Helena Lalita

A peek into Helena’s past reveals a history that spanned continents, cultures, and genres before arriving at her synth-heavy sound. Born in India to classically trained parents, raised in Pennsylvania, schooled in the Himalayas, discovered in Venice, now based in L.A., her path to musical success story is anything but typical.

While “Paper House,” with it’s immediately danceable beat and elastic vocal performance doesn’t hit all those cultural touchstones (don’t expect any sitar), it shows a newcomer with a beguiling voice and innate pop sensibility. While it may be a cliché that music is the universal language, "Paper House" just reinforces the truth that pop knows no boundaries. Check out the premiere of the Claire Carre-directed video below, and be on the lookout for her album early next year. - Refinery29

A peek into Helena’s past reveals a history that spanned continents, cultures, and genres before arriving at her synth-heavy sound. Born in India to classically trained parents, raised in Pennsylvania, schooled in the Himalayas, discovered in Venice, now based in L.A., her path to musical success story is anything but typical.

While “Paper House,” with it’s immediately danceable beat and elastic vocal performance doesn’t hit all those cultural touchstones (don’t expect any sitar), it shows a newcomer with a beguiling voice and innate pop sensibility. While it may be a cliché that music is the universal language, "Paper House" just reinforces the truth that pop knows no boundaries. Check out the premiere of the Claire Carre-directed video below, and be on the lookout for her album early next year. - Refinery29

York, PA -
Aaryonia Deshields bounced her left knee nervously in a classroom at Devers Elementary School as she recited a poem she'd written, about being the girl in the corner, the quiet one.

As the seventh-grader finished, Helena Protopapas commended her for her honesty.

"That's really important," Protopapas said. "Writing music is like (having) your own therapist."

Protopapas, 22, knows a little something about that. Born in India and raised in Glen Rock, she's now a singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles, where she's signed with Warner Bros. She's working on her debut album, and some of her songs are available online.

While in York County for the holidays, she spent


From left, Jenaya Fells-Griffin, 11, Adrian Torres, 11, Yanelly Escalante, 11, and Yessiah Principe, 12, look through poems they have written during a songwriting workshop at Devers Elementary School. (DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS - KATE PENN)
three afternoons holding a songwriting workshop at Devers, where her mother Jan Protopapas is a teacher for English language learners. Students in sixth through eighth grade, with an interest in music, participated.
Helena Protopapas spent the first day talking with students about what music means to them and sharing her creative process with them. She sent them home with an assignment: to bring in some of their own poetry or write some lyrics to share.

The following days, they shared their lyrics -- about love, friendship, the world at large -- and worked to turn them into a song. They settled on a theme of good and bad, dark and light, love pulling them through.

Protopapas used a keyboard to set up the melody. Students threw out suggested lines and adjusted them until they worked.

"The first line of a song is really important, because it opens you up and gives you a landscape," she told the group at the Dec. 13 workshop.

Protopapas said that as her "little music career" has slowly progressed, she's seen "how much more music is than something for myself."

She held a similar workshop at a high school in Los Angeles, she said, where the students, like many in York, face various challenges.



Digital connection:
Angie Mason
· Facebook: On her reporter's Facebook page, ask questions or comment on posts, get live coverage from classrooms and more.

· Twitter: Live coverage of meetings and other events, links on education topics and more.

· Cram Session blog: School news -- including some exclusive to the blog -- posts about education issues, classroom videos and more.

Many use music and art to deal with them, she said.
"They have more to say," she said.

Aaryonia, a seventh-grader, said she learned some things from Protopapas.

She and her friend Gerdley Cadet, another seventh-grader, write a lot together. Aaryonia writes poems and Gerdley sets them to music.

"(For) a lot of kids, when they're going through stuff, the best way to express it is through music," Aaryonia said.

Gerdley says she tells people music is her way out.

"Music is powerful," she said. "It's like music is another world nobody knows about."

More about Helena

Name: Helena Protopapas

Age: 22

Background: Born in India, raised in Glen Rock, now in Los Angeles

Her music: Her songs are described on her website as "fanciful, synth-driven pop songs."

