Meet Dessa, who will be covering the Minnesota Orchestra's South African tour for Classical MPR

Hello. I'm Dessa.

I'm a writer and musician who'll be riding along with the Minnesota Orchestra and Classical MPR on their South African tour. For the many of you who don't know me, I'd like to properly introduce myself. And to do that I'm going to direct your attention to a carpeted living room in South Minneapolis, circa 1988.

At 7, I did not know what a glottal stop was, but I knew there was a sound — a strange new sound that I liked very much in the song "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes." That song was on an album called Graceland, which my parents played and to which I often listened while sitting on the living room floor. On the recording, vocalists singing with Paul Simon made a sound sort of like a musical hiccup, where they all stopped short in unison, the way a figure skater going full speed might turn her blades sideways to spray a little ice and brake in style. I could imitate this noise easily and my mother could do it, too, which was exciting because I'd never heard human voices do that trick before.

I had no way of recognizing it then, but my mother had an excellent voice — easily better than the one I'd develop. She could absentmindedly match Whitney Houston's melismata while doing the dinner dishes and hum clever countermelodies to songs she'd barely heard. When we sang along to the radio together in the car, she'd urge, "OK, now sing something that isn't there." She wanted me to ad-lib, improvise or weave a harmony through and around the main pop line.

Meet Dessa

Now, 30 years later, I am a seasoned performer. I began my career in an independent rap group called Doomtree; we spent our 20s recording in basement studios, releasing our own music, and getting a decent education in entrepreneurship, marketing and money management along the way. We made genre-blending hip-hop that combined our varied tastes. Some of the guys loved old rock songs; some loved foreign jazz; some loved punk. I loved vocal harmonies, melancholy melodies and the sounds of strings, piano and guitar.

We toured hard, gained traction and toured harder. Slowly, our audiences grew. We went from touring the Midwest to touring the country. At home, we could sell out First Avenue. Then we could sell it out three nights in a row, back to back. We received offers to play festivals in the UK, Germany, Belgium and France. We were not reclining on balconies with affogatos, mind you. As often as not, we were sharing bunk beds. We were seeing the world on our own steam, and we were spending our collective youth in the company of our choosing.

As my career solidified, I had the chance to venture outside of hip-hop. In what felt like an outlandish indulgence, I bought a $500 Casio keyboard from a music shop on Lyndale Avenue in Uptown Minneapolis. I played badly then (and still do now), but I managed to capture my musical ideas well enough to share them with other musicians who could bring them to life.

I recorded an acoustic love song with the incredibly talented cellist Takenobu; I co-wrote a piece for a 600-voice choir with composer Jocelyn Hagen; I made my debut with the VocalEssence choir on stage at Orchestra Hall, performing a song I wrote with gifted musician and arranger Andy Thompson. In 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda asked me to contribute a track to The Hamilton Mixtape, and I did a seriously aerobic victory dance in my apartment.

In 2017, I had one of my proudest musical moments: my debut with the Minnesota Orchestra. Sarah Hicks conducted; Andy Thompson arranged; I bought a couple of new dresses. We sold out two nights in a row.

As the front person of a tight band, you're nimble. You can change the set list or stop to tell a joke — it's as if you're maneuvering through the world on a skateboard. Collaborating with an orchestra, you are at the bow of a destroyer, hair blown back and chin into the wind. The sheer magnitude of all that talent on stage, with every player on time and in tune and sensitive to the dynamic of the larger sound, is a force larger than life.

In between the Graceland years of my childhood (which were also scored with Sade, the Beatles and Michael Jackson) and joining Doomtree in my early 20s, I earned a philosophy degree from the University of Minnesota. During my undergraduate years, I had dreams of becoming a creative writer. I ended up as a musician (in part) because I couldn't figure out how to get published. Performing gave me a platform to share what I'd written on stage.

Even while touring hard with Doomtree and as a solo artist, I wrote essays and poems and short works of fiction. Sometimes, I'd pay to have them professionally bound at a local printing shop, making miniature books to sell at concerts or give away as part of deluxe music packages. I submitted my work to writing contests, literary journals and sent off moon shots to periodicals like The New Yorker. Finally (fiiinally), after years of trying, I started racking up a few wins with publications like the City Pages, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and then The New York Times Magazine.

Next month will see the publication of my first hardcover essay collection, presented by Dutton Books. It's called My Own Devices, and it tells the story of — well, of a neurotic, hard-touring artist trying to make a place for herself before the clock runs down.

As a musician who works from home, I spend a lot of time listening to public radio. My ears perked up immediately when I heard that Classical MPR was headed to South Africa. I've performed there twice, and South Africa lives up to its considerable hype: the knockout coastline; the arts culture; the easy hospitality; the creamy Amarula liqueur (if you have a sweet tooth, please find yourself some of this; it's a lot like Baileys Irish Cream — look for the elephant on the cap); the arresting, refreshing and moving way that people talk about race. It's also a complex place, struggling with corruption, inequity and regional rolling blackouts. Nelson Mandela's fortitude, grace and his sense of humor continue to reverberate palpably. (I'd recommend his autobiography, even the abridged version, if you have space on the reading list.)

And there's the music: impassionate, skillful players in both contemporary and traditional scenes. Those voices I'd first heard on Graceland were, of course, the singers of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The sheer, undeniable talent of that South African choir awed listeners around the world, including one listener who sat enthralled, cross-legged on her parents' carpet and who is now, many years later, counting the days until the upcoming trip to their homeland.

Throughout the trip, I'll be posting to social media using the hashtag #DessaInSAfrica. Those posts will be collected here on ClassicalMPR.org, too. Follow along for photos, little stories and scraps of overheard conversation. If you've been to South Africa, or have plans to go, hit me with questions, advice or just to share in a little bit of the adventure.