Taja Sevelle

Urban Farming was founded by Taja Sevelle in 2005. The mission of this charity is to eradicate hunger and the organization is now the official charity of Atlantic Records. Taja has had 3 years of experience working on a potato farm, which included discing and plowing fields, driving trucks, lifting 100 lb potato sacks onto semi-trucks, cutting potatoes for seed, planting and harvesting. The farm was certified for seed potato in the last year that Taja worked there, which familiarized her with some of the sanitation processes necessary to become certified to sell seed.

Taja is no stranger to hard work and rural life. When she was in fifth grade, her parents left the city for a year and home schooled her in their cabin in the wilderness. The winter temperatures would fall regularly between 20 to 40 below zero (f) and there was no road access, no running water or electricity. (No television, no radio.) Her family brought water from the lake in buckets and during the harsh winter months an ice auger was used to hand drill through 2 feet of solid ice, whereupon the water was ladled into buckets and hauled back to the cabin. When she returned to public school in sixth grade she was a year ahead of her classmates. Initially, Taja Sevelle wanted to become a botanist, but her life took a turn when she decided to become a recording artist and was signed by Prince.

Taja Sevelle graduated from high school close to a year ahead of her class and subsequently signed a recording contract with Prince in the same week she was accepted into the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. -The first song she wrote, ‘Love is Contagious’, became a #3 hit in England and was in the top 5 in 15-20 cities in the United States. She has made six music videos, recorded three cds and one ep and toured in eight countries, garnering rave reviews in People, Billboard, Time Out New York and many more.

Taja Sevelle has song catalogs that are co-published by Warner/Chappell Music Publishing as well as North Star Media. Her current and future songwriting is published by her publishing company, O.W. Music Publishing. She was a songwriter for Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and has written for Johnny Mathis with co-writers Burt Bacharach and Denise Rich and has collaborated with other songwriting legends such as Thom Bell, Prince and Nile Rodgers to name only a few.

Taja invented a kitchen appliance which is currently being manufactured and is targeted for release on QVC Her partners on this project are Larry King (CNN) and his wife Shawn King.

Miss Sevelle has written a 400 page novel, Rain On A River, and has started writing her second novel, The Joke, as well as an autobiography and a biography about her Godmother who lives in Detroit, Michigan.

She has worked as a radio DJ a program producer and a radio news reporter. Taja produced a weekly radio program on food and nutrition just prior to garnering her recording contract with Prince. She also managed a Health Food store during that time.