Family: Her mom, a teacher at Devers Elementary School, is a classical Indian vocalist, and her father is a professional sitar and tabla player.

Online: To hear some of Helena Protopapas' music, visit www.helenalalita.com - YDR

York, PA -
Aaryonia Deshields bounced her left knee nervously in a classroom at Devers Elementary School as she recited a poem she'd written, about being the girl in the corner, the quiet one.

As the seventh-grader finished, Helena Protopapas commended her for her honesty.

"That's really important," Protopapas said. "Writing music is like (having) your own therapist."

Protopapas, 22, knows a little something about that. Born in India and raised in Glen Rock, she's now a singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles, where she's signed with Warner Bros. She's working on her debut album, and some of her songs are available online.

While in York County for the holidays, she spent


From left, Jenaya Fells-Griffin, 11, Adrian Torres, 11, Yanelly Escalante, 11, and Yessiah Principe, 12, look through poems they have written during a songwriting workshop at Devers Elementary School. (DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS - KATE PENN)
three afternoons holding a songwriting workshop at Devers, where her mother Jan Protopapas is a teacher for English language learners. Students in sixth through eighth grade, with an interest in music, participated.
Helena Protopapas spent the first day talking with students about what music means to them and sharing her creative process with them. She sent them home with an assignment: to bring in some of their own poetry or write some lyrics to share.

The following days, they shared their lyrics -- about love, friendship, the world at large -- and worked to turn them into a song. They settled on a theme of good and bad, dark and light, love pulling them through.

Protopapas used a keyboard to set up the melody. Students threw out suggested lines and adjusted them until they worked.

"The first line of a song is really important, because it opens you up and gives you a landscape," she told the group at the Dec. 13 workshop.

Protopapas said that as her "little music career" has slowly progressed, she's seen "how much more music is than something for myself."

She held a similar workshop at a high school in Los Angeles, she said, where the students, like many in York, face various challenges.



Digital connection:
Angie Mason
· Facebook: On her reporter's Facebook page, ask questions or comment on posts, get live coverage from classrooms and more.

· Twitter: Live coverage of meetings and other events, links on education topics and more.

· Cram Session blog: School news -- including some exclusive to the blog -- posts about education issues, classroom videos and more.

Many use music and art to deal with them, she said.
"They have more to say," she said.

Aaryonia, a seventh-grader, said she learned some things from Protopapas.

She and her friend Gerdley Cadet, another seventh-grader, write a lot together. Aaryonia writes poems and Gerdley sets them to music.

"(For) a lot of kids, when they're going through stuff, the best way to express it is through music," Aaryonia said.

Gerdley says she tells people music is her way out.

"Music is powerful," she said. "It's like music is another world nobody knows about."

More about Helena

Name: Helena Protopapas

Age: 22

Background: Born in India, raised in Glen Rock, now in Los Angeles

Her music: Her songs are described on her website as "fanciful, synth-driven pop songs."

Family: Her mom, a teacher at Devers Elementary School, is a classical Indian vocalist, and her father is a professional sitar and tabla player.

Online: To hear some of Helena Protopapas' music, visit www.helenalalita.com - YDR

