It has been common knowledge that green tea has been known to revitalize mind, body, and soul. The Japanese tea, which has captivated the West only recently, has been known to have healing properties and has been used as a medicinal aide for thousands of years in Japan and China.
Enter Green Tea the artist. The DC area singer lives up to her namesake, providing a therapeutic alternative to the sounds of today’s radio. Her music captivates, inspires, and even doles out advice. “Green is my favourite colour, and tea is healing, it’s soothing,” she says as she appropriately takes a sip of her tea, “and I’m pretty much musical medicine for the soul.”
Green Tea is an old soul and she grew up wanting to sing at an early age. “I’ve been singing for a long time. My mother would tell me that I would stand on top of anything with my Miss Piggy tambourine and just sing.”
Her love of music was no doubt influenced by her musical idols, from Stevie Wonder to jazz legends like Louie Armstrong, Sara Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald. “Music a long time ago used to tell stores, nowadays, the music is so forward and it’s missing that element.”
On the powerful track, “Fire,” she talks about her personal journey of not blending in and her struggles with her identity as an artist. “Fire is my testimony,” she says about the track. Unfortunately the word God is still a no-no for many artists in the industry.
Faced with the choices of going the secular path or the spiritual one, she chose both. “My style of music really doesn’t fit anywhere. I’m not traditional R&B, I’m not traditional gospel.” On “Fire” she made her intentions clear with one single line: “I choose not to reject the call of God in my life.” Asked why she made this decision to talk about God, she simply says “because I owe my life to him. I need to be true to my art and be true to myself, because he is a big piece of who I am.”
In addition to her spirituality, songs like “Love Yourself” and “Hold On” also find Green Tea giving advice. As a social worker, she has had to deal with the difficulties that people face every day. “A lot of times [my music] comes from talking to people, and having people telling me their stores. It comes out in my music. Its my musical therapy.”
The native of DC, or “Chocolate City” as we call it, loves the different facets that the city has to offer. “Theres a vast spectrum of people, from the poor to the rich.” But of course, as a musical artist, she highly recommends the U Street Corridor, which starred as the backdrop for her video “Crazy Feelin,” and the area once known as Black Broadway.
Winston Ford | Photography by Tamar Nussbacher
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