Voicing Your Truth with Monique DeBose

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This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Monique DeBose, an award-winning singer-songwriter and playwright, who has toured throughout America, Europe, India and Asia. Her third album, The Sovereign One, debuted at No.2 on the iTunes Jazz Charts.

Inspired by her experience of of what it means to be half African-American, half Irish-American, Monique wrote the funny, heartwarming and disruptive one-woman show Mulatto Math: Summing Up The Race Equation in America to initiate a different kind of conversation about race relations in America.

Monique is also a coach, speaker and workshop leader who helps others to follow her example and live ‘fully expressed, clear and unapologetic’.

I first met Monique at a coaching event – a Coaching Intensive in Los Angeles hosted by Rich Litvin, who is Monique’s husband. You may recall Rich was a guest in Season 3 of the show when he gave us a great interview about the price of being a high performer.

At the Intensive Monique did a session with us on vocal improvisation as a way of unlocking emotions in communication, and I heard at first hand what an extraordinary voice she has.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear her new album had been so well received, and I found it a compelling listen. I had it on heavy rotation in the run up to interviewing her, and I’m delighted to say we can hear some music from the album in the course of this interview.

I invited Monique onto the podcast to ask her about the source of her inspiration for the album and her one-woman show, and I have to say I was surprised – it turns out these two works have their origin in a very creative and resourceful response to a medical diagnosis.

I’ll let Monique tell that story in her own words, but I’ll just say that this is one of the interviews where my guest really digs deep and shares something profound about the nature of creativity and inspiration.

Monique is someone who really embodies the ethos of the 21st century creative – she’s a terrific artist who doesn’t shy away from the challenges life sends her, but uses them to create extraordinary work, and shares it with the rest of us.

In the course of this interview, you will also hear some of her music, so I’m betting this conversation with Monique DeBose is one that will stay with you long after you finish listening.

You can follow Monique’s music on Spotify and Instagram, and Mulatto Math on the show’s website and Instagram page.

Monique DeBose interview transcript

MARK: Monique, when did you start singing?

MONIQUE: I started singing out loud in front of people probably when I was 18 years old. I’d always wanted to perform and sing. And I’d be in my childhood home, singing with records in a room, roller skating in the backyard as if I was a performer singing, but if it was in front of somebody, I clammed up quickly. So it wasn’t until I was a freshman in college at Berkeley that I joined an improv singing group because that felt like the safest way to enter.

MARK: Improv singing, what’s that?

MONIQUE: Improvisational singing is when you create a piece of music on the spot seemingly out of nowhere. It’s circle singing. We’d stand in a circle, and somebody would start a riff, so for example, just like, ‘day by day, dah, dah, dah, day by day.’ And then, a group would start singing that and then somebody would add another part to it, and then add maybe another part to it, and then somebody would solo sing over it. So it was a great way to feel like you couldn’t make a mistake, and that’s what I needed to, actually, dive into the world of singing.

MARK: I’ve done a bit of improv acting, and I do like that whole culture that you support each other and make each other look good, which you very much have in that. But I’d never come across a singing version of it.

MONIQUE: Do you know Bobby McFerrin, or have you heard of him? The guy who sings, ‘Don’t worry, ooh ooh oo-ooh, Be happy.’

MARK: Oh, yeah.

MONIQUE: Bobby McFerrin, that is like his most commercial hit, but he has the most phenomenal group of vocalists around him. One of them is my mentor, a woman named Rhiannon. And your listeners should dive into his music. It’s all improvisational singing, it’s phenomenal.

MARK: Listening to your music, you have this incredibly expressive voice. Was it always that easy to express such deep feelings?

MONIQUE: My entire face just dropped when you said ‘that easy!’ It has been an uphill battle.

MARK: It sounds it. I don’t know. You tell me what it’s like.

MONIQUE: Well, no, it has not always been that easy. There was this point I got to, and I’m happy to share what the details of that were. But where I got to a point where I couldn’t afford to not sing from the gut, from the soul, anymore. And the desire to sound good and be what people think a singer should sound like or I went as deep as, ‘Well, you’re a mixed-race woman, you’re a black woman, so you need to sound like the women who can do all that ‘Aaaargh.’’ Like, you need to be that. And so it has been such a journey to really be able to find my own self and my own voice. So, no, it has not always been easy.

MARK: So how did you do it? How did you get away from it? Because I mean, by definition, if you’re singing in public you’re performing. Presumably, you are aware of how you’re coming across to other people. How did you get past that?

