Meet XienHow (artist Title) Aka The How (director Title) | Recording artist, philanthropist, and visionary filmmaker.

We had the good fortune of connecting with XienHow (artist Title) Aka The How (director Title) and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi XienHow (Artist title) aka, how does your business help the community?
Well as an artist, I understand how important it is to speak and be heard. Many artists in our communities don’t always have all of the resources available to them, or the know how, to take their careers to higher levels. Being someone who has pursued music as a form of expressing my views on personal experiences and society as a whole, I understand how important it is to share whatever platform I can provide as an independent small business. I have always made sure to share opportunities with those I see working hard and I feel are in need, and also deserve some help. We do our best to maintain some affordable ranges of production for aspiring artists so that they can have access to high quality production content. We are still a business and as much as we love to we can not give away all of our time and resources. However, it’s important to us to also still be sponsoring a lot of artists throughout the community as we are able. We have done this for over 20 years in the bay area through one platform or another and beyond. Reaching to artists in So Cal, The East Coast and across the world to places like South East Asia, the Dominican Republic and more.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am a direct descendant of a legendary freedom fighter and civil rights activist known to the world as Hope Foye. One of the first African American Classical singers in the early 40s and 50s, she was the first Black woman to have her own television show in Mexico where she was actually forced to flee with my young mother after being black balled for standing for civil rights.
So I preface with that to say, you will find mostly message and intention in the majority of my music. Not all, but most. I have adventured out into trying some different things, but the core nature of who I am as an artist is to reflect the state of the world as I see needs to be spoken on. I’ve always stayed true to what I feel and who I am, and I never strayed from me to chase fame or fortune. I’m not perfect and I’m no saint, but I do my best to walk on the light and speak what I believe to be the truth.

I’ve learned you can’t force others to see things how you do, but you can share your perspective in creative ways, which can help offer some insights to seeing things through a new lens.

The main thing I would want the world to know about XienHow (pronounced ZenHow) is that, what I do is not about me. It’s about the message. The majority of my music is about telling the stories of my experiences and of those who may not have a voice. In August of 2001 just before the September 11th attacks I went on my international trip by myself to Taiwan and embarked on a spiritual journey that I did not know I was taking. It is there where Zen (my given name) found out “How” to become “Zen”. This is where XienHow was born. As I started my evolution process and committed my life to living in truth. You will part of that evidence in my 3 main solo release endeavors. The 7th Sign Series that was created and produced over the course of 21 years. Evolution The 7th Sign (1st solo album – 2008) Process The 7th Sign (2nd in the series – 2015) and the final body of work IS TRUTH The 7th Sign. Which if you put it all together, you will see that THE EVOLUTION PROCESS IS TRUTH. XienHow is The 7th Sign. It’s alot but ita actually much deeper than even that. That’s the short version. Movie is coming 😂

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take them to a few places. I would take him to some of my favorite food spots. One being La Taqueria in the Mission in San Francisco for their world famous double fried tacos with cheese. We’d then hang at some local lounges for some drinks and conversation. We’d go out to Ocean Beach by the old Salt Baths and let them take in the beauty of hopefully a beautiful sunset that you can only see there. From there you can also see the Golden Gate bridge just right up the way.
I’d take him on a nice drive up to Bodega bay which I do regularly with one of my other closest friends whenever he visits. The drive is beautiful and takes you through a bunch of different scenery and landscapes. We always see it as a spiritual journey and gives good time for conversation and deep life contemplation. Depending on what was goin on, I may take him too a cool local show where more than likely someone I know from the artist community is having a live show and introduce him to people from my community. My best friend I’ve known since I was 6, so that’s over 35 years of friendship. His name is Ronnie Black and we’re still very close to this day even though we don’t speak as often as we’d like. He’s got 6 kids and a family, so his plate is full.
I’d take him to a few more of my favorite food spots including Sue’s Kitchen in El Sobrante which has one of my most favorite and consistently delicious Thai foods ever (Thai is my number 1 food). And we definitely would go play some pick up basketball to finish it off as we grew up playing basketball and that was our first real love that bonded our friendship all those years ago. One last thing about him is that we grew up playing basketball together and then I moved when we were 12. I started doing music in the early mid 90s and he eventually learned how to produce and became very good at it, which to be honest I didn’t know he could pull off. He has produced a few of my albums entirely. So it was amazing that we were able to reconnect years later on making music together. So one of the final things we’d do together, would most likely be him helping me shoot a video to one of the songs he produced which we have done a few times before over the years.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My first boss at my first career job probably helped me more than anyone else in my life overall. Even though it’s not directly related to the music and entertainment industry. He did a lot for me in a lot of ways. His name is Don Christophe and he’s a great, honest man of integrity. He reinforced and instilled values of professionalism and accountability as a man and as a business person that helped form the reliable and straightforward person, many throughout the artist community know me to be. It was the first time I ever had access to making good money, as an honest living, and through that, I was able to fund a lot of projects and opportunities throughout my community, and even in other countries and regions. Hundreds and even thousands of people benefitted unknowingly through the opportunities that he provided and shared with me. He didn’t have to give me those opportunities. Now he will be the first one to tell that I earned a lotof that and did the work to get there, but he still had to see something in me and be willing to take a chance on a kid who came from very little and humble beginnings.

Website: TeamDoneSon.com – TheZenXperience.com

Instagram: @XienHow @TeamDoneSonFilms @TheZenXperiencenow

Twitter: @XienHow

Facebook: @XienHow

Youtube: @TEAMDONESON

Other: www.xienhow.bandcamp.com

Where you can buy music directly from me that is not available on streaming services

Image Credits
Photo credit by TeamDoneSon production team. And photographer below

@miercoles44