Emmy Award-Winning Artist PaviElle French Is Rooted in Rondo and Building for the Future

In the latest episode of On the Radar, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder’s series highlighting Black Minnesota creatives, host Damenica Ellis sat down with PaviElle French, a musician, dancer, writer, art educator, and composer whose decades of work have made her one of the most celebrated and deeply rooted artists in the Twin Cities.

Born in Rondo, Trained by Legends

French grew up in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul and has been immersed in art her entire life. By the time she was two, she was drawn to music, sitting beside her family’s record collection reading liner notes and looking at album covers. Her mother, an educator, recognized the calling early and made sure the arts were central to French’s upbringing.

She began singing in the choir at Maxfield Magnet School under Mary Hafner, director of music at Pilgrim Baptist Church, and received her first solo performing Lift Every Voice and Sing at a school assembly. From that moment, she said, there was never any doubt about the path she would take.

French went on to attend Mississippi Creative Arts Magnet School on St. Paul’s East Side, where she trained in dance, vocals, instrumentation, and drama. As part of the school’s Mississippi Singers group, she began performing professionally as a child, including shows alongside John Denver and Mannheim Steamroller at the Orpheum Theatre.

Her training deepened through connections to Penumbra Theater, where her brother Aanti Young and cousin Greg Allen Williams were foundational members. She also came up through Stepping Stone Theatre, was part of the spoken word collective Edup Poetic and Brain at 16, participated in the Twin Cities slam poetry scene, and was involved with B-Girl B, the women in hip-hop movement. Through it all, she was being mentored by some of the most significant figures in Black American art, including theater director Lorie Carlos, who was among the first women to perform in For Colored Girls.

“No matter the tumultuousness and the trials and tribulations, I had a very enchanted childhood and teenage years being surrounded by nothing but beautiful artists,” French said.

A Career Built on Truth

French is a McKnight Fellow, a Jerome Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow, a distinction she holds with particular pride.

“I sit in that library with Toni Morrison and James Baldwin with my work,” she said. “That’s how far my work has made it out of St. Paul and I’m very excited about that.”

She is also a two-time Emmy Award winner, most recently for her work as host of the Making Minnesota Music documentary series from the Minnesota History Center.

Her debut album, Fear Not, released in 2014, was a grief project written after the deaths of both of her parents, who passed away five months apart when she was 25. She recorded the demos late at night in her mother’s house, eventually moved to Hilo, Hawaii, to process her loss, and returned to Minneapolis where she connected with a band and recorded the album. An early residency at Ice House helped launch it.

Her most celebrated work, the Sovereign Suite, came in response to the murder of George Floyd. Commissioned by the American Composer Forum as part of a three-year artist-in-residence program, the project brought together the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Schubert Club, True Art Speaks, Walker West Music Academy, and Purple Playground, among others. French described Sovereign as the questions and the Sovereign Suite as the answers.

“I was just in such a haze. It was a very wild experience. But I was being answered and I was really connected and tapped in to the spirit and to God in that moment and my ancestors,” she said. “Bringing it back, all these thoughts of living on the land and mutual aid and this Afrofuturistic type of thought of how we could actually imagine and create a better world through our imaginations.”

The Sovereign Suite earned her the MacDowell Fellowship and has reached audiences internationally, with notes of praise arriving from as far as Denmark.

Community Is the Foundation

Throughout her career, French has made intergenerational work and arts education central to everything she does, paying forward the investment that was made in her as a young person in Rondo.

She recently co-wrote a 100-page arts education curriculum with three other educators, structured around three units centered on truth, liberation, and sovereignty, and focused on processing trauma through art. She is currently seeking funding so the curriculum can be offered free to teachers and arts organizations across the Twin Cities.

“This work is tried and true and a very good way to help young people process the things that are happening in real time,” she said, noting its particular relevance in the current climate.

What Is Coming Next

French is also developing a documentary she is titling Legendary Pathmakers, in which she will interview the artists, activists, educators, and mentors who shaped her from the time she was a child at Penumbra, Stepping Stone, and Intermedia Arts, tracing the interconnected web of Black creative life in Minnesota across generations.

“It’s going to carry our history big time,” she said. “There’s so many different entry points and it all goes into each other because we were all three degrees of separation doing this art at the same time.”

Advice for Emerging Artists

French’s advice for artists starting out was clear and practical. Copyright everything, even demos. Do not let anyone split your publishing. Book yourself. Build your own momentum. And most importantly, do not let anyone talk you out of your style.

“Stay true to yourself and what it is that you want to do,” she said. “Don’t let people try to talk you out of your style. Even if it’s music that don’t nobody want to hear, if you want to hear it, that’s what makes it important.”

She pointed to Prince as her greatest influence in that regard, not just musically but philosophically. “The major way I take from Prince is the fact that he danced to the beat of his own drum. He did the music that he wanted to do and not necessarily what other people were telling him to do.”

How to Connect

Educators and collaborators can reach PaviElle French by email at pfrench3@gmail.com. Visit her website at https://paviellefrench.com/ and follow her on Instagram at @pavielle_music or on Facebook as PaviElle French.

To nominate a Black Minnesota creative for a future episode of On the Radar, visit msr.media.