MONIQUE: Well, it’s still in process. And I think it will always be until I take my last breath. But there are two things that show up for me when I hear that question. First, I was so paralyzed in trying to be something that I just didn’t see how I could be that it took all the joy out of singing and I loved singing and making sounds with my voice, so I got to a point of exhaustion. That’s one thing.

And then the second, the universe swooped in and helped me out by giving me the diagnosis of something called a desmoid tumor in late 2016, in my abdominal wall. And that was a complete shift in how I saw life and saw myself. And doctors were telling me, ‘You’re going to be on pharmaceuticals for the rest of your life.’ That was a no for me, I wasn’t going to do that. And the second opinion doctors told me, ‘Well, we’ll just cut out part of your abdominal wall and put in a mesh. You’re done having children, right?’ And I was done, but I did not feel like that was my solution either.

And so I went in and started having conversations with the tumor. I have a master’s in Spiritual Psychology and this is just some of the work that we do. And what it told me was, you have been holding back so much. You have been keeping so much inside, so much of who you are hidden, because you’re worried about what people will think, you’re worried about not doing it right, you’re worried about hurting others, and you can’t afford that anymore. All that energy and creativity has created me, so let’s move through this, you need to express.

And so from that point, that’s actually what had me write my one-woman show. That’s what had me actually write this particular album project. And in that I decided, and it was really like the decision was made for me and I just had to go ahead and go along with it that I couldn’t pretend anymore, and I couldn’t try to be something I wasn’t. My North Star was, ‘You need to express what is you fully.’ And that’s what I did. And that’s what I’ve been doing.

MARK: And you got this from doing inner work, focusing and dialoguing with the tumor?

MONIQUE: A hundred percent, hundred percent.

MARK: Wow.

MONIQUE: And that was one of the hardest things I ever did. Because in the world we live in, or most of us live in, Western medicine really is god and is king. And people are worried about you, who love you, who have that Western medicine, knowledge. And I had to be willing to trust myself and trust my own inner wisdom in the face of everybody telling me, ‘That’s stupid. You shouldn’t do that. How do you know it’s going to work?’ All of those things. And so I had to just keep coming back to, ‘This is what you’re being told. Trust it.’ So it’s been a process. So all of that also just adds to me really being able to trust my own voice in the singing capacity as well.

MARK: And you say that there were two creative projects that came out of that. Let’s start with the album, The Sovereign One. And again, I know it’s been very well received, did very well on iTunes when it launched and so on. But let’s go back to the source of inspiration for the album. Where did this come from for you?

MONIQUE: The Sovereign One came from claiming back all the parts of myself that I had either hidden away, shamed away, given away, decided I wasn’t good enough, so what was the point of having it anyway? I claimed back every aspect of myself that I could be conscious of, and even delved into the unconscious and just said, ‘Anything that needs to come back to make me whole, come back.’

And so this project was me fully integrating and accepting all the parts of myself because I feel like that was such a barrier for me to feeling happy, to feeling like I was living life the way I was supposed to be. So that’s where it came from.

MARK: And could you maybe take one song from the album and just talk us through where you got the inspiration, and then what was the process that you went through to turn that into a finished song?

MONIQUE: Sure. I am going to talk about ‘Damaged Goods’, which is the single on the project.

MARK: Maybe we could hear a little bit of ‘Damaged Goods’ before we hear you talk about it, Monique, because it’s a terrific song.

MONIQUE: Sure.

MARK: And if we can just hear a little bit of that, and then people will have a bit of context for when you talk about it.

[EXCERPT FROM DAMAGED GOODS PLAYS]

MONIQUE: So ‘Damaged Goods’ is a song I wrote with two amazing co-writers, my friends Isaac and Thorald Koren. And it’s really an ode to all the ‘faults’ that we walk around with as human beings. It’s acknowledging, yes, we are insecure and small and maybe unfaithful and resentful and we’re out of integrity. And even still, we are good at, the heart of who we are.

Oftentimes, people feel like, ‘Well, I’m damaged or I’m broken, or something is wrong with me that is not fixable.’ And this song is really speaking to ‘Yeah, you may be damaged in one way of looking at it, but trust that you are all good.’

And so the song really is speaking to owning all the parts of yourself. I don’t know if you know about that Japanese, I’m going to say, tradition. I can’t even remember what it’s called. But if a vase breaks, instead of throwing it away, artists or people will put it back together with beautiful gold paint.

MARK: Oh, yeah.

