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Abstract
This Culminating Experience (CE) project explores the intersection of songwriting, identity, and self-compassion from the perspective of an Asian woman artist. Inspired by my personal journey and observations of gendered representation in media, the project responds to the subtle yet pervasive psychological effects of societal conditioning—especially on women’s self-worth, emotional expression, and inner life. Rather than focusing on romantic narratives often portrayed in dominant media, this work centers the relationship with the self, using songwriting as a method of healing, empowerment, and reclamation. Through a series of original compositions—Wondering, Sound of Your Aliveness, Voices I Made Of, and Eye of the Dark—I explore themes of emotional vulnerability, fragmentation, and growth. These pieces incorporate jazz harmony, pop song forms, and BGJI concepts such as tetrachords, windows, zero gravity, and the three-tonic system. Each song is both a personal reflection and a compositional experiment: challenging conventional forms, integrating spoken word, and traversing emotional landscapes of grief, detachment, and self-invention. Accompanied by drawings and lyrical narratives, this project becomes an artistic map of transformation—tracing a path from silence to voice, from emotional disorientation to clarity. While this journey is still ongoing, it reflects an urgent need to question internalized models of love, identity, and womanhood, and to imagine new ways of being rooted in emotional truth and creative freedom.
Publication Date
7-1-2025
Campus
Boston Campus
Recommended Citation
Zhou, Yifei. “From silence to voice, From fragmentation to self-invention My Personal journey through a creative process of self consciousness and identity.” Master's thesis, Berklee College of Music, 2025. https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-global-jazz/196.