Queen Esther

Queen Esther is a vocalist, lyricist, songwriter, musician, producer, solo performer, playwright and librettist. Raised in the unapologetically Black bastion of Atlanta, Georgia – ensconced in the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement and the sonic undertow of the Black church – and rooted in Charleston, South Carolina’s culturally rich and enigmatic Lowcountry, a region with African traditions and Black folkways that span centuries and deeply inform her work, Queen Esther embraces lost American history along with her wide-ranging and ever changing aural influences, as she leans heavily on the bluing of the note to create reclamation-driven Black Americana. Her Southern penchant for storytelling entwines historical truths with personal anecdotes that contemporise traditional and original songs, blurring the past and present, and embracing the connectedness of the human spirit.

Set adrift in the narrow COVID restricted confinement of life in New York City after a month-long residency alone on the Gettysburg battlefield, Queen Esther let her heart shelter in place as she expanded creatively, and wrote and produced Rona, self-released on her imprint EL Recordings -- songs about her loved ones, the ever-evolving landscape of a desolate metropolis and a changing and restless world.