Baby Dee is a fascinating individual.  For some, there is a novelty in the fact that she’s transgender, which they’ve allowed to overshadow her work as an artist.  For others, her musicianship takes center stage over any personal identity that Baby Dee might have.  In reality, the work is far too revealing, honest, and personal to ever be completely separated from the person who created it.  In our approach to any interview conversation that we try and conduct on this site, there is a belief that the humanity of the artist and the exploration of them, their history, insights, and experiences as an individual on this planet should always remain a focus, beyond just the art that they create.  The “why” is more important for us than the “how”.  Even more important is the “who”, because from there the why will expose itself.  These concepts became especially relevant in our recent encounter with the Cleveland-born pianist/harpist.

It’s true that Dee continues to build a catalog of deeply engaging and beautiful music, and that is something that we, in no way, wish to discount.  We hope to open the door for you to explore her work further, but the sounds and feelings presented in her work are things that you can continue to discover slowly, in your own time.  I feel that our job in a piece like this is to attempt to truly help introduce you to the soul of  the person behind the work.  Baby Dee is a fascinating individual, but I think the point here is that, with or without her affiliations with various other artists, being transgender, or even her abilities as a musician, her unique character and quality as a person would still sustain her as such, regardless.  We trust that, after viewing our video interview below, you will see her in the same light as we do.  Her talents as an artist are undeniable, but music is little more than a simple medium to manifest and display the immense levels of truth and personal ideals which she holds inside. Read the rest of this entry →