Sheree performs on the launch of Palmtree Journal in Brooklyn, delivering a genre-blending set that weaves pop, R&B and Caribbean fusion.
Photograph courtesy @wickeddreamer & @a.shen_media
At first look, Sheree is all mild — a radiant presence with a contagious vitality and a voice that weaves by means of genres like daylight on Caribbean waves. However behind the assured stage identify is Ayana Sheree Cedant-Colville, a 28-year-old singer-songwriter from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, whose journey to self-discovery and creative freedom is stitched with battle, tradition, and an unshakable spirit.
Born to a Jamaican father and a Bahamian mom with Haitian roots, Sheree is a first-generation American whose life has all the time danced between worlds. Her upbringing was a collision of sounds and spirit, grounded in Rastafarian beliefs, but uplifted by the soulful hymns of a Haitian church. These seemingly opposing forces didn’t confuse her; they made her complete.
“I’m a giant spirit,” she says with unapologetic heat. “If somebody judges me, I’m actually not going to enterprise. So long as I’m pleased and dwelling in my reality, then I’m good.”
However Sheree didn’t all the time reside that reality out loud.
As a toddler, she discovered rhythm within the clatter of pots and pans and later within the drum set her father gave her. She sang in church and was surrounded by music, however didn’t imagine she had that voice — the Whitney, the Beyoncé type. So she turned to drawing, suppressing the sound that will sooner or later turn into her salvation.
The whole lot modified in school, not within the classroom, however on the streets. At simply 18, she was homeless and navigating despair, crashing on couches throughout boroughs and cities — from Jersey Metropolis to Queens. With nowhere to go however ahead, she began vegan baking and promoting cupcakes on the avenue to economize for one studio session.
“I’d not return inside till every part I baked was out of my fingers,” she recollects. She made $500 — sufficient to file her first music.
That first monitor, Listen Up, opened doorways. A file label confirmed curiosity. However even because the music moved, Sheree knew she wanted to evolve on her phrases. She pulled the monitor from streaming platforms, buying and selling untimely fame for creative freedom.
Over time, her sound reworked from pop to R&B to dancehall — till she lastly discovered her voice in Caribbean fusion, a style as layered and complicated as her id. Her breakout music Don’t Cease, laid over the infectious Raleigh riddim and set in Brooklyn’s Church Avenue, sparked viral dance challenges and caught consideration from retailers like Raja. Her subsequent single, Flex, filmed in Jamaica, even drew reward from actress Ryan Future.
“I need to deliver Caribbean vibes again to the mainstream,” she says. “The final time we had an actual seat on the desk was the late ’90s, early 2000s.”
However this journey has not been glamorous. Sheree has labored over 50 jobs — together with at a luxurious sauna and a smoothie bar in Equinox — simply to maintain the dream alive. “I’m drained,” she says, half-laughing. “I would like music to fund my life.”
And but, even fatigue hasn’t dulled her fireplace. Her father, a faithful Rasta and the heartbeat of her musical awakening, handed away in 2023 from a number of myeloma, simply two days after her birthday. The loss cracked one thing open in her. She grieved deeply, then vowed to reside louder, freer, extra totally.
With new tracks like “Increase Bye Bye,” “Ticket,” “Value It,” and “Indicators,” Sheree isn’t simply singing — she’s constructing a world. And she or he’ll drop her subsequent single on Might 24 at what’s going to appear to be an off-the-cuff get together. However for these within the room when the DJ presses play, they’ll understand they’re witnessing one thing greater: the subsequent chapter of a lady who turned survival into sound.
“After I carry out,” she says, “I really feel my sweetest. Music makes me be happy.”
From couch-surfing to group levels, from East Flatbush to her goals of worldwide attain, Sheree’s story is greater than a music profession — it’s a motion, an affidavit, and a reminder that resilience, rooted in tradition and love, turns into rhythm. And rhythm, in the precise fingers, can heal every part.
