A few days after the Mayor Steven Fulop interview went up one of his supporters, Victor Velazquez saw it and contacted me to tell the story about his wonderful children. Victoria, Alexia, and Emmanuel are part of a Gospel turned Pop group called “Ave.”

I checked out their music and they are incredibly talented! They have the voices of angels. What I love most about them is how positive their music is, especially in this day of age where women artists, in particular, are sometimes objectifying themselves in order to get ahead and be recognized (not that there is anything wrong with that). It is refreshing to hear music that is straight from the heart, music that has a positive message, and music that makes you feel good inside and best of all they are a Jersey City family.

Victor is not only a proud dad he is also their manager, so he invited me to the Mary Bethune Cultural Center on the Westside part of town to interview his girls. Since the interview, Victoria has successfully transferred into The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded at New York University! I am so excited to follow their journey.

What are your names?  

I’m Victoria.

And I’m Alexia.

What do you do? 

Victoria: We are a singing group.

What is the name of the singing group? 

Alexia and Victoria: Ave.

How did the group start? 

Victoria: When we were younger, we started off as Gospel singers. We were called the Velazquez Family Singers and it started off with my sister, myself, dad, and our younger brother. It officially started when we were in McDonald’s Gospel Fest in 2006 and since then we’ve been growing as artists and who we are. Recently we decided we didn’t want to sing Gospel anymore, but we still wanted to sing positive music that had good influences on the community and in society, so we decided to go with Ave. That’s what Ave is, we don’t sing Gospel music but we still sing music that’s supposed to help people.

 

How was the transition from Gospel to what you guys are singing now? 

Alexia: The transition, it came naturally with age because as we got older we were open to more things that were happening politically…

Victoria: And to music.

Alexia: And to music. So we were always very into other genres of music, but we started going to DJ school and there we had to study Hip-Hop, Pop, Country, we had to do everything. And so we were like, “We want to do more than just Gospel. There’s more than just Gospel and we can do so much.” So we decided to make that transition. It was pretty easy because we were all into the same thing.

How would you define your style of music? 

Victoria: Diverse. I don’t want to categorize our music ‘cause we branch off into different things. Like our latest song, “Inner City Blues,” [this] was a remake of Marvin Gaye’s [song]. It started off as a smooth dance track but then we did different remixes. We call one the “Fist Pump Remix,” we just finished a Hip-Hop remake and we have Dub mixes. I don’t want to categorize our genre because we want to branch out as much as we can.

What did you guys listen to growing up? What are your biggest musical influences? 

Alexia: Me, my biggest musical influences are Whitney Houston and Prince.

Victoria: Mine always changes. Right now it’s between Tina Turner, Phil Collins, and Jimi Hendrix.

What is your creative process? How do your songs come about? 

Alexia: It depends. Sometimes we get tracks from other people and we think, “What’s going on now? What’s our message? What do we want to say about this?” So then we do that and we write to the track or like other times, mostly we do this individually, we write a song on our own and then we present it to each other. We write our own music most of the time.

What’s your name and what’s your involvement? 

I’m Victor Velazquez and I’m the father who was a part of the Velazquez Family Singers and I was kicked out when Ave was formed. An ingredient from the transformation from Gospel to Pop-R&B-Inspirational, I served my purpose, was to lay the groundwork, to be the parent, to be the driving force and let them fly. They were born with extreme talent, their mother’s a singer, [and] I’m a singer. I’m Classical and their mother is R&B and Gospel and they just picked it up along the way. Right now, I’m their manager.

I’m getting like a Jackson Five Family vibe. Like the healthy version. 

Alexia: Everyone says that.

Victor: We’ve heard that. Am I Joe Jackson? Sometimes I can be. They’re three teenaged kids. It’s not necessarily so much about learning the music; it’s about raising good children. I’m a single parent and I raised all three of them by myself since the age of three or four when their mother and I broke up. But their mother has always been involved in their lives so it made it a little easier. But Joe Jackson, I didn’t hurt anyone, I don’t think…

Well there’s the discipline and respect, you can feel it. 

Alexia and Victoria: Yeah! Definitely.

You guys probably work really hard and practice all the time and he’s probably like, “Are you guys doing your homework? Are you getting your shit together?”

Victor: That’s right! 

Alexia: Yeah.

Victor: It’s also the music too because if something goes wrong, I’m very honest with them about their music. If they suck I’m [going to] say, “That was horrible.”

Is that tough for you guys sometimes? 

Alexia: It used to be but now that were older it sucks and if dad goes “It sucks,” we’re like “Why?”

Victoria: Yeah.

Alexia: If he says “This sucks,” he gives us a reason. He gives us constructive criticism which makes it a lot easier.

Victor: And they’ve learned how to take it over the years.

Victoria: And I’d rather get that than just somebody [saying] “Oh, it’s okay,” when it’s really not.

Can you tell me about your Jersey City related accomplishments since your transition? 

Victor: We do a lot of things throughout the area, but Jersey City [does] things here, the Bethune Center.

What is this Center? 

Victor: This is the Mary Bethune Cultural Center. It’s open to the community and they do numerous activities here to support the community.

