INDIA.ARIE Biography - Musicians

 
 

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INDIA.ARIE

Name: India.Arie                                                                   
Birth name: India Arie Simpson                                                     
Born: 3 October 1975 Denver, Colorado, United States                               
                                                                                   
India.Arie (born India Arie Simpson on October 3, 1975) is an American soul, R&B, 
and neo soul singer-songwriter, record producer, guitarist, and flautist.         
                                                                                   
Arie was born in Denver, Colorado. She absorbed musical skills early in life as   
she was encouraged by both parents. Her mother Joyce is a former singer (she was   
signed to Motown as a teenager and opened for Stevie Wonder and Al Green) and     
is now her stylist. Her father is former ABA and NBA basketball player Ralph       
Simpson. She has an older brother named J'On. After her parents divorced, Arie's   
mother moved the family to Atlanta, Georgia when she was thirteen. Arie had       
taken up a succession of musical instruments throughout her schooling in Denver,   
but her interest in the guitar while attending the Savannah College of Art and     
Design, in Savannah, led to a personal revelation about songwriting and           
performing. "When I started tapping into my own sensitivity, I started to         
understand people better. It was a direct result of writing songs", she said at   
the press release of her debut album, Acoustic Soul.                               
                                                                                   
Co-founding the Atlanta-based independent music collective Groovement EarthShare   
(Groovement was the collective artists' name and EarthShare was their             
independent label name), her one-song turn on a locally-released compilation led   
to a second-stage gig at the 1998 Lilith Fair. In 1999, a Universal/Motown music   
scout spotted her and made an introduction to former Motown CEO Kedar Massenberg.