Some nights, Lalin St. Juste stands on stage with her band and talks about “Firewalker,” a song she wrote when she was feeling particularly low.
Firewalker easily undone
The daughter of the sun
Loses herself in the waters
Of what never was…
St. Juste says it feels risky for to bare her soul with the crowd, but whenever she does people come up to her afterward to share their own experiences.
It’s the same when St. Juste shares a song about feeling invisible as a black woman, or one she wrote in memory of a close friend who died by suicide. Those powerful connections with the audience feed St. Juste, lead singer and lyricist with The Seshen, a six-piece electro-soul band based in the Bay Area.
“I have the privilege of looking people in the eye and sharing this really vulnerable thing,” St. Juste says. “With a little bit of new information, all these little nuggets help to bring us together in these really particular ways that can be often difficult to talk about.”
The Seshen’s music combines R&B, synth-pop, and electronic music in an outpouring of emotion that St. Juste calls a “love letter from a quiet Haitian-American girl who dreams of a world in which we can actually see and feel each other.”
St. Juste says the group finds musical inspiration across the spectrum—Erykah Badu, James Blake, and Radiohead, to name a few—and genres that don’t typically go together, like hip hop and indie rock.
In live shows, St. Juste, who’s about to turn 34, has made a choice to not only play her music, but to share some of her back stories.
“I want to give some insight because there’s so much more underneath that I want to say, and when I do, I’ve noticed that it’s resonating,” she says. “Now I consciously make an effort each show to share bits of these stories, so people can connect in a different way.”
To Lalin St. Juste, being a creator means “you allow your imagination to be infinite. You hold onto and embrace curiosity, and you seek to expand yourself and your surroundings in a variety of ways. Therefore you are creating your world around you.”
While studying abroad in Ghana, St. Juste met her husband, the group’s bassist and producer Akiyoshi Ehara. They started the band in 2010, naming it for an Egyptian word signifying rebirth and recreation. The rest of the group includes drummer Chris Thalmann, keyboard/synth player Mahesh Rao, percussionist Mirza Kopelman, and sampler Kumar Butler.
The Seshen is currently working on its third album, and its recent win at the Creator Awards San Francisco will help pay for a national tour.
“I want to take our band on the road and share these ideas,” says St. Juste. “Without sharing and vulnerability and really being open to get close to one another, we won’t experience the change in our society that we are capable of.”
