TiKA SimoneTiKA is a woman of many talents, and entrepreneurship isn’t the least of them. Released in February 2020 on Next Door Records, her first album Anywhere But Here established her as a voice to be reckoned with on Canada’s soul and R&B scene. In parallel to that career, the singer-songwriter took her first steps into the world of screen composing and co-founded StereoVisual, a non-profit organization aimed at fostering the integration of BIPOC musicians into an industry that, even today, leaves them very little space for expression.

Her latest obsession: NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Nearly two months ago, TiKA Simone and rapper Allan Kingdom auctioned a song, “Yebo Life,” via the Etherium protocol, whose token eventually fetched 4.4ETH, the equivalent of just over $14,000 at the time of the transaction. Tika has since followed up by offering tokens of songs from her recent album, limited editions of the .wav files, in this case, while retaining her publishing rights.

“I’m super-stoked by the potential of NFTs,” says TiKA on the phone from Toronto, where she spends her time when she’s not in Montréal. “I find the concept to be a source of progress, especially for artists who are under-served by the music industry.” In other words, they’re a way to generate new, autonomous revenue for artists who often work without the support of established structures or record labels.

These revenues count for a lot in the process, admits Tika, but “they’re also a way to build a community of fans around your project. A major part of the process is posting it on socials or, in other words, being self-confident enough in your own work to actively promote it. You can truly build a community that will, down the line, allow you to rely of a stable source of income. A lot of artists are going through rough times right now because they couldn’t tour. I believe NFTs can allow artists to make ends meet during this rough patch.”

And during said rough patch, TiKA added a new string to her bow: screen composer. Co-written with Casey Manierka-Quaile for Thyrone Tommy’s feature film Learn to Swim, her song “And Then They Won’t” is currently up for Best Original Song at the Canadian Screen Awards Gala on April 8, 2022.

“Composing for a film is a much more intimate and private experience than when I’m creating for my own projects,” says TiKA. “There’s a whole world of difference between composing a song for myself and watching a film, or a scene, to imagine what music would best underscore it, and deciding what instrument best fits that emotion; that’s why I find that process a lot more intuitive. It was especially true with this project, since the director hadn’t finished his movie when I started working on it. That meant we had to communicate a lot about the film’s message, and the emotions the song needed to express. I composed a song based on our conversations, so it’s like I channelled the director’s energy to be able to flesh out the music he was imagining.”

It was also an opportunity for TiKA to take measure of the hurdles she’s had to overcome to gain a foothold in the world of screen composing. It’s a world, she believes, that’s not conducive to the integration of people of colour, who are still very much a minority. As a result, she helped create StereoVisual, an organization that equips that minority to enter the business.

“This project was born out of a strong desire to help this industry change,” says TiKA, who enrolled in a screen composition program at the Slaight Music Residency of the Canadian Film Centre. “It was an awesome experience, but I was also told stuff like, ‘You know, TiKA, if you want to become a screen composer, you must learn to play a string instrument.’ OK, fair enough. But what about all those who don’t get the financial means, or the opportunity, to get such training? Why should they be excluded from that realm, especially since many marginalized people don’t have access to such training, and must learn to use music software on their computer, since that’s all they can afford. It’s the accessibility to that training that sparks a conversation, because if you’re told that to compose for film you have to know music theory, that excludes a whole category of artists who are very often people of colour.”

That’s what the people behind StereoVisual are working on, building bridges between musicians from cultural communities and the “very white and very male” world of film and television. “The whole movie industry needs to change, not just the screen composing segment,” TiKA firmly believes.