Today we’d like to introduce you to Angel Smith.
Hi Angel, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m from the Chicago area – emphasis on “area” because while Portage, Indiana is technically a part of Chicagoland, nothing about endless farmland made this small town feel like a city. When my parents moved me and my younger brother, Allen, to Portage it was because both of them wanted us to experience growing up outside the chaos (good and bad) of the city. We left the city life for a town of fake smiles, manicured lawns, volunteer police officers, and charter schools or better known as the suburbs.
At first, it’s easy to look back on Portage and see all the things I wanted to leave behind, but the most sacred parts of myself were planted in midwestern soil. My shyness lived on the park swing two blocks from my house. Resiliency was built in the muscles of my body for the ten years I stepped on my neighborhood soccer field. Queerness coded itself into the fabric of my tomboy wardrobe, a prelude to finding my gender outside the binary. I love hiking – not in the California way – the way you walk on a dirt road next to a cornfield and question if you could live a simple life like this forever.
Life had other plans for me though. I got into Stanford University, found a love for Black Studies, and gravitated toward a community of artists that would become my family and anchor. I joined the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, Institute for Diversity in the Arts as a fellow and then co-chair, and minored in Creative Writing. There was so much room to grow and dream that I finally was able to see myself beyond test scores and imagine what mark I could leave on my community and the world at large. At the time, this looked like turning meditation into ritual and being in communion with my ancestors. Poetry became rhyme became rhythm became music. I danced with disciplines until I blurred the lines of theatre, music, poetry, art, activism, rest, pleasure, and resistance.
Once I left the container of Stanford, I moved to Los Angeles to continue to be surrounded by other artists. I started working at United Talent Agency because I wanted to understand the business of entertainment while I continued to refine my art practice. I’ve been in LA for almost two years now. I have a cat, Allen and I share a two-bedroom apartment with a backyard, and I am obsessed with starting my mornings with the same cup of cupcake-flavored hot tea. I often wonder how I ended up here when this life felt like a place I could only dream of. I never expected I would make it this far, but maybe that’s why I did. I had nothing to prove and everything to experience.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
One of the most recurring things I struggle with is mental health. I dealt with a lot of anxieties growing up having absorbed the energy from my parent’s divorce and experiencing the death of a friend. The most salient feeling I have from my adolescents was wanting to disappear. Now, in each room that I enter, I recognize I deserve to take up space but I haven’t exercised the muscle of belonging. I still feel out of place. I question my sentences before I say them, cry over failed meetings, and most painfully sit on opportunities because I’m afraid of disappointing myself.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an interdisciplinary artist at the crossroads of music, poetry, and performance. As a performer, I go by Ace The Storyteller. Besides the fact that the music industry is male-dominated, I occupy this space as a Black, non-binary, and queer being pushing narratives about radical love and emotional liberation. Oftentimes, my music incorporates the science of sound, seamlessly bringing sound healing into beat-making and composition. As a researcher at heart, there is so much untapped potential in terms of the impact that sound healing can have on music and performing arts, a ripple that could make waves in the fabric of our social structures.
My work focuses on helping to heal the intergenerational wounds inflicted upon Black and queer communities by way of meditation, spirit work, and community building. Mediation has always been my gateway into creativity because it requires that I bring buried emotions to the surface. Often, I like to evoke a similar experience for my audiences by giving them the comfort of knowing that whatever they experience when witnessing my work, I am there too, holding their hand through it all. I see so much potential in music and performance art to build community and dismiss fear by telling stories about processing pain and carving space for joy. In doing so, we allow the transformative energy of creative practice to shape more loving futures. The power of art to transform the way people experience news and give attention to the world motivates me to never stop telling the meaningful stories that need to be heard.
In addition to my work as an artist, I am co-founder of the artist collective Esoteric Creations (ESO), through which I’ve developed skills in community organizing, music production, and writing. We are a group of independent artists with a similar mission of creating more opportunities for harmony within and across different communities. I am a two-time CUPSI finalist, with poetry featured in Write About Now, Feminist Narratives Zine, on stage for Stanford’s Black Convocation (2018-19), Black Lives Matter protests, and Bruja Spa’s Spoken Spells & Spirituality.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Watching anime brings me the most joy these days. No matter the show (though right now, it’s One Piece), I love watching anime because it inspires me to push myself to my goals. If you’ve ever watched an action-based anime, you’ll know that the hero is rarely the person you’d expect to succeed in the end. The one thing that sets all heroes apart on these journeys is their willingness to fall down and commitment to rise again. Dealing with anxiety and feeling called to be a light for my community, I struggle to see myself as a hero in my own story. When I look at characters struggling like me, I rejoice in the fact that rarely is a hero born the strongest in the town. The hero is the one who emerges from the shadows to say yes to any challenge.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.acethestoryteller.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eso.ace/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1c7AQAGq0J2MP7_q4XdzmQ
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6iCTlEbbZ3RCr7XKN9JFiY?si=mXuRWQr9QQ6S47gp5nykrA
Image Credits
Ryan Wimsatt
