Celeste Krishna is a Southern expressionist music artist, songwriter, and producer originally from Birmingham, Alabama based in Brooklyn, NY. She stirs a brew of poetic songs that have musical notes of Van Morrison, Lauryn Hill, and Björk. She’s also one of the amazing artists on our friend’s management roster—Blonde Artist Management—and as a lead up to our showcase later this month, we wanted to let you get a little sneak peek into her life and music, and also to listen to her latest track, “Van Morrison.”
Happy Saturday lovers!
Left Bank: What are you looking forward to most this next year?
CK: Releasing the full-length album that I recorded this summer. It sounds incredible and I’m really proud of the songs.
What’s something, music or otherwise, you learned this year?
I have a lot of learning to do, but I’m beginning to learn how to feel emotions that I’m afraid to feel; trying to make space to access things like pain, even feelings of hate, anger, insecurity, not for those to control me, but to just allow myself to feel any feelings that may be unpleasant, and just to kind of sit with them. That’s something I’m working on a lot, and practicing in my beloved group therapy.
I definitely get that, I’ve been going through, and thinking about similar things. I think this season, and the end of the year is definitely good for that. So, tell me, is your name actually Celeste Krishna or is it a stage name?
Celeste Krishna is my actual name. I married a guy from India and his last name is Krishna. Krishna is a fairly common first name in India, it’s not a last name. His Dad’s first name has Krishna in it and when they moved to the States there was a mistake made and their last name became Krishna. So, it’s not actually their family history name, it’s more as his Dad says a decorative, spiritual last name. So, I chose to receive it because my first name, Celeste, means heavenly and blue, and Krishna is a god in the Hindu tradition who is often depicted with blue skin [amd] playing a flute, so it felt like a really spiritual name to receive and to write to, and it’s a big inspiration to me because the color blue is sort of my spiritual center.
If you could say one thing to Van Morrison what would it be?
If I could say one thing to Van Morrison? Wow. Damn. I guess I would just say, thank you. Thanks for making such transcendent music. And, do you have a house in Ireland I can come stay in? I want to write an album there.
Listen to the track “Van Morrison” below and make sure to catch her and all of our other friends on the Blonde Artist Management roster at Pianos on Nov 19 (event info here).