Habiba Schultz
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Habiba Schultz

Noisiel, Île-de-France, France | Established. Jan 01, 2010 | INDIE

Noisiel, Île-de-France, France | INDIE
Established on Jan, 2010
Solo Pop Soul

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"Yellows & Oranges" - Debut Single (forthcoming on insite music)

"This song is eerily beautiful and unique..." - Kristin Cifelli, Artist Development, We Are Listening (31 Dec 2010)

(LIVE) SONG INFORMATION

- The live recording on this (Sonicbids) site was taped on a digital recorder (Zoom H4N) during a lunch rush performance at Terra Cafe, a soul restaurant in inner-city Baltimore, MD, USA. It's only the 6th time Habiba had performed in public solo playing the keys while singing this new composition (so there is still some "left-brainedness" in the vocal delivery ;-)

- This single will be recorded and co-produced professionally by American multi-platinum producer Paul Mahern (The Fray, John Mellencamp)

- This single will be sung in the upcoming dramatic feature film "Rock the Planet", in which Habiba has been (biographically) cast as an up-and-coming singer/dancer and vocal coach to at-risk children in New York City, which mirrors her own life as a vocal instructor to at-risk children in the Paris, primarily of North African and African descent.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT :: The Story Behind the Song
“"Yellows and Oranges' is a song based on a friend of mine from whom I draw much inspiration – a young woman determined to be in charge of her own destiny despite the cultural and familial chains that seek to limit her. For it is only through following her own path will she achieve a sense of self, and peace of mind. She’s a young French-Algerian woman raised in tenement housing in the French suburbs, who, like many youth (no matter where they are from, what color, religion, gender or ethnicity), yearns to break free from the desperate and closed circumstances into which she was born. In this case, it's a young woman being forced into marriage against her will. 

 Universally, it’s about families and societies who don’t listen to their children or their childrens’ needs, but rather use them to fulfill their own. This young woman’s determination to go beyond the bounds of what is safe, what is known – the life her parents have designed for her - towards a fuller life driven from her own center, is, to me, hera-ic and inspirational. Thank you for listening." - Habiba Schultz

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Check Habiba out on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwFkOYJ3Cwk

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"Habiba's versitility in genres is remarkable and rare, as she can effortlessly move through jazz, classical, R&B and pop repertoires. She is a unique interpreter with the uncommon ability to move an audience when she sings because she is so generous with her emotions when performing. This kind of extraordinary presence takes a special kind of courage. Her distinctive, humanistic voice is both non-derivative and desperately needed in the current musical landscape." 

             - Shara Worden, opera-trained vocal coach/The Worden Institute, NYC; award-winning & internationally-acclaimed indie vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/composer, My Brightest Diamond; collaborater: Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, The Clogs, Dayna Kurtz, St. Vincent.

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With visual lyrics that create "beautiful images" and "vivid pictures", "Yellows & Oranges" is "eerily beautiful and unique…" 

            - Kristin Cifelli, Artist Development, We Are Listening 

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"Habiba has a magnetic style - a unique fusion of jazz, modern, ballet, hip-hop and African dance - superb technique and a mystical presence that takes dance to a higher level of "feeling."

            - Nathan Trice, Prof. of Dance, Alvin Ailey-trained Founder/Artistic Director of Nathan Trice/RITUALS, NYC:

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A BRIDGE BUILDER

Habiba Schultz is a socially - and emotionally - committed, soulful new French-Algerian singer/songwriter and dancer based in Paris, New York City and Baltimore USA. Through her deeply intuitive art and unique background, Habiba is a bridgebuilder into the emotional worlds we, as a global society, often fear to tread. Habiba believes that our unexpressed emotional wounds are one of the biggest causes of violence - to self and others - in the world today. Thus she is committed to creating music that empowers people to uncover and heal these wounds, and, in doing so, set free their own true voice. Habiba understands she can only realize this goal through the painful journey down to face her own daemons in a process of personal en-light-enment - returning to report what she experienced in kinetic poetry and song.

Born of North African-Arab-Muslim descent, orphaned as a baby and adopted by white Catholic parents when she was 4-months old (who changed her name to "Marianne", the woman who represents the French Republic's spirit of "liberte, equalite and fraternite"), Habiba (which means "beloved one" in Arabic) naturally embodies a spiritual bridge between Black and White, East and West, North and South. She grew up in the public housing district of a mostly Middle Eastern/African Paris suburb singing English to Mary J. Blige on the radio and singing French with her adoptive parents to Charles Aznavour on their stereo.

Habiba connected to American Soul music early on in life, as it awakened her North African roots and expressed the pain and longing for her true voice that she had kept bottled up inside. Her influences include the vocal truths of Mary J. Blige, Billie Holiday and Diana Ross, and the music and poetry of Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Stevie Nicks, Nina Simone, Elton John/Bernie Taupin and Leonard Cohen.

In 2007, Habiba graduated from l'EDIM - Ecole de Jazz et Musiques Actuelles - in Paris, where she studied music theory and voice, while waiting tables to pay the rent. Soon thereafter she became the vocalist/frontwoman for the jazzy-folk Paris duo "The Siblings," singing covers and starting to write original compositions of her own that were of a more soulful vein than their set list.

GOING SOLO – SIGNING WITH insite
In Fall 2010, Habiba decided to go solo to devote herself full-time to her non-vocal instruments – piano and guitar – and to writing and arranging original compositions. At that point, she signed with the socially-progressive music label, insite Music, a division of the probiotic mass mneme company, insite, of which she also became a partner. She is the debut artist of the label and has artistically collaborated with insite’s founder, M. DeSales Linton, Esq., award-winning filmmaker, social justice attorney, and progressive media entrepreneur, for many years. 

 Habiba's first song, "Yellows and Oranges", will be released with insite.

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Habiba currently is writing new material and re-crafting songs-in-progress for a full set/repertoire of original compositions and covers for performances in Europe and America starting in Summer 2014.


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