I first witnessed the magic that is duendita as part of the Black Science Fiction concert series in Brooklyn, New York. On a small stage, she sat surrounded by equipment and began to sing - filling the room with the depth of her vocals and instantly lulling the audience into trance. Birdsong ushered us into her performance, and throughout, we heard snippets from conversations with loved ones interlaced with recorded moments of her own vulnerability. I left feeling raw, tender, and curious to connect with the source of such powerful sonic artistry. 

Melanie Charles Says Jazz Has Always Come From Black Women

And so, I was honoured to hold space with her for a conversation, ahead of her US nation-wide The Future Loves You tour. Speaking from her New York home, the singer reveals all things spirituality, relationships, self-care, and more.

You were born and raised in Queens, New York. What would you say your relationship to home is like?

I have a relationship with nesting where I definitely need a bed that's mine and a pillow somewhere in the world, but I feel like home is just wherever, in a lot of ways. I mean, they call Queens the world borough. But in a lot of ways, I could live anywhere in the world - as long as I'm just loving myself and with people that I love.

I lived out of a suitcase for like two years. And it was really fun. It was very difficult also, financially, rough times. But I also love being able to be on the go and see different species of birds in different environments. I like to switch it up, but having a nest to come back to is very important to me now. And I have a day job. So I have people that depend on me to show up, and so that's also a great practice. 

Berlin was actually a study abroad [trip], at first to study experiments in pop music, and I ended up meeting my bandmate, Noah, on the first night that I went out, and we've been playing music ever since. That was 2018, and he's about to come back to New York because we're going to go on an East Coast tour together.

 In this ongoing pandemic, we're attempting to move forward by calling now a "new normal". What has moving forward looked like for you in your personal life?

Learning new skills and finding new pleasures in things that I enjoy. Gardening is a big part of my life right now. I have eggplants that I've been eating - oh my gosh, I didn't know I could do that. Cucumbers have a lot of flowers. And in the fall, since the weather's changing, I'm going to have some more frost tolerant plants like arugula and spinach and stuff.

I'm super inspired by how there's so much information in a seed, and the seed just grows slowly each day and nourishes itself and with the sun, and with the love that we give, just to keep growing. And that's all I want to do in life is just grow toward the sun and keep growing. So I think having new skills like I've been crocheting a lot, I'm really into the idea of making with my hands, or out of nothing or whatever scraps I have. That's what I kind of like to do with everything changing around me. So I've been crocheting, gardening, birdwatching and just chilling.

Did your relationship to gardening and the knowledge found in nature inform your single "Bio"? Because I know that means "organic" in German.

Right when I started gardening was when we put that out, and I was definitely thinking about organic food and who has access to organic food or who has the ability to eat healthy. I lived in Berlin for a while, and that's where the inspiration came.

I would go to Berlin, and you can get really affordable, healthy food. My waist was snatched when I lived in Berlin, okay. In New York, we literally had to protest in my neighbourhood in Crown Heights because they're getting rid of a supermarket, and it's going to create a food desert. It's such a drastic difference. So in releasing "Bio," we were asking each other these questions like, what does it mean when we don't have the tools to feed ourselves? 

I was reading one of your previous interviews about how, as a child, you took up music to help process strong and deep emotions. How much of your craft is transmuting pain into art?

There was a time, especially the direct line to My Creator era, where that's all it was like, sometimes I just can't even listen to [the album] because I just think of what I was overcoming and what I was trying to survive. It's really overwhelming that that's what came out, and it was embraced the way it was.

I actually think there's so much art to be made from comfort, from safety, from breath, from deep healing and communal care. And that's what I'm really focused on right now is making cool stuff with my friends and building our own world together and our own little cultural church of love and stillness and health. It's really important to me. I felt a shift in my body after I had a real burnout. I could feel my voice, unhook from my trauma, and unroot itself from my pain. My voice became so much lighter and freer. Vocally there was a shift in my body when I started to accept myself and accept everything that happened to me and everything that I've done. In really deeply loving myself, my voice just unhooked from my trauma, and now it's rooted in something much deeper - maybe the tip of my toes now is where my voice comes from. I just love that shift. So I'm focused on nurturing that and feeling still and peaceful and even in gigs that are stressful, just trying to know that it's all flow. And I'm gonna be okay. 

I know you performed at the Move Forward festival back in September. How was that?

It was beautiful. It was fun to see all my friends under the same roof and really dedicate it to them. I meditated on what it really means to move forward. The things you have to leave behind, things you have to find within yourself, the things you have to focus on, and having a vision because moving forward requires vision. I just thank my family and friends for holding me down and supporting me. Nothing that I do is possible without my collaborators, my family, and the people in my environment. I think that artists copy, great artists steal, but incredible artists have incredible support systems.

So, would you say community plays a big part in your work?

Community is everything in my work. Nothing happens without love. duendita is a band of all of us, even the people who make the cover art, the videos, everything. And I practice that by giving my collaborators splits on my songs; everyone takes a slice of the pie. I'm so not into ownership in the way that the music industry is. I think that if you breathe on the track, you deserve a piece of this for life. I have the best opportunity and blessing from God to work with my best friends on everything that I do, and I'm going to take it, and I'm going to treat that with respect. Like, my Mom runs our label with me and my best friend, Sandy, and it was founded 10 minutes away from the venue we played [in September]. So, my music is very local, very hyperlocal. I think a lot of artists are so concerned with being seen on a global scale.

I just want to be seen deeper and deeper and deeper within my community and be able to see my friends in a deeper way. To me, that's the best reach I could have as a human as an artist is just being close to people that I love and sharing our art together and helping everyone build what they have their heart set on building in this life, you know.

What has been bringing your heart comfort and safety lately?

I've been studying the human body and getting into vibrational sound healing, I would say. So my instrument of choice right now are tuning forks that are specifically designed for neuro-coherence or body tuning. They have different frequencies that you can do different protocols with for certain ailments and certain disorders. In my relationship to sound, it has to become an offering for my community where I could tell people, 'come to my house and I'll give you a 40 minute sound bath'. 

Being on stage is great; performing interviews is fun, but lately, it's just not hitting because I don't do this for myself. I do this for our health. I want to practice more and maybe become a sound doctor. That's where I see myself, living in Queens, and people know who to come to when they need that sense of grounding. So I've been practising a lot and learning a lot about the body, and I want to. I want to treat my duendita stuff almost like a day job and then be going to night school and learning as much as I can. So that way, sound can become something that I can share with others on a deeper level.

Have you learned any tips for easing heartbreak? Asking for a friend.

Oh, I got you. Putting both feet on the floor, like flat and deep breathing, is one of the most powerful ways to get back into your body. Body scanning, which I always was like, 'how do you do that?' Feel as though there's some sort of light or something going from the tip of your toes to the top of your head very slowly and feel it travelling to the top. That really helps me. Remember it's not happening to you right now.

Heartbreak is like a collection of moments in the past and in the future, and you're worrying about all these things. But really, you're in your body, and it's not happening to you right now. Let's breathe through it. Some things I could hold and cherish and move forward with, you know, it's never about getting over things. How do I move forward with this? Everything in life is cumulative. You know, I love to think about fungi because 650 million years ago, we were all fungi. That's where we come from. They're our ancestors, you know? So like, there's stillness, we know how to grow, we know how to regenerate, and we will continue to. So be in your body because all of your power, all of your strength is you and is right here, right now. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.