When singer-songwriter Fana Hues was a child, illness took away her voice
for almost five years. “I had scarlet fever, tonsillitis, and strep throat at the
same time,” the 25-year-old from Pasadena, CA recalls about the years she
spent yearning to sing—years her mother, a dancer and healer, spent
concocting natural medicines and elixirs that would eventually restore her
voice. A challenging and humbling experience, Fana’s period of near
voicelessness, led her to appreciate both the power of healing and realize
her purpose as a musician at a young age.
A student of R&B’s masterful vocalists Nina Simone, Dionne Warwick, Anita
Baker, Beyonce Knowles, and Mary J. Blige, and one of nine
children, Fana was raised within a large, musical family. Her father, a bass,
guitar and piano player, taught her and her sisters how to sing. “I don’t
remember a time when I wasn’t learning harmonies,” Fana remembers,
illustrating a home environment built to foster her passion. “Music is literally
in the fabric of our family [and] our bond as a family,” she says about her

relatives, who make appearances in the form of memories in the self-
conceptualized video for single, “Notice Me”. Her family is also the

inspiration behind the moniker Hues, named to reflect their
surname Hughes as well as Fana’s intention to be innovative in her
approach. “I want to capture all the different shades of one idea,” she
explains about bending and twisting R&B, and bringing elements of herself
to the genre.
Fana trained in violin lessons for eight years, and after inheriting a bass
from her father, taught herself to play. In school, an English teacher
encouraged her poetry writing skills, and by the time she was a
teen, Fana was writing her own songs. “It was one of my favorite things to
do for a long time,” she says about trips to San Quentin State Prison,
where she participated in writer’s workshops and emotional literacy
programs with inmates as a part of a local community organization,
Aim4TheHeart. It’s where Fana says she developed her voice as a
songwriter, and rooted her musical practice in service to others.
Theatre has also been a really important part of her life that has shaped her
as a writer. “Theatre specifically calls for a more traditional and broader
approach to conveying emotion,” Fana notes, “I was taught never to move
without purpose in acting and I try to incorporate that in my writing and

everything I do really. To have intention behind every word I write or move I
make, makes for a better artistic display.” More recently Fana was cast in a
musical biographical exploration of Elvis Presley’s early days. Fana shared,
“I got to sing some of the blues and gospel songs he ‘borrowed’ from black
artists, but being in the production, and repeating the same track every
night for over 9 months allowed me to discover my voice in an entirely
different way.”