Drive Through Art Show Virtual Tour

"Sweet Little Baby" by Cecilia Qualey
Vocals & Ukulele

Artist Statement

Hi, my name is Cecilia, but you can just call me Cece. I am 14 years old, and I go to Connections Academy (an online school). I do Portable Audio and my mentors are Maria Hamilton and Aaron Sutton. For my piece I am sharing an original song that I have written called “Sweet Little Baby”. My piece is about how there are alot of single mothers out there and how they really struggle to take care of their kids, and sometimes don’t get to spend enough time with their children. Now I know not everyone's situation is what I said and not everyone is struggling, but I know there are definitely some people out there whose situation is like that. My piece is telling those children with a struggling single mother that their mom does love them and is just struggling on showing that.

The reason I say that is because I know from personal experience that when your mom is busy doing work and doesn’t get to spend much time with you, you feel lonely and unappreciated. But even though my mom was always working and tired, she spent every moment she could with my siblings and I. Sometimes I thought she didn’t love me but then as I grew older I noticed how much my mom truly does for me, how much she cares for me, how much she works for me, and how much she loves me. After realizing that I wanted to open other kids’ eyes to see how much your mother loves you and struggles for you everyday.

In my piece I use a ukulele as my instrument, my vocals, and the lyrics from my song. The reason I chose to use the ukulele as my instrument is because it is really the only instrument I know how to play and it is fun to play. I chose to use my vocals because I’m not really the type of person to make a song just using an instrument(s). Lastly, I chose to use the lyrics from my song, really the song in general, because that was honestly the least personal song I had at that time.

When I first went to Portable Audio, I was pretty scared. I was scared nobody was going to like me, that when I sang I was gonna sound horrible, nobody would like my song, ect.. I guess I always felt that way when meeting new people. Although I just wanted to tell my mom to turn the car around and to just go home (even though if I would tell her she wouldn’t have done it) I decided against it and didn’t say anything. On my first night in Portable Audio, I met a few people and got to know them a bit. Even though I almost ran out of there because there were so many people… I ended up having a lot of fun. When my stepdad came to pick me up, I told him everything we did and how much fun I had that night. Then, I kept going every Tuesday and made a bunch of friends. Sadly, though, the corona decided to swing by for a long visit. Luckily there is Zoom, and so we continued all of our things on Zoom. Being in Portable Audio has been really fun, and it has also helped me a lot in my spiritual journey. I never really believed in God much but I really did want to believe there was one. Going to portable audio has really helped me more into believing there is a God out there somewhere and he is real.

To close this short little narrative I just wanted to thank my parents for putting me in this program, my mentors at Portable Audio for being with me on this lovely journey, and everyone else for helping and supporting me throughout this amazing adventure and I hope everyone else had just as much fun as I did.

Oral Statement