At 9 years old, Aida Ade heard the violin for the first time.
She had just moved with her family from the north side of St. Louis city to Ferguson-Florissant. In this unfamiliar, nearly all-white neighborhood, she felt like she had no kids to play with, no family nearby and no corner stores to explore. At school she got suspended and frequently got into trouble.
When the school’s orchestra teacher, Jan Davis, stopped by Ade’s class to play the violin, Ade (pronounced ah-day) was enraptured.
“I was just amazed by her,” Ade, now 30, says. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what is this instrument? We don’t have this in the city.’”
Knowing that music was good for kids with behavior issues, Ade’s third-grade teacher encouraged her to try it. A year later, Ade was playing with the middle-school orchestra. By the time she was in middle school, she had switched to the viola and was playing professionally. It was only after graduating college that Ade picked up the guitar and began singing.
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Aida Ade
Today, the singer-songwriter has two albums and two EPs, and performs frequently at local venues. Her music is calming and eclectic, and draws inspiration from a range of genres like neosoul, R&B and dream pop (“a melting pot of sound,” Ade says.) When she sings, she tries to imitate the sound of a viola.
Ade has always been a songwriter. As a 6-year-old, she would sing made-up lyrics to music her mom would play in the car. As she got older, she drew inspiration from emo-rock artists like Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy to write her songs.
She didn’t have to look far for other aspiring musicians, because “everybody wanted to be an artist, so I was just watching all of my older cousins.”
In high school, Ade’s songwriting became a necessity. As someone who struggled with mental health issues, music was her refuge.
“Music was honestly the way that I got to stay here,” Ade says. “I know that sounds kind of corny, but it was literally a lifesaver for me.”
Now, Ade writes up to 30 songs a week, or about four or five a day. Of her songs, 500 of them have yet to released. Ade says that some songs are meant to exist only for her, either because she is not ready to share them yet, or she just wouldn’t want her mom to hear.
During the day, Ade is a therapist. In the way that she provides therapy to clients, music provides therapy to her.
Writing a song requires sitting with an emotion, for Ade, guitar in hand. Her songs seek to put her emotions into sound.
“My goal of sitting with that emotion is to acknowledge that it’s there, understand where it sits in my body, understand where it comes from,” Ade says. “Once you’re able to be creative with it, that’s my way of telling that emotion ‘OK I see you girl, but it’s time for us to move on.’”
She hopes the music let’s others better process their own emotions. “I just want people to understand that a lot of things that we deal with, especially mental health, are because we are not allowing ourselves to have relationships with our emotions,” Ade says. She previously worked in early childhood education and hopes to interweave that knowledge with her therapy background, and dreams of being on the City’s Board of Education. “I hope that I can use my platform to bring more awareness to the issues that we’re facing as educators, and as children in the education system.”
Heartbreak motivated her to switch from viola to begin with, when she felt like no piece of music could convey what she was feeling — only words could. “If it’s an angry week, I could write for days,” Ade says.
For her, listening to past songs is like reading her diary. Ade says her second EP, released in 2018 and titled “Blue,” is “wrapped in grief” and difficult to listen to. One of the songs had been dedicated to her best friend and aunt, who passed away a couple weeks before it was released. Reflecting on the EP also makes her think of a time she was immature, Ade says, laughing.
Her latest album, titled “The Unbreakable Aida Ade,” was released in January of this year. As a whole, the album reflects a yearning for the freedom to become a full-time artist. “Unbreakable” was the first song on the album she wrote, and was born out of the realization that, well, everything would be okay.
“I ended up writing the song, and I just remember sobbing,” Ade says. “It honestly felt like giving myself permission to be free to do unconventional life. I don’t have to be a 9-to-5 therapist, I don’t have to go to school. What I do have to do is free myself from those expectations.”
Ade attributes the release of the album to local singer Mvstermind and his artist-development camp. When she gave up on music, that’s what brought her back.
“I don’t know what convinced me that music wasn’t for me, but in my mind I just couldn’t do it,” Ade says. “If it wasn’t for Mvstermind bringing me into his camp, there would be no ‘Unbreakable Aida Ade.’”
On July 5, Ade will perform live at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation with the Dhoruba Collective. Expect an eclectic mix of music, and a bit of a celebration for her mom’s 60th birthday. (Her mom is also a singer.)
As for her listeners, Ade aims to inspire hope.
“I want everybody to know it is possible for you to live a good life with whatever it is you want to become and whatever you want to do,” Ade says. “Because honestly I’ve learned it the hard way that you’ll be miserable chasing things that aren’t you.”
“The Unbreakable Aida Ade” stands as testament of that.
“This project is the first time that I felt like I was being 100% authentically me,” Ade says.
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