A peppy, casual tune echoes through the Wilde Lake cafeteria. Samadhi Davis, lead singer of the band BLACKOUT, is grinning as she sings “Santeria” by Sublime. The guitar bounces with her voice as the highs and lows of the song carry the audience away.

Samadhi is extremely diverse in her art. She has taken on acting, drawing, and singing in a band throughout her years as an artist.

However, the art that resonates the most with her is music. “I’ve always been around music,” she said.

Both in and out of school, she devotes her time to her trade. Her connection to music is a form of expression. “As a person I don’t necessarily talk about my feelings and I don’t really express anything. So music was kind of my way to be vulnerable, and singing really tapped into that.”

For Samadhi, music is not only expression but communication as well. “I find myself being in my most vulnerable state when I’m singing because it’s hard to talk about what I’m going through,” says Samadhi. “I use music as my way to say it without people having to know what’s going on, but they can still feel the emotion behind it.”

Samadhi says that she is able to be the most expressive when performing her  original music. One song she wrote, “Guardian,” is about her guardian angel watching over her. “It’s also about how much I care for others before myself,” she says. To Samadhi, the day of a performance is like the Fourth of July. “Everybody’s stressed out about who’s doing what, like cooking and setting up fireworks, but once the fireworks start everyone shuts up,” she says. “The performers, the musicians, the audience, everybody just stops and just enjoys that moment together.”

With her love of music, Samadhi has found herself viewing the world in new “colors.” This is more commonly known as synesthesia. Synesthetes are people who can hear colors when music is playing, or they could eat food and taste shapes. “Simply put, when one sense is activated, another unrelated sense is activated at the same time,” says Psychology Today.

“When you see the color blue you think of being sad,” she explains. “But when I see it I think of a blue sky.” Samadhi continues ro describe the colors as representing more memories than emotions. “It gets weird, but I can hear music as colors.”

Due to her lifelong love, Samadhi says that she wants to make a career in music, and with the band, BLACKOUT, and her own raw talent, her future in music is looking pretty rock ‘n roll.