Crystal’s Music Bio

Crystal is no newcomer to the music business. She actually started playing piano by ear at the age of 5, and started writing poetry, working with song lyrics, making mix tapes, and re-wiring music equipment, and studying the music of Billie Holiday by the tender age of 12. Just recently, she remembered a film theme song she heard at the age of 3, that stuck with her all these years, until she allowed that theme to inspire a film score she recently composed. This too was a sign of her preparation & future work as a film music composer. She has co-written hit, chart-topping singles on past albums by artists on Capitol Records and Virgin Records. She has done vocals on major albums and collaborated with many successful songwriters and producers. She briefly toured Italy with her own band, generating interest from CBS Records in Milan, Italy and did a brief stint as lead singer of the all-female black rock band, PMS, generating a lot of industry interest from major publishers and major record labels in the U.S.

Crystal’s worked both in front of the camera as an actress in film & tv and has worked behind the scenes at companies like Universal Music Group, BET, Stevie Wonder’s Steveland Morris Productions, and Sony Pictures Legal. She also has worked as an Entertainment Consultant and Publisher in her own companies, where she advised and helped actors, film crews, screenwriters, & directors secure agency representation and work on film productions, including BET’s Arabesque Films. She also helped music managers and producers negotiate and understand their business negotiations and contracts and administered her own publishing on her song catalog.

She currently has written well over 200 songs, yet to be released, through her catalog. 500,000 units in record sales on an album. Goldmenber of the National Academy of Songwriters for approaching gold.

She is also a member of the Screen Crystal also was awarded an artistic residency to teach songwriting to
at-risk youth by the LA Cultural Affairs Dept. and was a Actor’s Guild (SAG), American Federation of Television and Recording Artists (AFTRA), and American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and has film & television acting credits as well. She has studied, lived, & traveled abroad, including the Caribbean, Toronto, London, Paris, Cannes, Edinburgh, Brussels, Milan, Florence, Rome, etc. She is fluent in Italian and is learning French, Spanish, and Igbo.

She is also currently working on a project series of CDs, titled: “Spirit Songs and Chants”, that includes songs & chants, such as: “Call of The Water Spirits”, “I am Home”, “Know You Are One”, and “You Create with The One”, etc. She will release these projects on her URSPIRIT record label.

Crystal is also a music scholar, ethnocologist, and music researcher who has earned a B.S. degree in Pre-Medicine from Eastern Michigan University, an M.A. degree in Music from California State University-Los Angeles (specializing in Musicology and the music of the African Diaspora, including Jazz & Afro-Latin and Percussion), and has completed two post-graduate certificate programs in both Filmscoring and Music Business from UCLA Extension and one in Community College Teaching from California State University-Dominguez Hills, which included a college teaching internship at historical Compton College.

Onyinyechi-Chipo are names given her by spirit, with her work and training as a medicine woman / spiritual healer, which mean “gift of God” and “gift” in Igbo and Shona tribal languages of her ancestors from West, South, and West Central Africa. BlackCreek is her tribal name, from her maternal great-grandmother’s African & Native American / Indigenous / Aboriginal / First Nations heritage. Her paternal great-grandmother grew up on a reservation as well, tribe unknown. Underground Railroad Spirit within URSPIRIT pays homage to her enslaved African & African American ancestors, now in the spirit world (ancestral realm), honoring their struggle for freedom and to retain their cultural and spiritual traditions.   

It also symbolizes the continued struggle for equality of opportunity and resources today and her personal journey to freeing herself as a socially-conscious, truth-telling, afrocentric artist/healer, composer, and entrepreneur, releasing her message of “Ancestral, Cultural, Spiritual Healing”, as an instrument of inner and outer peace and healing for the community and all of humanity.  

Through music, books, teachings, concerts, lectures, workshops, inspirational speaking, healing events, ceremonies, and one-on-one and group counsel and healing sessions, Crystal’s spiritual healing gifts are expressed and shared, in and through her, as a vessel of Spirit (her ancestors and the Source of all life), to the world, in order to inspire, uplift, liberate, and empower others and to promote racial equality and healing, racial and social justice, racial healing, harmony, understanding, self-love, respect for differences, all nationalities, and all ancestral, cultural, and spiritual traditions, (especially the most distorted ones of Africa and the African Diaspora and those before Columbus, slavery and colonization).  

It is also her intent to work for real peace within individuals, peace in the neighborhoods, and peace in the world, hence URSPIRIT’s motto, “Ancestral, cultural, Spiritual Healing in everything we do”.