MONIQUE: And then that just makes it even that much more beautiful. That, to me, is kind of how ‘Damaged Goods’ is. It’s really owning, yeah, you may be somebody who is, really insecure. But let’s really own all the parts of you because the whole of you is exquisitely good, is beautiful.

So I just wanted people to not feel like they have… this was it. I was exhausted from trying to be something I just wasn’t. And I don’t think that’s fair to any human being walking the planet. So this was like, ‘Forget it all, people. Let’s just be us and let’s look at us and let’s love us as we are. We’re all divine beings having a human experience. Let’s just enjoy all of our humanity.’

MARK: Well, thank you. That certainly comes across beautifully in the song.

MONIQUE: Thanks.

MARK: And what does the title The Sovereign One mean to you?

MONIQUE: Well, again, it’s speaking to really being someone who is fully integrated into herself, someone who stands in herself, who, I don’t want to say doesn’t need because I believe as humanity, we all live in community and we need each other, but doesn’t need others to validate, to justify her existence.

That’s what I mean by The Sovereign One. That was a claim and a call and an intention. And the music is reflecting that, that I am sovereign unto myself. I belong to nobody. I owe nobody. And I move around full, whole, complete and perfect. That’s what it means.

MARK: And not content with creating amazing music and a terrific album, you’ve also created and toured with a very unusual one-woman show.

MONIQUE: Why do you call it unusual?

MARK: Well, that’s what the word is on the street.

MONIQUE: That’s really funny. That’s funny. Yes. I’d had the desire to create a one-woman show for a good while, but nothing was making me, actually, sit down and commit to doing the work. So I don’t think I was ready to tell the story that I’ve told yet. But when the diagnosis of the tumor showed up, and the information from the tumor showed up, I was clear that I needed to write this show. And the show is called ‘Mulatto Math – Summing Up the Race Equation in America’.

And what I do is I watch my own journey into discovering who I am. I come from a mixed-race background. I have an African-American father from the segregated South. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. And then I have an Irish-American mother from upstate New York, who came from an educated family background. And just trying to navigate who I was, where I belonged, and what was okay for me to say in this company, and what was not okay for me to say in that company, it was, again, me trying to like, be right and be enough and be safe for other people. So a lot of my growing up included really hiding parts of myself or not being fully myself.

And so this show really navigates my journey growing into myself. And it’s very raw, it’s a very real, and dare I say myself, a very powerful experience for me as an artist, but also for audience members. I have a degree in Mathematics, an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Berkeley. So I’ve created all these math equations that tie the story together with how my binary brain was thinking about race and identity. And then, I also have original music in it where I perform it with a live basis when we do a full show. And then a bunch of characters I play, different family members, different people in my life.

And I always have a talkback with the show as well because I feel like it would be out of integrity for me to really open up this huge can of worms and really have people confronting questions around race and identity, whatever their ethnic, or yeah, their ethnic background is. I always have a talkback after so people can really digest and integrate and actually, share in ‘mixed company’ their ideas and feelings. So it’s really powerful, and I’m really grateful that it was asked to be born.

But I remember I would be sitting at my computer, typing the script, writing it and just bawling my eyes out saying, ‘I cannot write this. I cannot say this out loud.’ And the tumor or the energy from the tumor was like, ‘You have no choice. You have to share this story.’ So it’s real.

MARK: One of the quotes I keep thinking of in relation to writing is from Robert Frost, the great American poet, when he said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.’ If you don’t feel it as you put it down on paper or on the screen, they’re not going to feel it. So you have to go to that place that you want to take the audience to, but that takes a lot of courage, huh?

MONIQUE: Yeah, when I first started performing that show about a year ago, it felt like I was completely naked. And not only naked, it felt like my skin was not on this body, so I just felt so raw.

And as I’ve continued to do the show, it’s as if the skin that I had for all the time before the show or for a lot of the life before the show, that was the skin of hiding, that was the skin of being not fully myself, being what you needed me to be. And so it was as if everything was stripped. And then, with each performance of the show, new skin started to grow, and it’s skin that is really… it’s tough, it’s supple, it’s flexible, it’s a beautiful skin. It takes such good care of me. It’s almost Teflon in a way, but not fully Teflon. It’s just a new skin has grown, and it continues to grow. But it’s a beautiful skin for me to walk around in as I continue with life.

So I’m really grateful for the process and for the show, for myself and for others, because I know people are moved and changed by the show.