We being singers, they will bring us in and we’ve done four productions here, the musical of The Wiz, twice, we’ve done a tribute to Whitney Huston concert, The History of Gospel Music. Because it can’t just be music and fun it [has] got’ta be halfway educational. In Jersey City, we’ve sung for Councilwoman Diane Coleman, all over the city for her. Another one, Councilwoman Joyce Waterman, so we’re very tied to them and of course, Mayor Fulop. I remember when he was running, he used to come to our events and he would come, he was a councilman then. Alexia was just in Newark at NJPAC at the Hispanic Youth Awards. They’re a member of also, Black Girls Rock, so they appeared with Jill Scott at their first Black Girls Rock Awards show. They sung backup right there on stage. So they have a lot of exposure. Two times winning McDonald’s Gospel Fest in New York, three-time nominees for Stellar Gospel Music Award, which is a national award. So we’ve done quite a bit.

What do you guys sing about? 

Victoria: It sounds so cliché, but love, communicating with one another, just all things positive, anything we can that’ll help the community be better, for society’s purpose.

Alexia: But now that we’re getting older, we’re experiencing things more. So we do sing about love and we do sing about giving each other positive energy and stuff. We all sing about things that are realistic, like how to get through certain situations like hard times, how to get through it with love, with being positive, with living to inspire, being inspired to inspire other people. As we get older, whatever life gives us we write about and put it into our music.

How do you guys feel about the music industry these days? Do you feel more pressure trying to be like mainstream female artists? 

Victoria: No, I don’t think we feel pressure to be more like that, but I feel like it’ll be harder for us to break in as something that isn’t trending right now. A lot of times in the music industry, when they bring in a new artist, there’s a certain formula that they create based on what they’ve seen work with other people. So I think what our challenge will be is if someone is interested in us and if they want to push us out more, they might want us to perform or act or dress a certain way because it worked in the past instead of us wanting to try different ways because of what we want to put out.

Alexia: I think also what will be good for us in the long run is the fact that we are representing strong black women.

Victoria: Strong women period.

Alexia: Strong women period in the music industry and were putting out a positive message and that we’re not on stage half-naked or having to do the trends of what’s going on in R&B music. We don’t have to compromise to be something were not one thing, we’re trying to reach out to everyone.

Do you guys have a favorite Jersey City hangout spot? 

Victoria: I like Babo, I love their bubble tea. Newport Mall, just the food court because it’s food, I like to eat. I like Liberty State Park, my friend and I a lot, every summer, we used to go and have a picnic there.

How old are you guys? 

Victoria: I’m nineteen.

Alexia: Seventeen.

What’s your favorite hangout spot? 

Alexia: I would say downtown where the train station is and it has all the little thrift shops on the side. That’s my favorite ‘cause I love going shopping.

Poor dad. 

Alexia: Headaches!

Dad, where’s your favorite hangout spot? 

Victor: I have two favorite hangout spots. I love Retro [Fitness].

Alexia: He goes to the gym.

Victor: And I’m here. I also give voice lessons out of this center so I spend a lot of time here. I have free voice lessons on Thursday nights. I’m always working.

What do you guys do? Are you guys in school? 

Victoria: I just graduated from Hudson County Community College and I’m enrolling into NYU.

Mazel tov. What are you going to study in NYU?

Victoria: I want a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, they have a department of music called the Clive Davis Department of Recording Music and it’s under the Tisch School of The Arts. So I plan to finish school there and hopefully get my master’s.

What about you? 

Alexia: I go to County Prep High School and I am a theater major there. I actually just came from rehearsal so that’s why I’m all did up. We’re doing The Seagull right now, anything that keeps me on stage I will do it.

Recently one of the songs we did with Bill and Walter Brandt got picked up to be on Dance Moms so that’s our newest thing right now, to be on Dance Moms.

 

Do you guys have any future plans? 

Victoria: We just did a project of “Inner City Blues” which was a remake Marvin Gaye’s song and it [was] released on June 21^st and like she said her song with Bill and Walter Brandt got picked up by Dance Moms.

Alexia: I [had] auditions for a New York Center Stage Production and I also [auditioned] NBC, they [did] The Wiz just like they did The Sound of Music.

Victor: She [was] the Musical Director for Center Stage Brooklyn.

What about the third person that is missing? 

Alexia: Emmanuel.

Victoria: He’s the youngest one.

How old is he? 

Victoria: He’s fifteen.

Does he sing too? 

Victoria: He sings too, but he’s still trying to find himself. He’s recently tapped into writing. And with us, because we’re old and stuff, we have to learn how to be more patient with him. Because we’ve had a lot of time to develop our artistry and who we are and the reason why we are who [we are] is because nobody [has] tampered with it. We have strong leadership qualities, we just have to give him time and let him grow into what he is. He might say something bizarre and we’ll be like, “Oh… I don’t know about that.” You have to be patient, still be honest but patient.

Victor: The key is he’s a teenage boy. He’s skateboarding, gaming, but he wants to get into rap now.

Alexia: He’s just at that age now where he wants to discover what he wants to do. Like we did it faster I guess we knew what we wanted to do at a really young age. He’s a boy.

Anything else you’d like people to know about you? 

Alexia: Be inspired to inspire and that’s what we hope to do as Ave is to inspire people to make positive moves towards their future, within themselves, and towards the world.

www.AveMusicInc.com

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