Melanie Ida Chopko

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Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, songwriter Melanie Ida Chopko writes “little jewels,” exploring our relationship to the natural world and to one another. Her songs are as interested in the world around her as the one within herself, lush in melody, lyric and arrangement. If Joni Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens, and Ben Folds were neighbors and made music on Sundays, it might sound like this.

Her new album, "I Come From, was co-produced by her longtime friend and Independent Music Award winner Jean Rohe ("Sisterly," 2019 Best Adult Contemporary Album). Chopko writes in her liner notes: "I come from the wildest dreams of my ancestors, their courage, their unlived lives, their best possible choices and mistakes. I come from stolen land and stolen bodies. From the violence and lie of whiteness, the fear at its root. I come from a long winding path back to myself, my center, my soft and wild heart. I come from the quiet miracle of willingness, and the gift of everyone who has loved me into being..."

Chopko is perhaps best known for her co-write with Maya, age 9, on the record “Freedom Is,” produced by Oakland’s Chapter510 & The Dept. of Make Believe, and her class at The Freight & Salvage, “Singing Outside the Shower.”