Harmonizing Cultures: Kneet Music's Path to Artistic Expression and Advocacy

In this inspiring episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we are joined by Kneet Music, a global independent artist who masterfully blends self-expression with the power of voice. Kneet shares her remarkable journey from her roots in Thailand to her pursuit of music in New York, highlighting how her Indian and Punjabi heritage influences her sound and lyrics.
Kneet discusses the profound impact of music as a tool for healing and connection, revealing how it has helped her navigate personal struggles and empower others. She opens up about the importance of using one's voice for advocacy and the transformative power of creativity in overcoming adversity. Through her music, Kneet aims to inspire listeners to find their strength and reclaim their identities, emphasizing that everyone can rise above their challenges.
This episode dives deep into the themes of cultural identity, resilience, and the universal nature of human experiences. Kneet also shares her upcoming projects, including new singles and music videos, as well as her vision for connecting with audiences across cultures through her art. Don't miss this heartfelt conversation filled with motivation and empowerment!
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The role of cultural background in shaping artistic expression
- How music serves as a healing tool during difficult times
- The importance of using one's voice to advocate for change
- Ways to connect personal experiences with universal themes in music
- Upcoming projects and the journey of an independent artist
For more information on Kneet Music and her work, visit kneetmusic.com.

Transcript

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve. Welcome, to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, I am joined by Neat Music. Neat is a global independent artist who blends self expression with the power of voice through identity and resilience. Her work shows how the power of the voice can be a sense of connection and inner strength across cultures. So we're going to be talking to Neet about her work and everything that she's up to and going to be up to. So, Neet, thank you for joining me.

>> Neat Music: 1:01

Yes, hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful to be here.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 1:06

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

>> Neat Music: 1:10

Yes, of course. So, thank you for the introduction. So I'm Neet. I am Indian, Punjabi, so from Thailand, born and raised. I have been in New York for, quite a while now, pursuing my music, my education. I have always used music as a way not only to escape, but to heal, to tell the story. My music tells, a story of where I came from, what the struggles that I've been through, and I hope that it resonates with the people that listen to it and empowers the people. I try to carry a message behind my music that will help people, find their strength and, with their messages that how they define the song, how they define the messages themselves. But definitely something that, I would like to empower people with is my music.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 2:02

Yeah, well, talk about how your cultural background has influenced your sound, lyrics, and creative process.

>> Neat Music: 2:12

Yes, definitely. So I'm so blessed because I'm definitely. I'm Indian, but born and raised in Thailand. It's already, like, such a beautiful mix. so my, cultural background with the Indian background, it was quite difficult, for me to pursue music as a teenager or a young adult, but I used it as a way to express myself anyway. I believed that. I believe very strongly then that we are allowed to, as women and children at that time, that did not have a voice in our culture back then. I believe that it was okay for us to express our feelings or our emotions through other ways, like through art and through music or even through fashion. Any creative process which was not recognized when, back then, when I was growing up, my family didn't condone it. So, that definitely pushed me even more towards doing my music. So it influenced my earlier music, and then I wanted to pursue it further. So I Came here to the United States to try and pursue it further. And with that I bring the background of the Indian music, the background of the Thai culture behind it to try and mix with the western sound. So you can hear a blend of that in my first single and also my second single, My man, which is a little bit more, Punjabi style. Yeah.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 3:39

Well, talk about what the power of voice means to you, both musically and personally.

>> Neat Music: 3:47

Yes. So musically the power of voice for me means like what I had mentioned earlier about my music carrying a message, carrying a strength that you can hear in my voice. Because I'm telling a story of what happened and how I found my strength. And. And then in real life it applies because, for example, I'm going through a lot of stuff in my personal life and you reach to a point where you don't feel heard, you don't know what to do. So you use that voice to empower other people. You use that voice to like I started a petition to protect children. So voice is something that is found within you and then you choose to apply it. Like how I chose to apply it to music. But in real life I choose to apply it by trying to be an advocate to protect children, for example, in the court systems that have been failing children or failing to recognize mental abuse and stuff like that. So I choose to use my voice that way in real life. Yeah,

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 4:52

well, talk about how creativity and music become tools for healing. Even when words alone on Enough.

>> Neat Music: 5:01

Oh, definitely, I could speak for myself. I was going through such a dark time in my life, when I came here and my life did not go according to what I had imagined, it. And I felt like I was literally left with nothing. I felt like even my self identity was stripped away. And years down the line when I was still, trying to discover myself again, I realized that I went back to my music and that that was in me the whole time. And that's how I slowly, I wrote down how I felt and that was the way for me to cope with the pain of the everyday life struggles that I was going through at that time and still going through some of it right now. But I chose to write it down and then I chose to put it into a song. Me and Pipe, I had a wonderful, wonderful team working with me and my producer Joe Philey, who helped me to put this pain and this story into a form of an art like, of art form of lyrics and putting it into a song. Then we got Josh from Icon Media who's beautifully brought the story into life. We went back to shoot at the area, the same place where the story took place initially in my life. So Josh was able to capture that beautifully in the music video for Ryan. And then we have TJ Habibi, the engineer who literally brought the magic to the whole song. So that whole process was my healing process. Being able to go back to that location of where, you know, things actually started in the bad direction for me and taking that power back, feeling so empowered, going there with my own story, not a narrative that somebody else had built for me that has snowballed over the last decade. I went there as myself with my own story, and that was, very healing for me.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 7:02

Well, talk about the moment in your life that forced you to stop surviving and start choosing yourself.

