POC in Art and Music: Rina Sawayama

As a millennial, Rina Sawayama's perspective as a biracial artist would rock the music industry. After being born in August of 1990, she and her parents migrated from Japan to London, England. She was supposed to return to Japan, but decided to stay in London. She struggled with English, which led her to feel isolated from her classmates and teachers. Despite this battle, she was able to connect with something that would help her feel included in England: music. She enjoyed listening to pop covers and recreating them as if they were her own. Eventually, she attended Magadalene College, where she studied the humanities and earned a political science degree.

Photo Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rina_Sawayama

Her early career would be detailed with producing several solos. One of those includes her first song, "Sleeping in Waking". Shortly after that, Rina produced a new song titled "Terror," which was meant to be a festive Halloween song. In 2015, she released a song depicting the effects of social media shaping human life. This song was titled "Tunnel Vision" and became an inspiration for her future song "Cyber Stockholm Syndrome", which explained how the internet provides an escape for individuals struggling in reality. In an effort to maintain her home influences, pop and R&B vibes dominate most of her early songs.

Sawayama worked hard on her Debut self-titled EP, which was finally released in 2017 and highlighted in the Guardian Newspaper. 2020 would be a big year for her, as she signed with Dirty Hit Records and was widely recognized throughout Britain for her positive acclaim. Many citizens were angry that the Committee for British Music Awards would not allow Sawayama to obtain any awards due to her British citizenship status, so her supporters began a hashtag that stated her British roots. This hashtag went viral, and the committee changed their process for selecting citizenship; she could finally accept awards from Britain.

Rina was featured on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to showcase her music shortly before beginning her first tour. In 2021, she began the process of a new album called "Chosen Family".

In addition to being a singer and songwriter, she worked as a model for multiple agencies and even partnered with John Yuyi to discuss Asian beauty standards. Sawayama felt that standards such as having very pale skin were both detrimental and in some cases, like her own, unrealistic for Asian women. She touched on this topic again in a more recent interview with Vogue.