Statement of Intent - NYU CDI
Why are you a good fit for CDI, a holistic program where every student is required to study a core curriculum that includes business & technology, production, music history & writing, musicianship & songwriting, and performance. Your essay should demonstrate that you have researched CDI's curriculum and understand the Institute’s aim to produce well-rounded graduates who will help define the future of the music industry. Help us to understand you as a person, a scholar, a creative, an entrepreneur, and an aspiring professional. Include relevant background information and experiences, personal traits that will help you succeed at NYU and at CDI. Include experiences that have informed your growth as a student and aspiring professional, ideas about how you hope to contribute to the community and culture of CDI. Finally, include a few words about areas of study you are interested in at CDI that fall outside your current focus or strengths.
In order for me to reach the heights that I dream of reaching, I deem necessary for me to engage in higher learning, not only in music but in courses that fuses music into them such as those offered in CDI, in particular, the courses offered in liberal arts. As an aspiring performing artist and aside from studying and creating music, I truly enjoy classes that incentivize deep thinking and provide opportunities to analyze the way humans’ function and our relationship with things around us. Not only do I strive to make connections using music, I also strive to understand how these connections are made and their effects on the human psyche. Understanding the interconnectivity between the arts, more specifically music, human sciences such as philosophy and psychology, and business and technology, will further impulse me to fulfill my mission as an artist and musician. My goal is to seamlessly fuse culture and language through sound, song, and music which will in turn allow my music to resonate with souls regardless of the things that make them different through the qualities that make them unique.
The comprehensive curriculum offered at CDI is extremely intriguing to me as I am most curious about my ability to combine different areas of knowledge from the liberal arts courses. In my opinion, the core curriculum offered at CDI stems from the integral sectors of the music industry needed to ensure success. Although it is up to each student to “fuse” the knowledge acquired to best suit their personal, creative and professional interests, the program has safety nets put into place to reach the multi-faceted goals such as fusing or improving “students’ analytical skills through thinking, writing, research and discussion”. For this reason, I believe myself to be a great fit for CDI because creating fusions, through my individual passions, is a setting in which I thrive thus making it one of my strongest assets and is a setting in which I thrive.
My love for fusing has helped me realize the importance of building positive relationships and their impact not only on success as a professional but also on one’s emotional well-being. When it comes to music and the arts in general, collaborating with other artists and professionals has been one of the most important aspects for my success. On various occasions, I have demonstrated that I have the ability to richly contribute to a collaborative environment. These experiences include but are not limited to the creation of innovative and inclusive NHS projects, creative team building in scholarship awarded programs, that aside from NYU are AMDA and Berklee College of Music, my participation in arts-based community service as the first international Inspiring Girls Panama Young Ambassador and my participation in the 2023 and upcoming 2024 Panama Jazz Festival as a vocalist for Las Hijas del Jazz, first all-female big band of Latin America.
My multicultural background as an Afro-Panamanian and African American young female draws my interest towards the Study Away program that CDI has to offer. As can be seen in my original music in which I fuse elements of Jazz, Panamanian Folklore, Reggae/Dancehall, Reggae town, Salsa, Afrobeats and bilingualism to name a few, learning in and from different cultures is extremely important to me. To be given the opportunity to study in Berlin during my junior year will not only provide me with the academic and creative space to learn from a culture that I have yet to discover but it will also more likely than not propel my overall artistic abilities to another level.
It is important to mention that my interest in attending CDI is not only to develop my skills and talents in areas that I may already be familiar with. On the contrary, my interest in NYU also manifests itself from my need for stimulation in areas that I am not sure even exist within myself. When I think about areas in which I would like to explore or even improve, I think about courses such as REMU-UT 1159 RECYCLING POP MUSIC: INNOVATION, IMITATION & ORIGINALITY, REMU-UT 1166 TOPICS: HIP-HOP/JAZZ CONTINUUM and REMU-UT 1168 TOPICS: AMY WINEHOUSE/ERYKAH BADU.
I finalize my statement of intent by expressing that, with my demonstrated creativity and experience as an multicultural young female artist, my strong belief in emotional well-being and my adamancy in the power of collaboration, I whole-heartedly believe that I would be a grand addition to NYU and CDI family.