Nine-year-old sings about mental health
Nine-year-old Iisha Harris has a message: “It’s okay not to be okay.”
The Tauranga actress and singer released her first song, OK, this month as part of New Zealand Music Month.
Iisha started writing the song in June last year after things got “quite tough” due to Covid-19 and after experiencing difficulties with friendships at school.
“I thought that would be a really good way to write down my feelings into a song.”
Iisha produced a music video for the song. She wanted kids to listen to it, feel happy and “get up and dance”.
The ACG Tauranga student said attending school via Zoom during the Covid lockdown last year “wasn’t the same at all”.
“I couldn’t see any of my friends ... and I missed them quite a lot.”
Covid also meant she missed out on opportunities to do commercials overseas and could not travel which was “really tough”.
Her main message of the song was: “If [you’re] frustrated or sad or something tough is happening, you’re always going to feel better and you can get through when things are hard.”
“It’s okay to share your feelings because it’s actually better to tell someone how you’re feeling than just keep it in.”
Iisha’s older sister, Venice Harris, is also a singer and actress and was her main inspiration to start singing and acting.
“I’ve loved singing, acting and dancing since Venice started all her shows.”
Iisha used to sing in the background of Venice’s songs and she reached out to Venice’s producer in America about writing her own song.
“I thought he was going to say no because ... I was 8.”
Iisha said she and the producer did a Zoom session once a week for about three months and wrote the song together.
“I kind of wrote down what was happening and then together we put it into words that would be like a song.
“When we were writing it, things were also quite tough because of Covid and lots of changes.
“For some kids that was really tough because they couldn’t see some of their family overseas and some of their friends.”
Now that the world was opening up for travel again, Iisha was looking forward to going to America soon to meet the producer and some of the girls who featured in her song.
The thing she enjoyed the most about singing was there were “no rules” to it and she could just have fun.
With acting, she loved meeting new people and has made