Ahya Simone
Ahya Simone (born 1994) is an American multidisciplinary artist. Based in Detroit, she is best known for her work as a harpist and for creating and starring in the web series Femme Queen Chronicles. Early life and education Simone was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She grew up singing in the church choir and started to play harp as a student at Cass Technical High School when she was 16. While attending college at Wayne State University she came out as transgender. She was the principal harpist for the university's symphony. Career Music After college Simone sought out ways to perform outside her previous experience "playing 300-year-old dead people music, and being around all these white suburban kids who had access I never did, who’d been playing classical music since they were two years old." She began to cover r&b and soul music, and named Dorothy Ashby as one of her biggest influences. This led her to collaborate with fellow Detroiter dream hampton, to score hampton's short film Treasure (2018). Simone received a Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2018 and was the first Black trans woman recipient. That year she also teamed up with Kelela on Take Me a_Part, the