Monique DeBose

Monique DeBose is an award-winning singer, activist and playwright. A leading vocal improvisationalist (having studied under Rhiannon and Joey Blake of the renowned Bobby McFerrin Voicestra), Monique has toured and entertained audiences throughout Europe, India and Asia, with the mission of helping people of all ages and cultures to transition beyond seeing in just “black” and “white” to seeing in full color.

On August 28, the date of so many pivotal moments in the civil rights movement, including the anniversary of Martin Luther-King’s “I have a Dream” speech, she released the powerful anthem Rally Call. The song is a call for liberation, an anthem for the disenfranchised. The chorus calls out to “get rid of those papers,” a reference to a time in history when black people were unable to go out in public on their own without papers that demonstrated who they “belonged” to. Her current single MORE, released October 23, is Monique’s personal anthem “at this challenging time in the world, I feel that we all really need reminding, myself included, that we can and must choose MORE for ourselves, particularly as women” she says.

Inspired by her experience of what it means to be a black, mixed-race woman (from an African American father from the segregated south and Irish American mother from upstate New York) she wrote the funny, heartwarming and disruptive one-woman show Mulatto Math: Summing Up The Race Equation in America to initiate conversation and help heal race relations in America. After winning the Producer’s Encore Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival and performing the show throughout the world as a workshop focusing on identity, race and belonging, Monique is currently developing Mulatto Math for original programming.

She calls LA home, is married to a Brit and is raising two compassionate, culturally intelligent boys