Helena has eyes of a child, untainted by the cynical and limited perspective of life that courses through society. Her’s is a world of boundless wonder lust overflowing with a hunger for the mystical experience in everyday life. Her music is a complex blend of dark and light sounds that move like the shadows in the forest,cast and caught in a sea of spine-numbing beats, haunting vocals, and whimsical chord progressions.
When Helena was signed to Warner Brother Records, she was driven purely by the dream to share and to touch, to evoke powerful emotion in her listeners. She is talented in a variety of creative mediums and her music possesses such an uninhibited persistence of positive energy that people forget to focus on their problems and turn to hope and happiness. Helena is a teacher of how to live and my closest friend.
We were all a bit stunned back in 2008, when she missed her high school graduation ceremony to visit a friend in California. She called her parents after a week or so and said, “Send me my things, I’m not coming home. I’m going to play music.” I wondered how a person could function without a solid “plan.” Her successes and struggles have shown me that life is not about a plan, learning is not about a grade, success is neither a record deal nor degree. Rather, these qualities can be measured by a great will and passion to persist in the face of enormous challenges. Those who must create and share are responsible for turning walls into gorgeous escapist photographs or paintings, for transforming morning jogs into personal concert halls, and weaving words beautiful enough to inspire others to drastically change their lives in career choices, or love.
I am so impressed with the music she has created; an eccentric twist of pop, dream-weaving, and fairytale dusted with sweetness and strung with so much heart and soul. I know how she laughs and smiles when she builds a piece, how she never takes anything too seriously, and how she started off as a child with a violin and an ever raging imagination. I remember how she dabbled on the piano in Unitarian Church basements with me until we were reprimanded for being too loud. I remember how she grew up fully immersed in Indian culture and the arts, how when I was listening to Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, she showed me Cat Stevens. We paraded through our brief fascination with screamo-hardcore electronica, were always inventing strange games and filmed wizard movies in her magical backyard (bows and arrows included).
Being with Helena is like escaping to Narnia beyond some beautiful ancient closet. She has taught me to feel the support of the universe when looking for a personal voice, and she has taught me to believe in the impossible. I know that Helena wants nothing more than for you to zone out, escape through the music, find your imaginative and adventurous inner-self, and cosmically create something new with her.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ravi Shankar said, “How does one put the spiritual significance of music on paper? Music transcends all languages and barriers and is the most beautiful communicative skill one can have. Music makes us all experience different emotions or the Navarasa as we call it. Different types of music, whether it is vocal or instrumental, Eastern or Western, Classical or Pop, or folk from any part of the world can all be spiritual if it has the power to stir the soul of a person and transcend time for the moment. It makes one get goose-bumps in the body and mind and equates the highest mental orgasm and the release of grateful tears!” How do you put the spiritual significance of your music on paper? Do Ravi’s words about music relate to you?
That’s really hard though, putting the spiritual essence of music onto paper…I almost don’t think it’s possible. I think the only way it can possibly be on paper is if it is written as a poem. At least for me, everything is vibration and music is vibration and it’s been scientifically proven that music actually relaxes our whole body. Music is all-encompassing. Music with words is all encompassing. I have synesthesia, so I experience music visually and sonically simultaneously. When I explain how I see music to people, I tell them that I see a movie in my head. I experience music visually and that’s how I write my poetry. I think the most amazing thing for me about the musical experience is that I know I’m tapping into something spiritual. I get memories of things that have never even happened to me before and it’s like either past life stuff or—I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it takes me to this lucid dream space and it just makes me feel both completely empty and full.
How does Ravi’s words relate to you?
I was raised on Ravi Shankar. My dad’s been playing sitar for over 20 years and I was asked a question recently, Where would you be without music? And I said, “I wouldn’t have been born because m - Theo Constantinou

