Music Fusion
The creative process of fusing Music Art with Food Art
When I cook, I always feel more like a Musician than a Chef…
This is because I use ingredients like musicians use musical notes… blending just the right components together for a delicious melody or a beautiful edible “song”.
I like to express with food what my heart and soul are feeling and absorbing when I listen on repeat to a particular song. My food art that you see on a plate is not notes on a musical staff, but one that is represented on a blank canvas plate holding edible arrangements and emotional concoctions.
Creating food art and recipes for me is less about taste and technique, and more about first expressing my Art. Taste and technique are highly and vitally important naturally, but it’s achieved only after the artistic expression is revealed first through visuals from the inspiration of music, melody, and song.
Would a musician write a song just to fill the ears of the masses with an emotionless subject matter? Or do the best songs songwriters write and perform pull at us so strongly and deeply, because they actually express something we relate to so vividly?
Waking up emotional intelligence is what I try to do with my food creations, food styling, food photography, and recipes. I try to write edible “songs” of emotional expression and content… not just fill stomachs. That’s what edible art exemplifies to me.
I try my best to express various emotions in food, just like a musician does.
There are countless examples of strong emotions expressed in songs. I’m sure you could name quite a few of your own favorite songs that speak to you and your life experience. Some of my personal favorite examples of this are in Rhythm & Blues and Soul music samples. Here’s a short list, and please check them out because these are gorgeous songs: Rihanna’s “Stay”; Drake’s “Take Care”; Sza’s “Supermodel”, “Love Galore”, and “Drew Barrymore”; Post Malone’s “I Fall Apart”; Chaka Khan’s “Aint Nobody”; Sade’s “Nothing Can Come Between Us”; Alicia Key’s “Blended Family”; Aretha Franklin’s “A Rose Is Still A Rose”; Jhene Aiko’s “The Worst” and “New Balance”; and finally Kendrick Lamar’s “Love”.
I intensely love music so incredibly much. I come from a very talented musical and artistic family line, back some three or four generations even. This might explain why music has been so viscerally important to me throughout my entire life, and why I actively use it as an essential ingredient in all my cooking.
Let’s take a look at two songs, and how the emotion in a song can then be transferred into a recipe.
1) Rihanna is my favorite female singer, and her gorgeous song “Same Ol’ Mistakes” has inspired me so much with my food art. If I could just have a dollar for every time I’ve listened to this song, then I would never need to work again, haha.
This touching soulful song has brought me to create some of my very best recipes in 2017, including my popular Cinnamon & Ginger Spiced Cookies. This song has its array of “spicy” influences, heard and felt so gorgeously in its vocals, music arrangement, and strong lyrical sentiment.
When you listen to Rihanna’s song, it actually takes you to a deeply sensitive area of your heart. The song expresses an emotional connection that most of us can in one way or another relate to. This might be one of finding a new vision for ourselves, or a new self-awareness and empowerment, or possibly gaining strength after eyes being opened finally after an experience once lived. These lyrics offer no apologies, only blunt clarity. This particular song, while being strong, still maintains its softness and vulnerability aspects too. You hear these qualities clearly through the lyrics, musical sounds, breathy vocals, and lowered bass tones. You also feel other attributes in the audial representations heard from the sound waves, exuding optimism, renewed self-confidence, and an embracing of ones inner truth that’s been only recently discovered.
I challenged myself to try to accomplish this same emotional message and connection within my food.
I used this song to develop my original Cinnamon & Ginger Spice Cookie recipe. In these cookies, when you taste them, you experience bursts of warm spices that are both fiercely intense yet balanced in soft and delicate notes in their taste and texture. There is a harmony created, of strong plus delicate (vulnerable) flavors all at once. These bold flavors offer no hindrance or reservation, as they can’t manipulate their ultimate purpose. They can only be pure in their representation in the cookies… as a truthful full-bodied cookie. These cookies are powerful little bites of feistiness, and they shine their spices with maximum pride and impact. They are not subtle at all, but completely forthright, just as the songs emotional content is expressed.


2) In Sza’s song “The Weekend”, and also her Funky Remix version of the same song done with Calvin Harris, this song inspired me to use it for a national holiday and famous quote in my food art.
I really love Sza’s music so incredibly much, and I listen to her CTRL album daily.
I was scheduled to work at the restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr.’s national U.S. holiday in January, so I wanted to honor him and his beautiful words of astute wisdom that he so generously gave to the world. I used SZA’s “The Weekend, Funky Remix” song and my favorite Dr. King quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness… only Light can do that” to inspire my recipe.
What a beautifully positive and unifying statement in this quote of Dr. King. He did his absolute best to have the world hear, understand, and adopt better actions from hearing his heartfelt speeches of vision, love, and equality. I also thought about how Dr. King always spoke within “a cup half full” perspective, despite many in the world choosing hateful ways against him and towards people of color in the past and during his lifetime. What strength and courage he demonstrated in standing up for his beliefs for equality for all people, and to make positive changes in the world for a better life for many oppressed. He saw true clarity way before many others did in the world. Then sadly, he was ripped away from us in a hateful act of ugly discrimination.
In reflection of all the brilliant words of wisdom he is quoted as saying, I just knew that I wanted to create a menu item at the restaurant for a Harvest Salad to serve our customers that would reflect all the positivity, unity, and loving light he gave to the world during his life (and continues after his death too).
So before work, I listened to Sza’s “The Weekend, Funky Remix” song, and I began drawing what came to mind. That’s when I created my special Dr. King Harvest Salad that I eventually posted on Instagram. It showcases dark and light tones of color blended together as one. I used the white flesh of the cucumber planks combined with fresh bronzey crisp bacony tones, plus my turmeric-infused diced onions too. These bright yellow diced onions were sprinkled symbolically all around the salad plate, just as Dr. King’s loving words of hope and light were sprinkled all around the world.
I also added a second important visual of “light” in the Dr. King Salad. I created a cucumber “candle” when you looked at the salad from the side view. It was placed there purposely, to symbolize yet another form of warm and beautiful light that shines light through the darkness.
I am super proud of this Dr. King salad. The final result was exactly as I had originally sketched it on post it notes, and envisioned it in my mind before ever touching one piece of lettuce or cucumber. What an exhilarating feeling it is when art accomplishes a task that’s invisible, and needs to depict intangible elements of feelings and thoughts.
It reminds me of what an edible portrait of a heart’s contents might actually look like….


Music starts the process, and food finishes the beautiful artistic process for me.
I don’t want to be just a perfect “technician” of food, but one who also raises the bar to a whole new comprehensive level by accessing the invisible five senses and vast range of emotions that we all have lying deep inside us. My goals are to make each dish and recipe created to cause eyes to smile, hearts to sing, souls to jump, mouths to water, stomachs to feel satisfied, and bodies to feel well loved and nourished from all these beautiful aspects of heart, soul, mind, and body being included and engaged all at once.
Maybe I am a song whisperer….. loll!!