MARK: I’ve got to be maybe a little culturally sensitive here. I’m not from the United States. And obviously, those of us outside the US, we see and hear there’s a lot of media and debate around race in America, but it doesn’t compare with having lived your life in that particular country. So maybe you could give us an idea of the kind of context that you’re stepping into with a show like this. Because as I understand it, you are engaging with the issue in a very unusual way.

MONIQUE: I still want to know what unusual means! I’m like, ‘What have you heard?’ Yeah, well I can speak to my experience, and that’s what I do with the show. I really use my experience as a microcosm for the United States.

MARK: Yeah.

MONIQUE: What I feel like is in the United States, there are two camps running. And I’m sure there are more, so this is a very broad generalization, so please know that I know that. But I noticed that in a lot of African-Americans, there is fear, there is resentment, there is a non-trusting of white people in our culture. That doesn’t mean that people don’t succeed and move through life and have great lives. But I think those are undercurrents in relation to the United States. And then on the other side, I’m looking at, and again, obviously, there are more than black and white people in the United States. I’m just speaking to those two groups currently. And again, these are generalizations.

But on the white side, what I notice is that there is either desire, but having no clue how to step into that desire to be in connection with African-Americans, or there is ignorance. And, to me, the ignorance comes from an unconscious place. It comes from a place of protecting themselves, even if they don’t know it in their conscious mind what they know their country has been built on, which is having to, what’s the word? Dehumanize other humans in service to your way of life.

So that just lives in the DNA of the country and lives in the DNA of, for lack of a better term, white people in the United States. So even if there is this desire to bridge the gap, until people are willing to actually look at that and speak that, and not to be made wrong for it, but to actually just be willing to acknowledge, I think both sides are at an impasse.

And so even if there is this desire to integrate and be present, and integration is the word that… integration and surrender are the words that run my life, quite honestly. Integration on many levels, surrender on many levels. But people will not be able to, actually, move through and move past and integrate into what they’re actually wanting, if they’re unwilling to see both sides. So that’s context.

MARK: It sounds like a very brave thing to do, to step into this context. Were you not just tempted to leave these things for someone else to say while you just got on with your music?

MONIQUE: I couldn’t get on. That was the problem. Trust me. I had a teacher once who said, she was teaching what she was doing, and I was learning from her and she said, ‘Monique, if you can walk away from this, walk away.’ And I could walk away from it. So I did. And I never understood why she said that.

But this, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is my thing.’ If I could walk away from this, I would 100% walk away from it. But I can’t. I feel like it’s the charge my soul has been given to really integrate all the parts of myself, which also includes integrating all of the parts of this country because that is what I’m made from. I just feel like that’s been imprinted on my soul and that’s what I have to do. But trust me, if I could walk away, Mark, I would be on a beach.

MARK: And can you give us an example, maybe? So, we’ve got the context. We’ve got your intention. We’ve got a sense of maybe what’s at stake here. But can you give us an example of how you address this in the show? What’s the format of the show that allows people to see this and experience it differently?

MONIQUE: I think the number one thing is that it is a very vulnerable show. And by that, I mean I am speaking family secrets. And they weren’t necessarily told to me as family secrets or experienced as secrets, but when they’re out in public, people get very uncomfortable.

It’s been such a journey with my Mom in doing this show, and she’s one of the most supportive people. I’m really proud of who she is in the world. Because I was sharing things about her unwillingness to accept that or to look past her own struggle to see African-American culture’s struggle.

I’m speaking to bringing up stories about my granddaddy on my dad’s side, who was a longshoreman and fell 30 feet from the air and had a broken back, broken pelvis, and two broken bones. And when the men he worked with took him to the nearest hospital, which was the ‘white hospital,’ they literally put him out on the sidewalk with a broken back, broken pelvis, and two broken legs. And he had to wait until my uncle came and an ambulance came to take him to the community hospital. So I’m speaking real things.

I talk about also my experience going into college and not knowing where I fit in, seeing all the black students together in the dining commons, and wanting desperately to go over to them because I knew that was where I wanted to be, but not knowing how to enter that space because it felt like it was a very protected world.

So I talk about things that are initially embarrassing, shameful. And also then the level of disrespect, possibly, people could see as a person telling my family stories. Quite a few people in the audience, it’s happened more than two times where people have raised their hand and said, ‘Your parents aren’t alive anymore, right?’ And I’m like, ‘No, they’re actually sitting right there in the audience.’ So and I think that piece is also really important, too, because my family is intact. My family is supportive and loving. And, I think, it’s not just the show. It’s everything that surrounds the show as well, that, I think, makes it such a powerful piece for people.

MARK: What are the talkback sections of the show like?

