From Chicago’s South Side, music artist Shawnee Dez intently engages her audience, encouraging energy exchanges first and foremost. Dez is concerned with ancestral knowledge and performance as an opportunity to channel and communicate with the past and future. Her music style consists of heavy use of harmonic layering, a fusion of live instrumentation with digital production, topped off with her dynamic multi-ranged alto melodic voice, creating the perfect dreamscape.

When off the stage, Shawnee’s work centers youth and community advocacy. She activates spaces for creative youth to express unapologetically. In June 2020, Shawnee organized a mass Pre-Juneteenth Black Joy bike ride through Chicago’s Metropolitan area. This ride was a symbol of liberation and mobility, during a time where many were heavily limited by the horrifying effects of two pandemics: systemic racism and COVID-19.

“Chicago singer Shawnee Dez evokes a wide range of emotions with her sultry and dreamy voice and sound that straddles between Soul and R&B with a pinch of contemporary electronic synths.” – Vocalo Radio