Head” recently after not releasing anything for a while. It’s about some of the darker themes and people that I knew from my first year in LA. I learned so much about myself in the process of prying that song out of me. It was tough. I’m just really proud of the music I’ve been making and the world I’m creating in my art. 

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I learned a lot about how life can be so beautiful and so messed up at the same time. I was a brand-new transplant in LA at the time, and I signed a lease a month before everything shut down. I knew two people in LA, one whom I had a falling out with just weeks after I moved, and the other ending up going back home to another state to wait out the pandemic. I was living with a stranger who was a sad and angry drunk. At the same time, I was lucky enough to live in a small apartment complex full of other artists, and we had marvelous family dinners in our courtyard in Lincoln Heights. I got to spend so much time working on my music, and then I got to spend even more time doing absolutely nothing, which completely changed my relationship with time and “productivity.” I didn’t even have a car in the beginning, so I’d go on hours-long walks with my dog. We explored a lot of East LA on foot. Even though some horrible things happened during that time, I still look back on it with so much tenderness. 

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roksanahabibi
• Facebook: facebook.com/roksanamakesmusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/432hz4ever?s=11
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHYs7Z1cs7j2imSjCkO3ozQ
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/track/0LV8gdMxcPcCTegT9h08hw?si=49c0403df4574383

Image Credits
Miles Coulton
Thomas Julia McCabe
Naiqui Macabroad