MONIQUE: They’re wonderful. And again, I say it in mixed company, people who may never run the same circles are in the audience. And because the show is so vulnerable, because I am so vulnerable, it really creates a container of safety and openness just in the entire space, which is so beautiful. And that’s one of the things I feel is one of my gifts as a creative professional too. That’s just one of the things I’ve been given to do, and to offer to people.

So people are asking questions and identifying and sharing their stories. I had an Irish former nun in the audience who was maybe like 70, saying, ‘You have just told my story.’ And maybe that’s a Scottish accent. Sorry, European people!

And then I have African-American men who are 50 saying, ‘Yes, everybody walks through a field of landmines’. It’s an opportunity for people to see not just an actor on stage, but to see real people in real time being vulnerable, being open, and sharing their stories.

I have white people who say, ‘I have a mixed niece and I never, ever thought about the things you bring up in the show. And I want to go back and just kind of get in curiosity with her to hear what her actual story is instead of the assumptions we make about people.’ So it’s beautiful. I love it and people really get value from it.

MARK: Where are you taking this next?

MONIQUE: ‘Mulatto Math’?

MARK: Yes.

MONIQUE: It’s so funny. The cheeky part inside of me was like, ‘Wherever it wants to be taken!’ I’m continuing to reach out to festivals, to reach out to theaters as well as universities. I’ve done it a couple of times at universities with, workshops attached afterward. With the Spiritual Psychology, I’ve created beautiful workshops around identity, around compassion, around race, relations, all kinds of things. So doing more of all of that, really. So it’s just constantly in motion of sending out materials about the show and being in conversation, same with the album. As an independent artist, it’s continuous work.

But I could see it being a tool for people who are policymakers, change-makers, so that it can act as a portal for people to make shifts and change, to really raise the vibration of where we all currently live. Yeah.

MARK: And not only do you do the music and the show, but you’re also an agent of change yourself for other people, as a coach and a workshop leader. How does that relate to the other two aspects of your work?

MONIQUE: It’s all the same, honestly, in my book, it’s really about authentic expression. It’s about being a vehicle for change for people, and being a portal, that’s a word that really has come into my consciousness a lot lately.

I’m not an accountability coach. I’m somebody who helps people create vision, but really helps get integrated into themselves. And my belief is that when we are fully integrated, or when we’re on the path to full integration, the sky’s the limit.

And a lot of the work I do is really helping people, creating space for people to actually be willing to look at all the parts of themselves. Because a lot of times, we just don’t want to look at it because we’ve been told that who we are is wrong, or we’ve been shamed out of being who we truly are. So I really help people in those arenas to really just be fully integrated into themselves.

MARK: And presumably, you find this comes up in relation to things other than race?

MONIQUE: Hundred percent.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, in terms of what we want to be doing in the world, what kind of relationships we want to be in, reaching goals that we just think are not available to us for whatever the reasons we’ve been told or learned, that helpless behavior. So it spans the entire spectrum of life, quite honestly

Race is one piece of it. It’s the piece for me that I could directly identify and tell this particular story. But yes, it really transcends my coaching. Nobody has ever, actually, come to me around race yet. But I’ve always been curious about creating a workshop around race for people. But no, that’s not the specialty in my coaching.

MARK: What are the implications of all of this around creativity? If somebody is listening to this thinking, ‘Okay, well, so what are the implications for me as a creator?’ What would you say are some of the biggest lessons that you would like to impart from this journey that you’ve been on?

MONIQUE: I think the biggest lesson that jumps out so strongly is: you were born exactly the way you were supposed to be. There is nothing about you that is wrong, or a mistake, or needs to be changed. Yes, we are always growing, and we are refining, but the core essence of who you are is perfect, whole, and complete. So my offering and what I want people to walk away with is the thing that you are thinking is wrong about you and that you need to hide away and minimize is probably something that needs a second look, a more up-close look because what I normally find is that thing is really your gift. That thing is really your doorway into you fully being yourself. And when we are fully ourselves, you cannot help but be magnetic to people. You cannot help but be magnetic to the things that are actually in your heart that you want. So that’s what I would say.

For me, the perfect example around singing, I was not Whitney Houston, I was not Mariah Carey, and I was mad about it and so I stopped singing. And when I got to the point of, ‘No, your voice is your voice. You don’t need to be anybody else,’ that freed me up so much. It let me let go of trying to be something that I wasn’t. And it, actually, gave me the energy to focus and be more of who I am. And when we’re more of who we are, people trust us. People believe us because we are in alignment and in integrity with ourselves. So that’s what I want to offer. That was very long-winded, but I hope the point got made.

