Courtesy of Mater Mea
“Stevie Wonder, Sali. Doesn’t that sound good?”
If there was ever a 2-year-old who would love old school Stevie Wonder, it would be Salimata Diarra. Her father, G. Idrissa Diarra, is an African Reggae singer, while her mother, Zuhirah Khaldun Diarra, spent a big part of the late ’90s taking some of the biggest names in Hip-Hop (think Jay-Z and Ludacris) beyond ciphers and mixed tapes.
Though Khaldun Diarra has left the flashing lights of the music industry to empower those affected by the housing crisis through the National Urban League, she remembers those days are still fresh in her mind.
“It was dizzying,” Khaldun Diarra admits now. “We worked when everybody slept. I’d be criss-crossing the country with these guys, then on a night off I’d run into, Jay (Z) or Damon (Dash) downtown at a party. and we’d throw up the diamond sign. They’d be so surprised to see me outside of work… We were entertaining the world. The beat that the world was moving to on the weekends and their off-time was our full time life.”
How has being a mom changed your life?
Prior to getting married and having the baby, I guess I was a bit of a — I don’t want to say party girl (laughs) — but I definitely loved the nightlife. I was a globetrotter who traveled quite a bit; I had worked in the music industry before and maintained a lot of that lifestyle even though I had transitioned into working for nonprofits before I had the baby. I was still out on the New York nightlife scene two to three nights per week. Burning the candle at both ends with that sort of lifestyle and a corporate lifestyle simultaneously up until I got pregnant prepared me to be a mother. There’s a lot of sleepless nights right after you deliver, and sleepless nights for many months after you deliver, and maybe for the rest of my life (laughs). [That lifestyle] gave me the stamina to deal with being up four times a night feeding the baby and having to go into the office the next day.
It’s been a drastic change. I’m not spending my nights out hanging out with friends and dancing anymore. I’m spending them at home with my child; since I do work, the evenings are our special time together. We’re weekend warriors as well.
I think it’s changed me professionally [as well]. I’ve become much more serious. There are higher stakes in life. I find myself more productive in the office, taking my career much more seriously. I’ve always been a high-obtaining individual, worked very hard, but I think being a mother definitely has helped me as a professional as well, in terms of a seriousness that I bring to my professional life and the work that I do, in managing my time. If I’m going to be away from my baby, it’s going to be for a good reason, and I’m not going to waste any time doing it either — the hours are going to be well-spent. I think that mothers are magicians, in terms of multitasking, and also in terms of having the seriousness and the focus.
Photo credit: Rog Walker
