Who is Somilia Rabee? Come, take my hand, slip inside and see...

I had the good fortune of meeting Somilia Rabee on a beautiful July afternoon. On her concert tour, she was passing through Atlanta, on her way to Montgomery, AL. And as the Goddess would have it, our paths crossed, and I was blessed when she accepted my offer to appear on my Blogtalkradio.com/theSiren show. As she gifted me with her new CD, sound unheard, I invited her to guest star on my blog, right here, on A Golden Life.

Again, she said yes, providing me with divine answers to my questions and delicious pictures.

Without further ado, my darlings, I give you, Miss Somilia Rabee, artist extraordinaire....

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1. Who is Somilia Rabee?

Just a human being trying to survive in this crazy mixed-up world. Doing it my own way, not taking no for an answer and claiming what I want.

a. What does your audience not know about her that would charm their hearts?

My other passion is for serving people, my mother, a stranger on the street, a customer in my store whatever and whenever..some of the positions that have most impacted my life have been those where I worked with mentally ill patients, adjudicated youth, at-risk youth and incarcerated women. Ultimately I would like to start an organization to teach people from these communities and many others about business development and management.

2. Are you from a musical family?

Listening to music has always been a big part of my family's tradition but not so much creating it. I do have several relatives who are visual artists though.

a. Is your family supportive of helping you pursue your dreams?

Absolutely. I was always marching to my own beat, so they don't expect any less from me as an adult. When I told my mom I was leaving my job at the Department of Transportation to do music full time, she kind of gasped but soon got over it after I reassured her that I have to follow my heart and my dream and that I have a plan to actually bring it to fruition. She couldn't really argue as she did the same thing herself around my age.

3. When did you know you wanted to be an entertainer?

I'd say by 7th grade. I was a class clown and loved the attention and making people feel good. I knew I had a knack for it, and by my freshman year was doing stand up at a local comedy club open mic.

4. What inspires you in the work of Herbie Hancock, Phoebe Snow and Lauryn Hill?

Herbie Hancock made some crazy music on the keyboard. I've always loved jazz fusion (often these groups were headed by keyboard players Bob James, Chick Korea, etc.) and Herbie Hancock just got nuts with it..I feel that same energy when I jam out on the keyboard..just like you wanna go nuts! Phoebe Snow has a really amazing voice but sang beautifully without all of the trills and going up and down the scale etc. Lauryn Hill is just dope! Amazing singer, amazing mc, producer, musician, woman, activist, mother and I'm sure much more. I wish she would come back...

5. Who are The Heath Brothers?

The Heath Brothers are a jazz group out of Philadelphia. They were very popular during the late 70s and early 80s when jazz fusion was really developing as a genre. I actually used a bassline from the song "MellowDrama" as the foundation for one of the songs on Beats, Sounds, Life.

6. How did you come about such a smooth, tantalizing flow in your music?

I'm not sure..this was my first digital production and I kind of just went with what sounded and felt good to me. I was just learning the programs and was limited in my abilities as well and I think sometimes that simplicity creates a sort of continuous groove..kind of like riding a low wave that's safe and comfortable but feels really good.

7. What is your creative process?

It varies...sometimes a phrase or sentence will come into my head and I'll write it down and create a piece around those beginnings. Most often, I am either tooling around on the keyboard, guitar or one of my virtual instruments and just come up with a chord progression or rhythm, melody that feels good and right like..ahhh this should be a song. From there I flesh out the arrangement...you know, adding a bass line here, a guitar solo there, or whatever components you choose for that song. It's like a painter with a palette of colors and a variety of mediums, canvas, oil paint, acrylic, you choose whatever seems right at the moment and just build from there.

8. How has your first tour been so far?

Crazy! Truly a journey from day one! Most exciting event? Having an opportunity to see New York at its most vibrant...I've never visited in the summer and in a matter of a few days saw Q-Tip in Central Park, an amazing musician that I know from Chicago, folks dancing, skating, playing drums, hustling and just being so alive..it was pretty amazing. Most challenging? I was really sick one day for several hours. I'm living out of my car and so that's where I had to lay. I was vomiting about every twenty minutes and it was particularly hot this day. I had to keep the windows up though, as I was parked in a neighborhood with all kinds of people going by and I didn't want to make myself vulnerable..it was the worst!

9. Where would you like to perform if you could perform anywhere in the world?

I'm thinking UK ..touring with Lauryn perhaps.

10. If you could regale one person with your silken sounds, who would it be and why?

Alicia Keys..I had an opportunity to meet her once and mentioned that I'd really like to play music with her sometime. Her response that she looked forward to it was genuine. If I could, I'd lavish her with my sounds in the hope that she would do a project with me.