Helena has eyes of a child, untainted by the cynical and limited perspective of life that courses through society. Her’s is a world of boundless wonder lust overflowing with a hunger for the mystical experience in everyday life. Her music is a complex blend of dark and light sounds that move like the shadows in the forest,cast and caught in a sea of spine-numbing beats, haunting vocals, and whimsical chord progressions.
When Helena was signed to Warner Brother Records, she was driven purely by the dream to share and to touch, to evoke powerful emotion in her listeners. She is talented in a variety of creative mediums and her music possesses such an uninhibited persistence of positive energy that people forget to focus on their problems and turn to hope and happiness. Helena is a teacher of how to live and my closest friend.
We were all a bit stunned back in 2008, when she missed her high school graduation ceremony to visit a friend in California. She called her parents after a week or so and said, “Send me my things, I’m not coming home. I’m going to play music.” I wondered how a person could function without a solid “plan.” Her successes and struggles have shown me that life is not about a plan, learning is not about a grade, success is neither a record deal nor degree. Rather, these qualities can be measured by a great will and passion to persist in the face of enormous challenges. Those who must create and share are responsible for turning walls into gorgeous escapist photographs or paintings, for transforming morning jogs into personal concert halls, and weaving words beautiful enough to inspire others to drastically change their lives in career choices, or love.
I am so impressed with the music she has created; an eccentric twist of pop, dream-weaving, and fairytale dusted with sweetness and strung with so much heart and soul. I know how she laughs and smiles when she builds a piece, how she never takes anything too seriously, and how she started off as a child with a violin and an ever raging imagination. I remember how she dabbled on the piano in Unitarian Church basements with me until we were reprimanded for being too loud. I remember how she grew up fully immersed in Indian culture and the arts, how when I was listening to Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, she showed me Cat Stevens. We paraded through our brief fascination with screamo-hardcore electronica, were always inventing strange games and filmed wizard movies in her magical backyard (bows and arrows included).
Being with Helena is like escaping to Narnia beyond some beautiful ancient closet. She has taught me to feel the support of the universe when looking for a personal voice, and she has taught me to believe in the impossible. I know that Helena wants nothing more than for you to zone out, escape through the music, find your imaginative and adventurous inner-self, and cosmically create something new with her.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ravi Shankar said, “How does one put the spiritual significance of music on paper? Music transcends all languages and barriers and is the most beautiful communicative skill one can have. Music makes us all experience different emotions or the Navarasa as we call it. Different types of music, whether it is vocal or instrumental, Eastern or Western, Classical or Pop, or folk from any part of the world can all be spiritual if it has the power to stir the soul of a person and transcend time for the moment. It makes one get goose-bumps in the body and mind and equates the highest mental orgasm and the release of grateful tears!” How do you put the spiritual significance of your music on paper? Do Ravi’s words about music relate to you?
That’s really hard though, putting the spiritual essence of music onto paper…I almost don’t think it’s possible. I think the only way it can possibly be on paper is if it is written as a poem. At least for me, everything is vibration and music is vibration and it’s been scientifically proven that music actually relaxes our whole body. Music is all-encompassing. Music with words is all encompassing. I have synesthesia, so I experience music visually and sonically simultaneously. When I explain how I see music to people, I tell them that I see a movie in my head. I experience music visually and that’s how I write my poetry. I think the most amazing thing for me about the musical experience is that I know I’m tapping into something spiritual. I get memories of things that have never even happened to me before and it’s like either past life stuff or—I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it takes me to this lucid dream space and it just makes me feel both completely empty and full.
How does Ravi’s words relate to you?
I was raised on Ravi Shankar. My dad’s been playing sitar for over 20 years and I was asked a question recently, Where would you be without music? And I said, “I wouldn’t have been born because m - Theo Constantinou

Imaginative, compelling, and symmetric is how singer/songwriter and recording artist Helena Lalita describes her music. A self-described "rebellious romantic," her music rides the tightrope between light and dark. Growing up in a household of musicians and learning violin at the early age of four, music is rooted in her spirit.

Like many artists looking for a break, she moved to California where she landed in Los Angeles, playing violin on the street and gaining the attention of several music producers. After having one of her songs featured in a Donna Karan New York commercial, she signed a contract with Warner Brother's Records, where she is now recording her debut album.

Please join New Grounds in welcoming Helena Lalita back to our shop! She will be performing this First Friday as a part of our Artist Showcase. She takes the "stage" at 6 p.m. and the event is free to the public. Come be enchanted by the fluidity of her vocals, the eclecticism of her lyrics and the energy of her presence. We'll see you Friday! - 3cord

Imaginative, compelling, and symmetric is how singer/songwriter and recording artist Helena Lalita describes her music. A self-described "rebellious romantic," her music rides the tightrope between light and dark. Growing up in a household of musicians and learning violin at the early age of four, music is rooted in her spirit.

Like many artists looking for a break, she moved to California where she landed in Los Angeles, playing violin on the street and gaining the attention of several music producers. After having one of her songs featured in a Donna Karan New York commercial, she signed a contract with Warner Brother's Records, where she is now recording her debut album.

Please join New Grounds in welcoming Helena Lalita back to our shop! She will be performing this First Friday as a part of our Artist Showcase. She takes the "stage" at 6 p.m. and the event is free to the public. Come be enchanted by the fluidity of her vocals, the eclecticism of her lyrics and the energy of her presence. We'll see you Friday! - 3cord