Ezinma

Ezinma was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a Guyanese father and German-American mother.^[3] Her father is a professor of actuarial science,^[4] while her mother is a creative non-fiction author and works as an English professor.^[5] Ezinma started playing the violin at age three, and continued to play throughout school.^[4] By junior high school, she felt alone as she was often the only black classical musician onstage,^[6] and did not meet another black string musician until she was 13.^[7] As a child, she listened to a wide range of music, including her funk, reggae, jazz, and Caribbean soca due to her father,^[7] and Americana through her mother.^[8]

Ezinma attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln,^[9] where she originally studied pre-med, before switching degrees to music.^[10] At university, Ezinma formed a string and piano trio, and was mentored by members of the Chiara String Quartet.^[11][12]

In 2012, Ezinma moved from Nebraska to New York to study at Mannes School of Music, the classical division of the New School,^[13][6] which helped her see outside the rules of classical music.^[10] Ezinma began releasing music featuring both her violin performance and vocals, and intended to release these songs on an extended play called I Am Ezinma in 2016.^[10]

Ezinma began posting videos of her performing violin covers of songs to social media in 2016. Her first cover was a 15 second clip of Adele's "Hello" posted to Instagram.^[4] During this time, Ezinma continued to release original music, such as "Elevate Me" in 2016,^[14] and the instrumental "Give It Up" in 2017.^[15]

In April 2017, Ezinma uploaded a cover of Future "Mask Off" as a part of a viral challenge featuring instrumental covers of the song.^[16] Ezinma's version gained her millions of views across Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and led to a sudden increase in her popularity.^[3] American musician Beyoncé took notice of Ezinma's videos on social media (even before her version of "Mask Off"),^[4] and invited her to perform as a part of Beyoncé's 2018 Coachella performance in April 2018.^[7] Between 2017 and 2018, Ezinma appeared in modelling campaigns for Adidas,^[17] Gap Inc.^[18] and Gucci.^[19]

In early 2019, Ramsay signed to Universal Music Classics.^[20] She plans to release a classical-fusion album with hip-hop/trap influences in 2020, entitled Key of Black Minor, to be released alongside a documentary of her life.^[4][7] Ramsay has worked as a film composer, scoring the soundtracks to the documentary film The Times of Bill Cunningham (2020),^[21] and the Oluniké Adeliyi-starring short film Promise Me (2020).^[22] In August, Ezinma released her debut single "Beethoven Pleads the Fifth".^[23]

Ezinma partnered with Wide Open School, Re-Create (a program to provide educational content for public elementary schools in New York) and After-School All-Stars to create violin-related educational content for schools and after-school programs in the United States.^[6]

Ezinma's parents divorced when she was young, and she has two brothers and two sisters.^[4] Her mother, Lisa Knopp, is an author of creative non-fiction books, and works as a professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.^[24][5]

She is an honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.