Marisa Meltzer agreed to have breakfast with me!! It was so dreamy!! She was a freelance journalist in NYC and used to interview girls from my school, Chapin, whenever shed write for Teen Vogue. When starting my research on my Women’s Studies thesis on how women navigate sexist stereotypes in the music industry, I came across her book Girls Rock! I loved the sharp and slightly sarcastic way in which she writes and there were so many questions I wanted to ask her when I finished reading the book that I thought I had to try to reach out to her somehow. Amazingly, she wrote back and said she was happy to help with my thesis! We met at Prime Meat in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn and I will post parts of the interview via soundcloud once I get a chance to edit it down a bit. It was such an interesting conversation and she will be invaluable to my thesis.

After that, I made sure to stop at my favorite bakery called Mazzola at 192 Union street for their infamous lard bread! I know. But it has asiago and spices and meat and it’s so divine. One of the people that worked alongside Mayor Bloomberg with me in 2009 would always bring some to the office and it would be gone within minutes.

I then made my way to Mercer and Houston to meet up with Nadin Laskar, who goes by Brooklyn Shanti, to continue to learn more about he music scene in NYC. He, Thomas Blondet and Ludacris used to make music together in high school in Nova and since his time moving back to NYC he has taken off as a talented DJ, MC, Producer and label owner. He hopes to open for Jack Johnson this summer and will be collaborating with Rhythm & Culture on a track called Choli Ke Piche coming out soon!! He linked me up with a dynamo out in LA who is apparently putting together Lincoln Park’s next tour.

Onward to the LES but first a pit stop at White Saffron to say hi to my girl Ying Ying that works there and sells sone of the dopest clothes I’ve seen in Soho. I then proceeded to buy the most hipster thing ever next door at In God We Trust. It was a vintage dress from the 50s revamped into a romper. I know. But it’s not like I’d be strutting around Billyburg in it! I just love playing shows in weird shit like that…especially in DC. Fellow Chapinite Hoya Radha Sub came to vibe with me and we checked out Cake Shop where I opened for Beyonce’s drummer last September. We discussed the importance of odyssey’s in every sense of the word.

I then did a Noelle (and took the F to the L) to connect with Leader of the Revolution and Editor-in-Chief of Tom Tom Magazine. Mindy Abovitz. She’s so humble and loves what she does. Her work and mission and outcome of it all reminds me of what happened with Eve Ensler: at first it was tough to find female drummers but once the word was out, it turned out EVERYONE was a female drummer!!! She hooked me up with sticks and copies of the mag and teeshirts and it was pretty amazing to be at the Office of Tom Tom Magazine. We also discussed SXSW and the workshop/Performance I hope to do down there. It’s gonna be wild. 4:30pm on March 18th!!

From there? Back to Manhattan to AOL’s headquarters. An amazing panel discussion on The Music Industry in an Ever-Changing Digital Age hosted by GEMA. I met Universal’s music strategist who is actually looking for mathy kids to think up ways of restructuring the music biz model and I also spoke to the head of AOL Music who is a Georgetown grad. Amazing.

From there? Picked Noelle up from Think Coffee and we headed to a bar called Von. Last year when I saw Fela! On Broadway, I stayed back to meet the drummer for Antibalas and decided to reconnect with him on this trip as well. He invited me out to a delicious night of live music and Afrojazz and Noelle got her groove on. I sat in with Percussionist Ray who happened to play with Afrobob Alliance!! Joe McCarthy’s band!!

I caught a 3am train at Penn Station and am currently headed to DC. I arrive at 7am and will go straight to the airport since my flight to LA leaves at 9am.

Been passing out the latest Second Sky / Rhythm & Culture jams and telling people about what we do. Can’t wait to hear what people think.