Measha Brueggergosman has lived her life under the spotlights. Canada’s operatic soprano is a groundbreaking, ceiling-busting, award-winning musical pioneer with a voice that is liquid and a spirit that’s fierce. She worked with the National Arts Centre to promote Black History and she’s won almost every international music award there is, including the George London prize in New Delhi. In 2010, she sang the opening hymn at Vancouver’s Winter Olympics.
“Can I testify?”
“Ten years to the day of my aorta exploding, I had a second heart attack and on that same day my father died. That man lived fully. He breathed the exact amount of breath that he had preordained. But this is a story about my mother. Because she never told my father that his youngest was in the hospital as he died in her arms. My mother knew though, and she never said anything. That’s my mother. Imagine that.”
“You can’t be motivated by desperation. That’s a poverty mentality.”
“If you want to be a reflection of the country, you have to allow different voices to flow.”
“This season, let’s face it, we’ve all done more: more drinking, more smoking, more loving, more hating. It’s been a season of more.”
“Feast or famine is not how God wants you to live.”
My goal is to make bank from my kitchen table.
“I’m a dirty joint girl.”
“There has to be equilibrium beyond white-knuckling it. But look, I’ve had two heart attacks, I get it. Don’t get me wrong.”
“What motivates me is a righteous anger in the need to heal people. My kindness gets aggressive sometimes.”
“If I wasn’t a servant in the order of Christ, I would bow down to hip hop.”
My shit is tenuous.
“I like fights. I never fought in my marriage so I never learned how to fight. It’s a good thing for a woman to learn how to do. Especially a woman who leads a lot of men.”
“I was ‘the only’ so much: the youngest, the blackest, the fattest—all of the things, I was first. But I don’t care about first. I care about lasting.”
“You don’t need but a thousand loyal people to spread what you start.”
“COVID, no COVID, my calling hasn’t changed. It’s only the instruments of war that’s been changed.”
Be seated in your heart.
“I’m trying to be led more by purpose and less by feeling. Trying to shed myself from myself and yes, weed plays a part in that process. It’s detachment, but also awareness; when your brain relaxes into flow and it’s been a huge help in my ability to express myself.”
“I know I’m articulate. I know I have vision. I have gravitas.
Boom.”
For more on Measha Brueggergosman, see Measha.com.
