OnRaé LaTeal: Musician and activist

A music producer, videographer, creative arts educator and activist all in one, OnRaé LaTeal writes her music to support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

To help the BLM movement, LaTeal takes the sounds from the movement and transforms them into contemporary music. In her latest musical work, “The Black Joy Experience”, LaTeal created an album of songs and chants based on freedom and liberation. 

The first single of the album is named “Healing”. A joyful song asks for healing for the “mind, body and soul”, in hopes to heal from the pain of oppression and racism. 

LaTeal’s music is meant to create audio and visual media to highlight the DC community’s response to the murders of multiple Black people through state-sanctioned violence. She includes video footage from direct actions held by the Black Lives Matter organization of DC, the Black Youth Project 100, Freedom Fighters DC and other local activists in the DC area. 

“I refer to my chant remixes as “fight songs” because the goal is to get you amped up to enter revolutionary combat”, LaTeal quoted for the Washingtonian. 

LaTeal is a strong, Black, queer woman that hopes that the audio and visual soundtracks she is creating will be a part of the history books, to give more first-hand experience from someone who has been intimately affected by the systemic oppression in the United States. 

In “Middle Finger to the Law”, there is joy clearly shown through the entire video. LaTeal told the Washingtonian that “Black joy is a form of resistance because it is something that we aren’t always entitled to.”

LaTeal quoted Imani Jackson by saying “We have always been people who prioritized joy. Joy gives us love, family, art, music and resilience.”

She also expressed toward fellow Black creators that “you have the power to make a difference.”

Be it through music, fashion, video, photographs, art, events, blogging, cooking, teaching, dancing, styling or any gift you possess, she says to “be bold and unapologetic.”