London based singer/songwriter Sofia’s voice enters the scene with her sense of lyrical sensibility and pureness of tone. Comparable to the music of ‘Tegan and Sara’ and ‘John Mayer,’ Sofia’s sound also matches her diverse background of Venezuelan and Lebanese parents.
Tristan Higgins interviewed Sofia for Huff Post Gay Voices earlier in the month and premiered her new single “Friendly Little Ghost”.
Listen to Sofia’s new single above.
According to Higgins’ report this song is very important to Sofia, because it came out of her battle with Crohn’s disease. So, here is a snippet from their interview about Crohn’s:
Please Explain Your Struggles With Crohn’s
I was at Berklee and had to withdraw from the semester because I started getting fevers everyday. I was hospitalized a bunch of times in a couple of months. 3 blood clots were found in my spleen because my immune system was so compromised, so I had to inject myself with blood thinners for about 3 months. Things escalated so much that I started to bleed internally and had to have like 7 bags of blood in a week. I went back to school the next semester and somehow managed to graduate on time. It meant so much to me to be there at Berklee, I had a scholarship and was so grateful to be there, so I kept going even though it got really tough sometimes. It was after I got sick when I wrote “Mom I like a Girl.” I came in second in the “Songs for Social Change” Competition and it was the first time in my life I had ever won an award for a song I’d written. So in a sense, it felt like I was overcoming my health battle with music.
I inject myself every two weeks with an immune suppressant, called Humira. It saved my life. Crohn’s can be a really scary process, it’s almost like having cancer, but it’s not cancer. They use similar terminology: in remission, no appetite, nausea. And I have a high risk of cancer in the future. It’s really a crazy disease to have. I try to speak to my best friend Avery, who struggles worse than me, every day and her experiences really give me a lot of strength. It is hard to want to do anything and stay positive, but we do because we know that there are kids as young as 8 who get this. That’s why it’s important that we make it more accessible to talk about stomach problems and make it more comfortable to talk about food issues, including irritable bowel diseases. We would help a lot of people to feel more comfortable with the fact that there is nothing wrong with you. You just have disease!
If you happen to have Crohn’s like Sofia, or just want to learn more about this disease, here are two resources: Crohn’s and Colitis UK and Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.
For more information on Sofia visit sofiamusic.in
