a little
closer

It started with a small piano

I got my first piano at five. It was small and inexpensive, but it was mine. I would listen, find the notes, and work out melodies by ear. It gave me a way to make something out of everything I was hearing.

I have always been sensitive to sound. The smallest detail can stay with me: a note, a texture, a voice arriving a little too early or too late. Something that could feel overwhelming became a strength in music. I listen closely to timing, tone and timbre, and to the little things a song still needs.

Choir, theatre, poetry and dance gave me other ways to express myself. Music became something I could feel in my body as well as hear. Today, my sound carries soul, R&B and Afro influences, with the piano still close to its centre.

Between places

My life has been shaped by Nigeria, South Africa and Canada. Each has changed how I understand belonging, Blackness and myself. Moving between those experiences means thinking about who I am, how I am seen, and what gets lost when someone assumes they already understand me.

Those questions enter my art and my advocacy. Education for girls and women matters deeply to me. My work in science, writing and philanthropy comes from the same person who makes the music. I do not experience those parts of my life as separate.

In my own voice

Music gives me room to be vulnerable. I do not have to be composed or professional all the time. I can be uncertain, playful, complicated, or still figuring something out.

I write fiction, and I often see life as poetry. That carries into my songs: the metaphors, the double meanings, the things that reveal themselves on another listen. Those layers let a song hold more than one feeling at once.

With New Era, I explored love, loss and self-discovery. I continue to explore my voice and who I am becoming through the music.

I hear music in relationships, in love, in loss, in the way we move through the world. Making songs is one of the ways I make sense of it all.

Dara Belle