11. What messages do you convey in your music?

Love is a common theme throughout everything I've ever written. I feel that is what I am..all of us are at the core. However, because of our fear of ourselves as love defined that fear manifests itself into all of the crazy scenarios we encounter with people throughout life. So in that context, I always write about love and its many manifestations. Beyond that, my message is one of equality, responsibility, and empowerment..realizing yourself as a part of the universe and beyond.

12. Describe what you have learned from your years with Electro Hip Hop, the HEARD and Kansas City?

Hmm, I guess that I am capable of making a good living doing something I love, but what that requires is not something that you or others easily manage. I can only be responsible for myself, make moves for myself and I suppose that is what being with those groups have taught me.

13. Have you always lived in the Chi?

No, I was born and raised in Kansas City, KS and MO, lived in Iowa, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Utah and Jamaica for a couple of months.

14. How do you download and meditate?

Download..a nice bike ride, stroll along the waterfront, watching a movie. Meditate..sitting or lying quietly with no sounds except the electric buzz of the energy around me, playing guitar, biking.

15. How do you get in the zone before a show?

Usually just hang out and do it up with friends at the gig before I go on. The voice saying "Ok, let's do this, you have to do it hard, you gone do this!" is inside me all the while, pumping me up and getting me comfortable to get up there and entertain the people that came to see me. I am also really big on rehearsing...the more of that I've done the more comfortable I am and the less I have to prepare myself mentally to get in that zone..I'm already there you know.

16. Are you a spiritual woman?

Very much so, although I'm not into religion as far as "following" it, I do find it interesting, but I feel a very deep connection with the everthing.

17. What is your next project?

After the tour I'll decompress in Chicago for about a month then head to wherever I decide to live next. Wherever that may be, I'll set up my studio and get to work on the full-length album and managing Bad Girlz Productions.

18. Do you plan an overseas trip any time soon?

I feel and see myself overseas very soon though I haven't made any official plans. I believe it is a part of my near future.

19. When did you start your beautiful locs?

I had locks before, cut them and spent several years bald. I started growing my hair back in 2001, and I guess officially started locks in 2003.

20. Who blessed you with the enchanting name, Somilia? What does it mean?

My mother gave me my name..my parents were a part of the Nation of Islam when I was born. They wanted to give me a name that reflected their beliefs and so when my mother saw the name in a newspaper article she was reading about the country she knew that was me. I have tried many times to find the meaning of the word "Somalia" and have yet been unable to find anything more than explanations about the country itself. However, my middle name, Rabee, is Arabic and means, spring.

The Golden Goddess

El 19 de agosto

Con amor

In the Splendor of the Night...there are secrets and bees!

At 7 p.m., I dress, apply my make-up, and style my Sisterlocks. Within the hour, I am stepping into a star-draped night, on my way to my first Moxie Cabaret starring the beautiful, burlesque diva, Atlanta's own, Vagina Jenkins, and other local burlesque talent. I am ready, directions on paper. The gala is 21 minutes from my Clarkston home, precisely 10.38 miles away.

I access Highway 78W and begin diligently looking for Parkway Drive, in the dark. In no time 78W fades into Scott Boulevard, and, somehow, Parkway is just a smear of ink on a page in my journal. So I keep riding, dressed with no where to go and bent on making good use of getting out of the house on a Sunday evening. To put it bluntly, I'm breaking out of a staid routine---reading or writing or exercising the weekend away. By the time my black Jag races down Ponce de Leon, I am silently bribing God or my angels for clues to my destination, as I have no friends, who reside near the downtown area, to barge in on at such an ungodly hour.

Beyond my windshield, the night is friendly. Enticing me onward.

Am I heading to Belissima and their Sunday night salsa party? So what. I'm not wearing a swing-hem skirt and stilettos; I yet intend to salsa and tango even if the evening doesn't end on Amsterdam Avenue. Ummm. Piedmont Park will be too dark and eerie to adequately people watch. I don't know if Kat's Cafe, my favorite haunt, is open on a Sunday, although I'm fond of Thursday nights, when the musicians jam and scat my heartbeat.

So imagine my SURPRISE when the Jag pulls into the Midtown Art Cinema's parking lot. Even though I have all faith in the Divine, I glance out my window at passers-by and leave my purse in the car, under the brakes. Parked in a muted spot near the building's entrance, I glide, still puzzled, and a bit reluctantly, to the box office.

I have no problem admitting it---I haven't been to the movies since before the dinosaurs. Which is why I've missed quite a few films, one being Sex and the City or Sex in the City (see what I mean?).

