Linda Balliro: A Conversation with Zakiyyah Sutton

13/02/2023

The EntreMusician

0:00

28:53

EntreMusician & Associate Professor of Voice at Berklee School of Music, Professor Linda Balliro interviews Zakiyyah Sutton, currently Season Partner for the 2022-2023 Boston Children's Chorus 20th Anniversary Season.

Zakiyyah is an artist-activist who utilizes music and visual media to explore themes that centralize marginalized communities via her production company, Black and Bold Productions. As an actress and classically-trained singer who is well-versed in Opera, Hip-Hop, Jazz, and R&B, she employs her extremely versatile skill-set to reach a broad range of audiences and craft a sound that is uniquely her own--including her most well-known, "Hip-Hopera". She’s had the pleasure of bringing these sounds to numerous audiences from the House of Blues to more recently, the United Nations. After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Political Science and Sociology, she worked in politics for City Councilor Tito Jackson and later Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins. During her time there she created D.A.S.H. (Defensive Aids in Situations of Help); a women’s self-defense program that travels throughout Boston and neighboring cities. She also serves as a trustee for the Free for All Concert Fund, an organization charged with providing the necessary funding to make classical music accessible to the masses. She shares this honor with former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, and other dignitaries.

After departing from politics, Zakiyyah still remained civically engaged, serving as an elected delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. She then spent a year pursuing her artistic and scholastic ambitions in the Czech Republic, Thailand, South Africa, and Colombia, hosting Black Lives Matter events in the latter two countries and even recording with Grammy-nominated group Explosión Negra. She also has a commitment to education, having worked as an administrator at Conservatory Lab Charter School, offering private voice training via Harvard’s Holden Voice Program and the Hamilton Garrett Music and Arts Academy, and even creating an arts-activism program for teens in 2020 entitled “Creative Revolution”. In addition to her artistic practice, Zakiyyah currently works as a racial equity consultant with Arts Connect International, helping arts organizations reassess their practices through the lens of equity and creative justice. These experiences, coupled with her artistic versatility, make her uniquely qualified to use her art as a catalyst for social change. Her upcoming album, African Import, provides a window into both the beauty and complexity of the black diaspora, and the significance of its consumption by mainstream society.

Visit Zakiyyah @ https://www.zakiyyahofficial.com/

Visit Linda Balliro @ https://lindaballiro.com/

SHOW NOTES

00:00 – Show Open

01:07 – Boston Children's Chorus

06:29 – Arts Activism

08:24 – Formative Years

10:45 – Vocal Training

17:26 – Hip Hopera

21:31 – What's Next?

22:15 – Acting

22:42 - Instagram Contact