China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.
For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty, and it's not what it is for me.
I believe in music because it has the power of change.
I do get around. Geographically, that is.
I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it.
I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.
I really believe in the power of music.
I would say I've always lived creativity, but now I - I do it with an intention that's got a completely different power.
I would still describe China as a vast, invigorating puzzle that will never make sense to my western upbringing.
I'm, I guess you could say, the Chinese-speaking, banjo-picking girl.
I've noticed that the more I open up, the more I learn.
Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.
My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.
One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.
You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.
