They say that our soulmission is captured in the name we are given by birth. Iris is the name of a Greek goddess who traveled between the material and the spiritual world as the messenger of God. Oda means a musical ode to something, and that something is Maria. Maria is the name that, to me, portrays the divine feminine seen in everyone. Following this line, my soul mission is to build a bridge between the spiritual and the material world using music as an ode to honor the divine in myself, in you, in all of us. To remember that we are all fully human and fully divine, simultaneously.
Throughout my life, I have been always reminded of how important it is to follow my intuition, a dance between listening to the advice of others but always checking in with myself to see what felt true. I grew up in Holland, very sensitive and creative and always curious to discover more about the unknown. That curiosity made me travel to India by my self at the age of eighteen. I wanted to understand who I was, outside of the cultural environment I had known myself in. This journey gave me extreme freedom, profound insights, and the strength I needed to embrace fully who I was as an individual. After eight months of adventure, I came back to study Cultural Anthropology in Amsterdam. In between learning about humanity and cultures, I traveled to Africa, South America, Europe, and India. Music always played a major role during these years, it was a way to express my self and communicate that with those around me. After finishing my master’s degree, I ended up living in Colombia for five years, where I got discovered as an artist. I signed a record deal in Miami and worked for four years on a project that would bring all the pieces of the puzzle together: a musical album that gave meaning to all that I had experienced in life so far, and a way to share that with the world.
