Month: August 2020

Singa Bromfield a.k.a. “Singa B.” is bringing Memphis to Los Angeles on August 6th.

A former Memphian, Bromfield, 29, will host a single release party for “All I Got,”  a song he wrote in Memphis that will be released the same day. The outdoor event, “Singa B.’s Listening Party,” will be held at Club Bahia in downtown LA.

“It’s also going to be a record industry mixer,” Bromfield says. “People can come and network and meet different people from different platforms, A&R’s from different labels. I’m also offering a few slots for independent artists to be able to perform one song. They can come with their representatives and network and reap benefits for themselves and their career as well.”

Bromfield wrote the song when he was home in Memphis for several months during the pandemic. “I was in North Memphis at my mom’s house. I was just chilling. Looking out for the family. It was a crazy time. People were not really doing a lot of looting, but they were attempting to do crazy things. It was a cause for me to come home, look out for my family, and check the temperature of the neighborhood and make sure it was OK.”

“All I Got” came out of “a lot of frustration and reflection” on himself. “What your morals and principles are,” he says.

Bromfield was born Nersinga Bromfield in Maryland. A Hindu name, Nersinga means “half man, half lion,” he says. Singa became his nickname when he was a child.

He moved with his family to Memphis when he was just weeks old.

Bromfield quickly found music. “When I was about four years old, I taught myself to play piano. I learned how to play ‘Greensleeves.’”

His mother played a lot of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Earth, Wind & Fire records around the house, he says. “I’m Jamaican-American. My dad is Jamaican.”

When he was five years old, his mother enrolled him in Suzuki violin lessons because his brother was taking them. But he turned to guitar. “My mom bought me a guitar because I was interested in watching a performance on Austin City Limits. Just some band. But I saw how they were communicating with the audience via the energy and the music. I thought that was pretty expressive. I was attracted to how people can close their eyes and just use their life through instruments. And people can hear, see, and feel what they’re saying. I was pretty intrigued by that.”

Bromfield didn’t have much formal guitar training. “I took a few little lessons here and there. It was just books you could rent. And just little random stuff you could pick up and find your way around the instrument. It was mostly just me taking my time and figuring out how to make chords and learn how to solo. I listened to Jimi Hendrix records on vinyl. My mom had a lot of vinyl.”

Bromfield, who taught himself how to use program software, composed his first album when he was in the ninth grade. “It was kind of a mixture of R&B — like soul and acoustic folk, really.”

He got his first song published when he was 12 years old. “I wrote the alma mater for American Way Middle School. ‘We Love You.’ It was a competition that the choir and the principal were collaborating on.”

And, he says, “They still use it to this day.”

Bromfield attended City University School of Liberal Arts, where he played snare drum and sang tenor in the choir.

“It wasn’t quite as challenging for what I was aiming for.”

His mother then enrolled him in Stax Music Academy. “They were hosting auditions. She thought it would be a good place to learn about the culture of Memphis music and the artists on the label. They take young musicians and teach them how to be recording artists and performing artists.”

Bromfield was at Stax for three years. “I had already made up my mind I was going to do music, but Stax definitely instilled a foundation as far as learning and appreciating theory and knowing how to use it. I was already a recording artist. They helped me understand how to be a performing artist. Work the stage. Communicate with the musicians on the stage, off the stage.”

In 2009, he started his own record label, TRE Productions, which he still operates. It began as “mostly a fun little company; a cool thing with friends.”

Bromfield was accepted to Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he didn’t have enough money to go and didn’t have a scholarship, so he went to the Tennessee Art Institute in Nashville, where he majored in audio engineering. He only stayed a semester, but when he returned to Memphis, he continued with his music. He put together videos and released songs and helped friends and family members with their music aspirations, whether they needed help passing out flyers, doing videos, photo shoots, or marketing themselves online. “And using social platforms to be able to connect with their audience.”

He wanted to “just kind of show everything I’ve learned along the way.”

As for his own music, Bromfield says, “I figured if I start with hip-hop — Memphis is predominantly hip-hop and soul music — I would catch a buzz here.”

He recorded at Trap House Studios. Trap is a form of hip-hop, which “comes from the African-American region of America like Mississippi and Alabama,” he says. “And the pioneers of trap music were artists like Yo Gotti, Two Chainz. Most of the themes of trap are about coming from the bottom of society. And you have to hustle and find different ways of being able to sustain and maintain and evolve out of that state.”

Bromfield was part of the Take Me to the River music/documentary project, and he performed at several festivals and venues around town. But, he says, “I needed to go somewhere out of Memphis to use everything I learned.”

Moving to LA in 2019, he says, “helped me grow as a man. Even though both my parents are alive, I was raised in a single-parent household. My mother raised me.”

After he moved, he had to become “more accountable, more reliable, more responsible. I had to really make and seize the opportunity to make something.”

In other words, Bromfield says, “I had to rely on myself.”

Singa Brromfield a.k.a. Singa B.

Shortly after moving to LA, Bromfield performed at an open mike, where he met Damon Dash of Dame Dash Recording. Dash told him he was looking for musicians to be in a band with one of his artists. Bromfield got the job. He’s now on Dash’s record label, Blue Rock Records, an independent artists’ label. But, he says, “I’m still signed to my own label.”

He was performing his rock-infused trap soul on guitar at open mikes in Burbank and Hollywood until he moved back home in March because of the pandemic. He returned to California in mid-June after he told himself, “Hey, I need to go back to Los Angeles and finish what I started to do.”

“Singa B.’s Listening Party,” a “private, invitation-only event,” also will include a fashion show. The event will be live-streamed on social media: instagram.com/singabromfield, twitter.com/singabromfield, facebook.com/Singa-Bromfield

As for his future plans, Bromfield says, “I’m not looking to stay in LA. The big picture for me is to stay with music and see where it takes me.”

To hear “All I Got,” click here: 

Singa Bromfield