Art In This Present Moment
Leading a Path Forward: How Queen Drea Uses Music to Find Her Roots
Sound alchemist Queen Drea seeks reconnection with her family’s heritage through music and storytelling.
When Queen Drea wanted music that no one else was making, she decided to experiment with sound — creating her own unique sound.
She grew up singing in a Baptist church. At the same time, she was listening to genre-bending artists from the early ‘90s, like Björk and Tori Amos. Both experiences laid the foundation for her musical journey. Queen Drea records and augments her voice electronically and mixes it with other sounds. She uses her music to engage with her audience and reflect on what’s happening socially and culturally. These days, she has a particular project in mind.
Born on the 4th of July: From Mississippi to Minnesota is Queen Drea’s latest creative endeavor.
Her idea is to create a visual album in the form of an audio comic book and a movie score with original music. The project will tell stories about her mother’s life and experiences of being a Black woman born in Mississippi in the 1940s and her migration through Chicago to Minnesota.
Queen Drea’s family received their 40 acres and a mule as outlined in the Emancipation Proclamation.
“We still have some of [the land] but in the African tradition of cooperative economics, some was given away to the community of Harmony, Mississippi, to seed it and help it grow by my great-great-great grandfather. I’d like to use this project to uncover the history of my family’s land in Mississippi, and my family’s past and current relationship with that land.”
“I make worlds with my compositions. Glitchy vocals, guttural cries, scratchy sounds, ear-piercing ground loops, and off-kilter rhythms are what I do. Everything is intentional, yet improvisational in nature.”
Queen Drea
Supported by funding from Art In This Present Moment, the American Composers Forum, and Pillsbury House + Theatre, this project will provide a unique and creative way to explore the history and experiences of a Black family who received their 40 acres and a mule through the eyes of Queen Drea’s mother.
The project will follow her mother’s life growing up on their land in Mississippi, following her time as a nursing student at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) at 16, her move to Chicago at 18, and eventually Saint Paul where she spent the rest of her life.
This project will serve as a conduit through which her family can become reinvested in their past, encouraging them in the present to activate and become better stewards of their land, building generational wealth for their family's future.
About the Artist
Queen Drea is a sound alchemist, mixing sonic potions laced with looped vocals, jagged rhythms, and found sounds. She has designed sonic worlds for Pillsbury House+Theatre, Penumbra Theater, dance companies, BrotherHood Dance, Ananya Dance Theater, international artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and other dance and theater artists. Queen Drea has created interdisciplinary work about depression in the Black community, African creator goddess Mawu and an exploration of what life comes from Black wombs. She is a 2022 McKnight Composer Fellow, 2019 PH+T Naked Stages Fellow, 2019 Jerome Finalist and 2017 ACF Emerging Composer awardee.
Queen Drea was nominated for Art In This Present Moment by Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), an ensemble company of transnational feminist professional dance artists who create and perform social justice choreography.
Art In This Present Moment
This project is part of Art in This Present Moment, an initiative of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. We provided grants to three Minnesota-based nonprofit organizations to fund work by BIPOC artists who are changing and challenging dominant narratives through their craft.
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