Nonetheless, I get to the window and am shocked to see movies are $10.00, my ten dollars. Inwardly, I smile at a gentleman who gladly whips $7.00 out of his bruised wallet for his senior ticket. The cashier does not ask to see proof of his discount, his face, I gather, being validation enough. Huh uh! I'm 10 years off. Count that out for tonight. Okay! What to do? The glassed girl stares at me and smiles. A line forms on my right. That's when I remember my purse is in the car. Brilliant. And all this despite Shirley saying she'd heard the movie was a must-see.

Fine! I retrace my steps to the car. God is speaking to my attention-deficit pocketbook. Tickled, thinking how I'll laugh about the night's adventure with Miss Know-It-All and Shirley, I grab my big green bag and return to the cashier, to inform Miss Girlie I'm seeing a movie alone, for the first time.

"Great! Nothing like a first, honey. Enjoy!" she spouts.

I match her smile and take my ticket receipt. Say, "Thank you!"

Inside, "Bees" is nestled on the right, near the theatre's entrance. I stroll towards a set of tucked-away double doors. The room is empty outside of a cute couple, snuggled into one another, seated towards the front and an older gentleman in a wheelchair in the rear. I slip into a cushioned seat behind the snuggling girls and snuggle darkness.

The movie begins. It's South Carolina, 1964. Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) is adjusting the antenna on the television. A history-making, civil-rights decision is being televised, and Rosaleen and 14-year-old Lily (Dakota Fanning) sit galvanized by the news: Blacks have the right to vote. Thus begins a string of events that leave me wrenched with emotion. I cry a little, laugh a little, and even yearn to fight a little.

Scriptwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood has breathed life into Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 yawning bestseller (which sits on my shelf yet unread, although after seeing the movie, I shall make time to read it soon).

I am wholly enchanted, following a take-charge, fast-talking Lily and spunky Rosaleen as they make their way to Tiburon, S.C., where, unbeknownst to Lily, her dead mother, Debra, made her way to the same farm years before, fleeing Lily's abusive father, Owen. Debra's keepsakes point to the Boatwright Farm and beekeeper August Boatwright (Queen Latifah), locally renown honey entrepreneur...literally and figuratively.

Before August, Lily lies about how she and Rosaleen come to be there, but August Boatwright, who can hold water, as my Grandma Moss used to say, welcomes them into her loving, well-organized, family stronghold, a secret, no doubt, to whites who haven't yet figured out how to take the Boatwrights' 20-plus acres and bee empire.

In the shadows, I marvel at Sue Monk Kidd's audacity to write about a family of beautiful, cultured Black women, who not only survive (unmolested) but also flourish in a time of hate and lynchings. And I love them! There is the matriarch, August, who teaches Lily about beekeeping, family, faith and love. The fiercely independent June (Alicia Keys) is a social activist and cello-playing sister, who masters love lessons, i.e., family is about more than biological kin. Then there is May (Sophie Okonedo), the beloved sister of the exquisite facial expressions that own my heart! Kudos to Prince-Bythewood for trusting her knowing to cast Okonedo in the role of a character younger than her lovely 39 years. May, an easily excitable beauty, shoulders the sadness of the times by writing what hurts her on slips of paper and sticking them between the stones of a symbolic Wailing Wall in the sisters' yard.

It is safe to say, in the event you don't know, I am famous in the Moss Clan for retelling a story or movie you may wish to read or see to the nth degree, although I shall not be guilty of it here. So snap up $10, your ten or somebody else's, the latter is preferred, and treat yourself to a memorable movie. But I forewarn you. Tears may trickle, if you're like me. Laughter will bubble up from your soul. And you will praise the cast royally, with that little Dakota rendering a captivating performance with those saucer-size eyes and womanish ways. Tis true, Lily "brings the outside world in," as she rather aptly puts it in the movie.

"Love is all around you!" August tells Lily, who longs for someone to love her. It is another part I adore. The words serve to remind me that no matter what happens, I am always loved. For I am love, as we all are. Therefore, yes, I will continue to serenade myself and go to the theatre alone, if need be. After all, are we ever really alone, and aren't we worthy of loving ourselves so that we can better love others?

But that is a horse of a different color. Right now, we return to our regularly scheduled movie review.

Rosaleen and May become fast friends and play girlishly, while Lily works alongside August. Yet I love it when the two women delight in playing, something from which we could all benefit from time to time. One afternoon, screaming their pleasure, the women draw stern-eyed June into their good time. She allows herself to laugh, and, eventually, to cry, though not without a battle.

Before I lie in these lines, I'll stop and rest my laptop keys at 3:47 a.m. In parting, I wish you close listening to the Voice Within. It will allow you to live richly, lovingly. And as much as possible, say YES to life, considering on the other side of a YES is usually the adventure your soul seeks! Don't ask me why...it just bees like that!

Trust yourself and the splendor of your life will unfold like secrets in the night.

Te amo,
TheSiren