>> Neat Music: 7:10

yeah, that actually was a slow progress until I saw that it was hurting my child. When that happened, the whole thing changed internally because it wasn't just me fighting to survive anymore. It was me having my mom instincts, my mother instincts to protect my child. I couldn't sit there and be sad and dwell anymore. That was the minute I chose that. I have to fix myself. I have to get strong so that this child has a mom that's fighting for him and, a good life. So that was the pivoting point for me when I'm seeing, let my own child suffer or going down. And I couldn't take that. So I had to get. Gather all my strength. And, in a beautiful way, I feel like that's how I found myself again. So definitely it was a blessing.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 8:06

Well, talk about how you managed to stay grounded as an artist when your personal life is under such intense pressure.

>> Neat Music: 8:14

Yes. So I don't actually see it as two separate roads. I tend to see it as the same. as I mentioned, like, my song Rise, the fact that I was able to. Me and the team, were able to put it. Put what I was going through at that moment in life into the song. I feel like that's how I deal with it, because I'm able to integrate the two, able to translate my pain or even my strength, into the music that I'm doing. So I feel like I'm so blessed that I'm able to do both at the same time.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 8:51

Yeah. How do you transform personal experiences into music that connects across culture?

>> Neat Music: 9:00

So here's where I think the humanity side comes in. Right. Because culturally, of course, every culture is different. We might, reflect on things differently, react to things differently, but at the end of the day, we're all human beings. So there are certain things that will be the same across all cultures. Whether it's heartbreak, love, pain, betrayal, you know, control, mental abuse, anything like that. I think across all cultures as human beings, we all go through it pretty much, you know, in the same humanly reactive way. I'm studying psychology as well, so I do see humans as humans that, you know, learn from behavior, etc. So, yeah, I think that's how everybody is different. But at the same time, we'll go through the same process. Maybe you, everybody that hears my, my song rise, for example, might interpret it and align it with what they're going what's going on in their life. And then that's how they choose to interpret the song. But still, there's still a middle ground. Like music is so universal. Even if you didn't understand the language, you could understand the beat, you can understand the tone, you could feel the energy. So that's what I think about that.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 10:16

Well, talk about why so many strong women get misunderstood and how reclaiming their voice can change that.

>> Neat Music: 10:27

I think that that comes from a history of, women not being able to speak up. And, when they do speak up, whether they've been, like, silenced or they've been ignored, or they've just been shunned, even, that makes women sometimes question themselves. And then you have people that attack. Well, either they don't want the truth to come out, either they don't want to share equality. But I think at the same time, women, are also getting used to how we use our voice and how we're able to use it, in a productive way to help everybody at the same time. And I don't think that, anybody resisting to it is going to stop us women from still trying to speak up. maybe it's a process. You know, change has to happen over time. It doesn't happen overnight. So I think that, it's a work in progress. But as you can see, there's so many strong women nowadays. And I think as long as we, you know, stick together, we stick to the truth, we stick to what is right, you know, the truth will always prevail eventually, you know.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 11:36

Well, when people listen to your music, what message do you hope they take away from it?

>> Neat Music: 11:43

I. The biggest message that I took out of it, that I would like people to take out of it is the fact that no matter what you've been through in life, you can go through the lowest, lowest point of your life and lose yourself completely. But still find a way back to yourself that you have not completely lost. There is a way for you to find your way back. Having yourself surrounding yourself with the right people, that's very important in life. And I hope that people that listen to my music can hear the story in the struggles that you know, everybody might be going through in their own way. But you can always, you know, take a step back to reflect, find yourself. It is so important, you know, getting. I feel like I'm still getting to know myself every day. We change every single day as we grow and adapt. So I really want the listeners to hear the story behind it, hear the love, the pain, the joy and resonate with it and you know, put it, align it with their life and feel empowered by it.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 12:52

Tell us about any other upcoming projects that you got going on that listeners need to be aware of.

>> Neat Music: 12:59

Oh yes, definitely. So the second single had just dropped in February, my man. So we are going to do a, ah, music video for that and then we got a few more singles coming up this, this year and hopefully working towards that album and then we would start doing shows pretty soon. We're still in talks right now. So these are just a few things and everything is on my social, media pages under Neat Music K N E E T Music and all my music platforms underneath to listen to the new singles that are coming up to the podcast interviews or any new news that will be coming up.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 13:41

Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Your contact info, do you have a website?

>> Neat Music: 13:46

Yes, the website is coming up. It is also neatmusic.com but in the meantime for anything updates you can definitely hit the social media first and I will keep you guys updated there.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 14:00

All right, we'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if there was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

>> Neat Music: 14:09

I just want the listeners to know that never give up on yourself and never allow anybody to dictate or tell you who you are. You need to take the time to get to know yourself and pull yourself up and don't let nobody pull you down.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 14:26

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, neatmusic.com need has some great music so please be sure to check it out and follow rate review Share this episode to as many people as possible. You can hear how she connects, across all cultures. And also if you haven't done so please go sign up for the Living the Dream newsletter. You know, go to www.craveball337.com Leave us a review. If you have any guest suggestions, you can let us know. There's thank you for listening and supporting the show. And please be sure to share the curveball337.com website and show to everybody you know and neat. Thank you for joining me.

>> Neat Music: 15:12

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 15:16

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337. Until next time, keep Living the Dream.