Destinie Lynn: Reclaiming Culture

Courtesy of Destinie Lynn

Destinie Lynn is a Folk and Americana singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles. 

Lynn grew up in San Bernardino County and then moved to Santa Barbara for college then San Diego for eight years, and is now back in LA. 

While Lynn finds her roots in Southern California, the impact of the South on her is undeniable. 

“My dad is from Birmingham, and then my grandma’s from Texas and my granddad’s from Louisiana,” Lynn explained. “I was born here but it was very much a Southern household.” 

“I got really, really lucky with supportive parents,” Lynn said. “According to my mother, I've been singing since before I could talk but I've been songwriting probably since maybe 2010.”

In Santa Barbara, Lynn was a “total academic.” She participated in the academic decathlon and she wanted to work for the UN. 

“I had this kind of other trajectory going and I kept on coming back to like, the music and wanting to do the music, but I'm such a practical person. I was like, I can't live, I can't do that,” Lynn said. “ [My parents] were like, ‘no, you should do it.’ I know not everybody has that because I think if they had been kind of in the same headspace that I was in, I don't know that I would have had the courage to do it.”

In October, Lynn released her second EP “Little Ghost.”

“I think it was very different from my first EP [The Devil and the Deep Sea],” Lynn said. “I wanted this one to be a little bit more experimental, a little more playful.” 

Lynn felt that the collection of songs just fit together, even if not tied by a singular sound or genre. 

“Some of the songs are like 10 years old, some of them I wrote literally three months before the EP came out. So it was just kind of a wide array of stuff,” Lynn said. 

The EP, produced by John Caviness, features Lynn on vocals and guitar with Jamie Shadowlight on fiddle, Chris Rorrer on cello, and Paul Tillery on bass. 

“I've known these people for years, but I have never recorded in the same room as them. It was all remote so I would do my vocals and guitar and then send them a demo and then they record their part and then I send it to the next person,” Lynn explained. “It came together really well for how I guess disjointed the process feels.” 

“I'm actually trying to see if I can get together a project this year where we can actually record in the same space at the same time and you know, kind of have more of a live feel to it because I just haven't had a chance to do that yet,” Lynn said. Lynn feels that with Folk and Americana music, people prefer listening to live tracks rather than studio tracks.

Inspired by the old blues masters, such as Lead Belly and Eva Cassidy, Lynn gravitates toward a lot of old music, particularly artists that have the capacity to perform with robust vocals but match their vocals with a more folk sensibility of songwriting. 

“I feel like that combo can be really amazing,” Lynn said. 

Courtesy of Destinie Lynn

Lynn says she is still working on finding her voice and identity as a recording musician. 

“I kind of had to pick from a ton of different influences that I loved and kind of tried to synthesize it all into something that sounded authentic to me even though they were very different,” Lynn said. 

She wants to captivate the audience with only her voice and her instrument. 

“I just want to take all the elements of all these people that I love, and I want to be able to, with just me and the guitar, kind of have that same effect,” Lynn said. 

Southern California presents a bit of an isolated experience for Lynn in her genre and style of music, but she says in many ways it's been an advantage, even if lonely. 

“Especially here in Southern California, there's not a lot of other people or not a lot of other people that I know anyway, doing this kind of music and then definitely not a lot of other Black people or women doing this kind of music, so I feel like I've kind of been in a little incubator,” Lynn said. “It's one of those things where it's so niche that people are kind of like, ’oh, that's different.’ So I guess in that way, it's a little bit of an advantage that it's kind of unique. It feels a little lonely at times.” 

It is a bit of a challenge because there’s not as much of a Folk scene in Southern California. Lynn notices many Folk artists skip LA on tour. 

“It's not a thing here really and I'm trying my best to kind of find a community and try to build it up so that, you know, there's more of an audience for it here but it's been challenging,” Lynn said.  “It makes me sad actually.” 

Lynn went to a print shop in her historically Black neighborhood where she told the worker her music is in the Folk/Americana genre. He asked her “what are our people doing making that kind of music?” 

“It just made me sad because we are a foundational part of this music and a lot of people just don’t know that and that makes me really sad,” Lynn said. “That’s part of what makes me want to reclaim that as my cultural history. That’s a part of our history and it’s kind of been erased, you know?” 

As part of this cultural reclaim, Lynn is transitioning her primary instrument to the banjo. 

“My husband got me a banjo last year and so I've just been learning how to play and kind of find my voice on it, but it came to me so much more naturally than guitar did, I picked it up really easily and it just feels so much more comfortable,” Lynn said. “That's been really cool for me, especially as I've kind of gone back and learned more about the history of banjo and its origins. So hopefully I'll be playing more on that in the future.”

To learn more about Destinie Lynn or to find her music and shows, click here.