Musician Harold Simmons II, who performs under the artist name Fyütch, has dreamed of winning a Grammy since he was a child.
“It’s been on my goals list since I was maybe 12 or 13, listening to hip-hop music, seeing my favorite rappers give those speeches onstage,” Simmons said.
He started a jazz and hip-hop band in high school and later launched a solo career — and, after becoming a teacher, he started making educational children’s music.
But it’s his collaboration with his 8-year-old daughter, Aura, that’s earned him the most acclaim, including now a Grammy nomination in the best children’s music album category.
“It’s so much cooler that it happened in this way,” he said. “It’s just like a very full-circle moment because we’re a musical family.”
“We did it!” Aura chimed in.
They’ll travel from their home in Charles County to the Feb. 1 awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
Simmons grew up in a musical household, too. Born in Gary, Indiana, he moved to Nashville as a kid. His dad plays the saxophone (and is also featured on the album), and his grandfather was a trumpet player in the Army band. When Simmons started a band in high school, they played around town and opened for bigger artists.
“I thought that would be the band that got signed,” Simmons said. “But everybody went to college; we weren’t able to keep the band together. It just kind of fizzled.”
Simmons went to Belmont University in Nashville and started releasing his own music. He eventually became an arts teacher working with nonprofits while he continued to make music outside of work. He always kept his career as a teacher and his career as a musician separate — until one day, when he was struggling to find good, clean, educational music for his students.
“I just started making stuff and putting it up on YouTube and showing it in my classes. And those songs got way bigger than my other songs,” Simmons said, laughing. “I didn’t realize there was such a need. Teachers were searching for content like that.”
That was in 2017, the same year Simmons became a dad. When the pandemic hit, Simmons said, that need for educational children’s music exploded. Soon after, Simmons left his job as a teacher and became a full-time performer and artist.
His career has afforded him more flexibility in his schedule than Aura’s mom and stepparents, who are teachers, too. As the primary parent during the workweek, he found it only natural to include his daughter in his music. He started taking her with him to performances when she didn’t have school, bringing her onstage if she wanted — though at first she was nervous, especially when he was performing in front of “big kids” at other schools.
“To see her go from there to now being able to rock it in front of little babies to adults is pretty wild,” Simmons said. In the past couple of years, the father-daughter duo has performed their original music at famous venues like Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall at family music showcases.
Their first formal collaboration came when Aura was 3 or 4 and had an idea for a song called “I Am a Cool.”
“I don’t know what ‘I am a cool’ means, but I had a vision,” Aura said.
Her dad recorded her singing it as a voice memo on his phone, adding that as the outro to his album “Family Tree.”
In their new Grammy-nominated album, “Harmony,” which was recorded over the past couple of years, some songs feature Aura singing in a call-and-response with her dad, like the affirmations song “I Am Love, I Am Light.” On others, the two sing in harmony, like in the title track — which is about both the musical concept of harmony and the importance of cooperation.
“We had a song idea for ‘My Daddy,’” said Simmons. “I kind of wrote this funny verse about basically our banter. And I gave her lyrics, and we recorded it.”
Lyrics include relatable father-daughter themes like Aura asking her dad for money:
“I don’t rap for free,” she says, and he responds, “I know that’s right, all right, tell me, what’s your fee?”
She suggests “1 million dollars,” to which he says, “Let’s negotiate first/ But I’m proud of you, baby girl/ Always know your worth.”
Most of the song is jokey, but it ends on a sincere note from Fyütch: “This one goes out to all the dads out there/ Doing what we gotta do for our family/ And for the stepdads, the father figures, the role models/ We see y’all, let’s go.”
“Harmony” is one of five albums nominated in the category, including another album from a child and parent: Joanie Leeds’s album “Ageless: 100 Years Young,” with her 10-year-old daughter, Joya, and her 100-year-old grandmother Sylvia, whom she knows as Bubbe.
If either pair wins, the young artists will join a small group of young children who have been awarded Grammys — including Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter, who won a Grammy at age 9 for “Brown Skin Girl,” a music video she worked on with her mother.
On Nov. 7, when the nominations came out, Simmons surprised Aura by picking her up from school. He already knew they had been nominated but recorded the announcement so she could experience it firsthand.
“It was so exciting,” Aura said.
She went back to school after to tell her friends but said only one of her classmates had heard of the Grammy Awards. Her teachers were excited for her, though, and announced her nomination at a school assembly where they played the music video for the album’s title song, “Harmony.”
The children’s music category has been part of the Grammys since the first awards show in 1959, said Nick DiFruscia, senior director of awards at the Recording Academy.
“By honoring creators who produce quality, inclusive and impactful music for young audiences, the Recording Academy and its members affirm that children’s music is an essential and respected part of our shared cultural landscape,” DiFruscia said in an emailed statement.
“This was super organic,” Simmons said of the way “Harmony” came together. “It took a few years to record. So we didn’t really give it any pressure going into it.”
He said he wants to keep that relaxed energy for their collaborations going forward, letting Aura take the lead if she has a song idea or feels inspired, or if she wants to take a break.
In addition to playing music together, Simmons and Aura love to listen to music in the car. They have a shared playlist for long drives.
“She puts me on to music now,” Simmons said. “She has her own kid account on streaming, and she’ll add stuff to our daddy-daughter playlist.”
The best thing about the Grammy nomination, Simmons said, is that it gives people another chance to discover their music.
“These messages of harmony, of self-love, of community, of empathy are super important,” Simmons said. “We need that energy, and I’m happy we were able to provide that.”
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