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 Petula Caesar

“I’m a writer, first and foremost,” Petula Caesar, “Tula” to her friends and fans, explains. “But being creative in general comes naturally to me. I grew up in an ‘artsy’ house. My dad was a painter and graphic designer, and he wrote as a hobby. He also recited poetry to me from the time I was a baby. And there was always music and dance in our house too, so I grew up hearing every type of sound, and moving to most of it. That’s why it’s been easy for me to transition from writing to music to recording and performing – it’s all creative energy, just different ways of being expressive.” As a result of her versatility, Tula is a successful writer, a reporter, a journalist, an editor, a recording artist and a performance poet.

Though she was named after British singer Petula Clark, Tula was born in the U.S. in Paterson, New Jersey, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland as a teenager. She always wrote as a hobby during her ten years in public relations. An essay she wrote on a whim was published in Baltimore’s daily paper The Sun. Encouraged by that success, Tula continued submitting her work, and within a year she became a regular contributing writer for Baltimore’s City Paper, and for The Afro American Newspapers in Baltimore and Washington, DC.  She has also written for Baltimore Magazine and Mic Life Magazine.

Tula’s favorite genres have always been poetry and erotica, and Tula published her first erotica anthology, Lipstick and Other Stories in 2005, and went on to become a contributing writer for New York Times Bestselling Author Zane’s erotica anthology Caramel Flava. Her erotic work and poetry has also been published in other print and online publications and in various literary magazines. Why erotica? “Because I am always intrigued by the things people try to hide, and often people try to hide how they feel about sexuality and sensuality and everything related to sex. So I like examining and exposing those things. Plus sometimes it’s been difficult for me to find the balance between being a very sensual person and a very intellectual person. And the poetry helps because I find women who struggle with the same thing – with wanting to have their sexy side and all their other sides too. I want everyone, especially women to celebrate all their dimensions.”

Her erotic poetry led to appearances on 96.3 WHUR-FM’s Spoken Word @ Joe’s Place with Joe Gorham and on 95.5 WPGC-FM on The Poetry Café. Tula began moving her work from the page to the stage -- including appearances in a few shows with The Punany Poets, a nationally touring erotic poetry performance troupe that has been featured on HBO’s late night series Real Sex, and then touring the country as a solo performer, offering a sexy, playful, thought provoking presentation of all her written erotic work. That tour eventually led her to the recording studio and into a musical partnership with Mo-Rece and Stinkiface Music, his independent multi-genre music label. A house music lover for years, Tula knew house music would be an integral part of her project, and with Mo-Rece’s production help they created her first CD entitled “The Eargasm. Tula calls it a collection of “love and lust poetry”. Mo-Rece and Tula’s collaboration also created Tula’s uniquely sexy, sensual, in your face spoken vocal style that matched the high powered sound of the first single from the CD, “Sex Shoes”. The track generated significant buzz as a declaration of a woman’s right to sexual expression right down to her toes, and Tula was invited to perform the track during the 2009 Winter Music Conference in Miami at several parties in South Beach. “Sex Shoes”, along with follow up tracks like “Silent” and “It Slipped” have become underground poetry, club and Internet radio favorites and Stinkiface Music partnered with one of house music’s labels, Cyberjamz Records out of the Bronx, New York to release “Sex Shoes” as a single nationally on Traxsource and Junodownload, two premiere digital distributors of dance music internationally. U.K. deejay DJ Thaddeus picked up the track and began playing it during his sets, and seeing the crowd’s response, immediately contacted Stinkiface Music to create remixes of the track released in the U.K. in December 2009. Several other remixes are still in the works and will be released throughout 2010.

These days Tula’s live show not only features her acapella performances but often include musical performances with her band. Tula is in the planning stages of her next project, an EPtentatively entitled “Prayers of a Modern Day Jezebel”. While she plans to continue with her house music and her spoken word erotica blend, she does plan to take some “new approaches to discussing sexuality. But while sex is going to be in the mix in a major way, this next project is going to be broader in scope in that it is going to be about the dark side of womanhood in general, not just as it applies to sex. I want to speak to a lot of the secrets we women keep when it comes to everything from motherhood to violence to politics to love to spirituality to religion…I’m gunning for all the taboos.”

Tula will also be collaborating with other artists such as label mate Janice B. Tula will continue to tour and perform, with upcoming shows planned for New York City. Her second solo short story anthology called “Unusual Positions” will be released as an audiobook and in print in June 2010.

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