Havalah Collins is a singer, songwriter, dancer, and ritual performance leader. She teaches Music Together®, a music immersion program for young children, and volunteers her time at Brooklyn College Early Childhood Center leading Spanish songs and movement for the children. Havalah is currently pursuing her CUNY Baccalaureate Degree with a focus on vocal studies, performance and ethnomusicology.
Havalah began singing for large audiences at age six. She performed solo at large community events, lead songs with her family at a liberal church, and was a leading actor in the her school’s theatre department. After high school, Havalah studied Afro-Carribean dance, Classical Indian dance, and Native American music at Twin Cities University of Minnesota. During that time, she also performed with the Sacred Dance and Song Troupe at Newman Center Church in Minneapolis. She then moved to San Francisco where she continued to pursue dance and music. While there, she performed with the Ouishe Dance Troupe, began writing and recording chants and studied music theory and vocal technique. In pursuit of singing professionally, Havalah moved to New York City and became a back-up singer for bands including Lucky, Blue Ceiling, and singer/songwriter Antje Zumbansen. Ready to create her own music again, Havalah collaborated with trip-hop producer Jeff Falcon, and released her first dance track single Sky High, which she had the pleasure of performing at the Winter Music Festival in Miami, Florida. She went on to create an EP entitled “Butterfly” with co-songwriter/producer Anthony Williams. Soon thereafter, Havalah directed and co-produced ONE VOICE; Music Without Borders, a benefit concert and healing ceremony for Kosova war victims that featured a variety of world influenced musicians and a recitation of Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues” by actor Julia Stiles in NYC.
Havalah began studying voice with Marie Alfonso, former member of Zap Mama, and was inspired to form and direct Songweavers, an acapella group that performed at events including the Solar Sebastopol Festival in California, Burning Man Decompression party in New York City, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. During this time she also acted as Priestess and ritual performer for Body Temple, a NYC based ritual theatre night club.
In Spring of 2007, Havalah joined two other Brooklyn-based singer/songwriters and mothers (Jessie White and Renee Skuba) to form the trio Tres Leches.
Tres Leches performs world-infused urban folk music and has just completed their debut album Tres Leches: Songs, Chants & Lullabies for All Our Relations set to release
May 2009!
