I don't have an emotional story to tell about how I've always been very musical as a kid. I made my first musical experience at the conservatory, where I tried to learn the violin. My conclusion from my five years of classical training is that I was not very gifted when it came to the violin and after I quit, I thought I'd had enough of all the music stuff, but here we are now.
Once I had forgotten all the musical theory rules, I started to pick up my stepsister's guitar and as you do, I taught myself how to play Wonderwall, many Green Day songs and Smells Like Teen Spirit. And voila, my frustration of music was gone and everything that happened after, happened pretty fast.
Before starting with C'est Karma, I briefly played in a punk band at my school. We weren't very successful and so we broke up after our third concert. I started singing to the songs I was learning on guitar because simply strumming a few chords started to bore me. At the age of 15 I chose the streets of Luxemburg-City as my first audience when I didn't find a student job but still wanted to make some money. At this point in time, my hate relationship with bureaucracy began, because for some weird reason you have to buy a 10€ permit to busk in our city. Ironically, the office selling the permits was only open from 9am-12am when no one is around the city to listen to you. Anyways, I survived it.
Then January 2018 came along, it was my little brother's eighth birthday and I was pretty late on looking for a birthday gift, so I decided to write my very first song for him. I realised that writing a song doesn't really take much and I began to write more of them.
Then I got to know Georges aka. Bartleby Delicate who started to mentor me and helped me open the gateway to live concerts.
Here's a summary of my first shows:
April 2018: Warm-Up Event for a local festival in a sustainable clothing store together with Bartleby Delicate
Mai 2018: Opening for Bartleby Delicate's EP release
Mai 2018: Opening for Milky Chance at Rockhal (the biggest venue in Luxemburg)
Honestly, it's still a riddle to me how I ended up at Rockhal a month after my first show. After that show things started to add up naturally. I played more shows, wrote more songs, recorded my first EP, went on my first tour etc.
And this is where we're at now. I see everything that happed to my music in direct link with my personal evolution, as I started with acoustic folk stuff and have now turned to more experimental pop music. Like many rebellious teens, I rejected anything mainstream, refused to listen to anything labelled under pop music and always wanted to be part of the "alternative underground scene". For me, politics and social matters have always been part of music. Listening to punk music as a kid and always having had a general interest in social and political matters, I never saw any reflection of my values in mainstream pop music. Turns out I just hadn't found the right artists: today I feel largely influenced by artists like, Charli XCX, Björk or SOPHIE who talk about feminist issues and are very active in the LGBT+ community.
Being a woman in our patriotic society and the daughter of two first generation immigrants, I’ve experienced the cruelty of discrimination first-hand and therefore it is evident to me, that as artists we are compelled to use our stages to stand up for our causes. This is also one of the reasons why I wanted to start this blog, to use my platform to keep you updated on my music but also talk about pertinent social matters. I view my music as political even though I also sometimes do like to write a cheesy love song for my partner.
This was a summary of C’est Karma. A musical project that is very personal to me, it is a documentation of my personal evolution over the years as well as it is my evolution as an artist.