What’s your stage name and where are you from?
My stage name is Tsira. I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but I’m currently living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
What’s the story behind your stage name?
Ideally, I’d love to just use my real first name as my artist name. But I’m actually named after a jazz musician who is decently well known so pretty much always knew I couldn’t use it. Years ago when I was making music with my friends I decided to throw my name in Google Translate from it’s original language, Arabic, and see which language sounded the best. I decided on “Tsira” which is from the Hausa language of West Africa.
Describe your musical journey in three sentences.
I started playing piano around the age of 6, didn’t take it too seriously until around middle school. My love for music grew throughout high school and in college and thanks to countless late nights messing around in Logic Pro at my school’s media center, I started to grow as a music producer. I’ve explored all kinds of genres and styles, I view my first album as the culmination of all the music I’ve listened to and made over thee years.
Share an interesting experience you had while creating your latest track.
This is a single from my upcoming album featuring two of my really good friends I’ve known since high school. It’s one of two songs that I didn’t completely write the lyrics for. It was really cool to see what JuDii and BrighterDaze came up with and I think this track “Bud” and the other song they are on both have my favorite verses from either one of them.
What message do you want to convey through your music?
You get it by how you live
Tell us about a challenge you faced during production and how you overcame it.
I have the tendency to overdo it with production sometimes, or at least have the desire to add all kinds of different instruments and parts. For “Bud” I forced myself to keep things simple. At it’s most dense, it’s keys, bass, drums, strings, and rapping. Even the drums are incredibly simple, just a kick and snare. No hats, shakers, percs, etc. Taking this approach forced me to be real intentional about the parts being used and I think allowing the track to have that space at some points really gives it a unique feel.
If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?
Too many to count, and in wildly different genres. To keep it to Hip-Hop, One Be Lo is probably my favorite rapper of all time. I would love to one day produce a track that felt like it was on his level.
Where do you see your music taking you in the next year?
I really want to work with other artists and musicians around the world. To be more specific, I’ve been learning Chinese for nearly two years now and wanna write some songs in Mandarin to challenge myself.
What’s the next big step for you as an artist?
Releasing my first album later this year. I’ve had so many abandoned projects over the years but this is the year I finally make it happen.
Where can we hear/watch your most recent work?
“Tsira” on all major streaming platforms. My instagram (and RedNote) is @tsira.music and my email is tsiramusic@gmail.com