MARK: No, that was a great point, beautifully made. So maybe this is a good time for you to set our listener your Creative Challenge, Monique. If anybody is new to the show, this is the point of the show where I invite my guests to set a challenge to the listener. Something that you can go away and do or get started on within the next seven days, and that is related to the theme of the interview. Monique, what Creative Challenge would you like to set us?

MONIQUE: I love this idea and it’s so great that you do this for your listeners, it’s such a gift. The Creative Challenge that I came up with was, it’s related to what we were talking about in the beginning, that improv singing or the improv creation with the voice.

I invite listeners to take a moment, maybe for seven days or give yourself the challenge of even three days, of each day tuning into your body, and really setting an intention and asking your body, ‘What part of me, body, wants to be heard, or has something to express to me?’ And when you just get quiet in that space, there will be a part of your body that really flags itself or raises its ‘hand’ to you.

So when that part of the body shows itself from that place, take a moment to really tune into that. And what that means is just get present with it. Ask, ‘What do you want me to hear?’ And then, this is the really bold part, let yourself be the vehicle for that body part to express through your voice. It might be a sound, it might be a melody, it might be words. But let yourself be that vehicle to let that part of the body express itself.

And the challenge on top of that is to not judge what comes out. Not how great it sounds, or what it says, and not having any expectation of yourself to do anything with it. This challenge is really to offer you an opportunity to learn how to listen and use your voice to let your body speak to you because I believe our body is our wisest tool, really.

MARK: Monique, listening to you describe this, I’m thinking on the one hand it’s obviously, and your work is testament to this, this is a part of some really deep, very profound, meaningful work. On the other hand, I’m also thinking, ‘I bet when you let yourself go with this exercise, it’s really a lot of fun!’

MONIQUE: It’s so fun! It’s so fun. I’ve run workshops called ‘Spring into Self-Love’. I do it each season. I’ve got, ‘Summer of Self-Love’, ‘Fall into Self-Love’. The winter one was a little bit hard for me to create a title for! But I take people for 40 days and we create an improv every day. It’s a challenge. And then I meet with people weekly just to support them along their journey of it. But it’s an amazing process and watching people do that over the course of 40 days is phenomenal. The amount of themselves that they now have access to, the lightness, the raised vibration that they just exist in is beautiful. So it will be fun for people.

MARK: Great. Well, personally, I’m going to have a go at this. I’m looking forward to it. And I do hope, dear listener, that you are going to do this in the privacy of your own space and really let go and enjoy it.

Monique, thank you so much. You’ve taken us on a really amazing journey today. And I can tell that these two projects have been a really big and important cycle of creativity for you. Are you able to say anything about future projects that are in the pipeline or is that still under wraps?

MONIQUE: It’s still under wraps. I love that you asked that, though. That’s beautiful. I’m writing more music. I said it’s under wraps and here I am talking. I’m figuring out a way to really… yeah, that’s what I’ll say. That’s it, Mark, for now.

MARK: Okay. That’s great. All right. Where can people go to listen to your music, to find out about the show? I do hope there are some more upcoming dates where people can come and see the show for themselves. Where should people go to find out about all of that?

MONIQUE: So there’s funnily enough, three different websites. I’m sorry about that, everybody. For the show, it’s mulattomath.com. For the music, it’s moniquedebosemusic.com. And then for coaching, it’s moniquedebose.com. And if you’d like to follow my music on Spotify, you can just find Monique DeBose and follow me there for new music and things coming. And then also on Instagram, for Mulatto Math, it’s @mulattomathplay. I’d love for you to follow me there. For the music it’s @moniquedeboseartist, and I’d love for you to follow me there. Thanks so much.

MARK: Great. And I will make sure we have those, obviously, in the show notes, as usual. Monique, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. And I’m sure I will be getting lots of delighted feedback from listeners of this week’s episode. So thank you.

MONIQUE: Thank you so much, and it’s really been my pleasure. Thank you, Mark.

About The 21st Century Creative podcast

Each episode of The 21st Century Creative podcast features an interview with an outstanding creator in the arts or creative industries.

At the end of the interview, I ask my guest to set you a Creative Challenge that will help you put the ideas from the interview in to practice in your own work.

And in the first part of the show, I share insights and practical guidance based on my 21+ years experience of coaching creatives like you.

Make sure you receive every episode of The 21st Century Creative by subscribing to the show in iTunes.