NAIMA performs during BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 24, 2024.

This story was first published in the M-A Chronicle. 

NAPA, Calif. — Among wine moms, rock bands and DJs emerges a 14-year-old and her guitar. “I’m NAIMA,” she tells the crowd before diving into her first song. It’s the first day of BottleRock Napa Valley, and Oakland high schooler Naima Nascimento is ready to be in front of an audience.

Nascimento has been singing and writing music for as long as she can remember. In fact, even though her debut single, “Blood Sweat and Tears,” came out just a few days prior, performing at BottleRock isn’t her first taste of the spotlight. In 2020, Nascimento went viral for writing a social justice song inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and posting it online.

“I wrote my first song—with chords and lyrics and everything—when I was 8,” Nascimento said. “It definitely wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. I think it was catchy. But of course, as I get older, my vocabulary gets better, so I can improve my writing with deeper meanings and better rhymes.”

At BottleRock, a gig she got with the assistance of Follow the Music, a music education and emerging artists program that counts Ronnie Lott and Sheila E as advisors, Nascimento played one cover and five original songs, all of which were accompanied solely by her acoustic guitar.

“I write most of my songs at home on my guitar, and that’s how I performed them today,” she said. “I’ll normally write songs because something just happened in my life and I’m feeling strongly about it, but other times I’ll just be on my guitar and I’ll try different things until something sounds good.”

Opening her set with an unreleased original called “Forgive or Forget,” Nascimento quickly established an intimate vibe through personal lyrics, relaxed yet articulate guitar abilities, and impressive vocal agility. Even though she may come across as shy when talking between each song, the moment she starts to sing, you can tell she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Since I’m in school, I don’t have that much time to practice every single day and drill it in,” she said. “So, I picked songs for today that I know I’m already solid on and I’ve performed a few times.”

Nascimento not only performs her own songs and acts in musicals, but she’s also in a band with friends called Salty Sally. The group diverges from Nascimento’s solo sound, opting toward the fiddles and twang of bluegrass.

“It can be scarier to play with a band than to play solo, though, because I have to be worrying about a lot more things than just myself,” she said.

Raised trilingual, Nascimento is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. At BottleRock, she played a cover of Spanish tune “Hasta la Raíz” by Natalie Loufacarde, which she said was one of her grandfather’s favorites and which she heard on TikTok. Nascimento also wrote a lullaby in Portuguese for a musical she worked on with friends in 2023.

Naima Nascimento said she can usually knock out a full song in under an hour. The next day, she’ll go back to it to see if she wants to change any chords or lyrics to get the song officially done. Afterward, she goes into the studio to record, mix and produce the track.

“I can always hear harmonies for songs—that’s just how my brain works. But for other production elements, I usually don’t think about them until I get into the studio,” she said.

Because of the stark contrast between the sound of her songs played solely on acoustic guitar and the sound of her produced tracks, there isn’t one exact way to categorize Nascimento’s music.

“Sometimes I can go folk singer-songwriter, but some stuff I’m releasing is more produced and is more R&B,” she said. “I listen to literally everything and love all kinds of genres of music, so I feel like my own music is pretty fluid.”

“Blood Sweat and Tears,” however, makes a statement for the sound she’s going for. She wrote it at home on guitar, but wanted to add some flourishes like percussion in the studio. The song features a foundation of electric piano chords, a trap-like beat and synth flourishes. Thematically, it finds Nascimento singing gut-punch lyrics about someone getting closer and closer to her heart. “You’re the scars in my skin to the stains on my clothes/ You’re the place that I call home,” she sings.

After her own BottleRock sets—she played three in two days—Nascimento was excited to enjoy the festival as a fan. In the span of just a few days, she released her first single and played a major music festival. Now, she’s gearing up to release Inbetween, an EP that showcases many of the original songs she performed at BottleRock.

“I’m really excited to release my music because my dream is for this to be my career,” she said. “And this is the first step of that dream.”

Celeste Zucker contributed to this story.