Hester Rame is an artist and songwriter whose music evokes the haunting quote from author Anne Lamott, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Rame quit music altogether for nearly a decade, barely touching her piano in that time and feeling incapable of allowing herself to become inspired, let alone create. It is now apparent that her self imposed exile was necessary to begin healing from a lifetime of trauma. The dark recurrent themes of her melancholic alternative music coupled with her rich, full bodied vocals spare no details in revealing the searing reality of her past.

Hester Rame stood in the audition room at California State University Stanislaus and sang Puccini’s “O Mio Babbino Caro”. Afterwards, the music professor and Coordinator of Vocal and Choral studies chased her down the hallway of the music department to ensure she would not leave before he could demand that she enroll. Rame was among a select few who were awarded the highest scholarship for Vocal Performance Majors at the time. Only a few months prior, she was the sole recipient of the Command Performance award of the 2002 Solo and Ensemble Festival for her performance of that same aria. Rame began to realize that her ability to communicate fully relied entirely upon singing. Her natural vocal abilities led her to interact with the world through Opera and classical music. However, Rame carried the weight of a dark secret which eclipsed those hard won accomplishments and tainted the path of her seemingly bright future.

During her senior year of high school, Rame was groomed into a sexual relationship with her 52 year old teacher while she was still a minor. The fall out from this situation created a level of trauma and denial that she would not come to terms with until many years later. In her own words, “I was an inexperienced young girl. I had kissed exactly one boy at that point. I was also on the autism spectrum, although I would not receive a diagnosis until well into my adulthood. Due to my youth and undiagnosed neurodivergence, I did not yet understand that not all adults have good intentions. I was the easiest target in the world for him, and he knew it.” Unfortunately, when this ‘relationship’ came to light, fourteen years before the ‘Me Too’ movement, Rame was ostracized from her community, and blamed by everyone from her peers to former teachers for ‘ruining the reputation of such a beloved teacher’. 

Rame began experiencing what we now know are common symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks so debilitating that she was often hospitalized. She soon left her schooling and beloved opera, turning to music she could create for solace. She found safety seated behind her piano, using her powerful four octave range to communicate, both subconsciously and metaphorically, the truth she felt too afraid to speak out loud. Rame toured the west coast as a solo artist in clubs, on television variety shows, radio stations, and festivals while developing a following in the tens of thousands on social media. She gained a reputation as a compelling and visceral live performer. 

Unfortunately, as is common in these situations, Rame had no one else she could turn to, and felt she had no option but to remain with her abuser. Her music career continued to flourish even as she carried the abusive dynamic of a 34 year age gap ‘relationship’ on her shoulders. Rame was still having severe anxiety attacks even after relocating to Nashville and continuing to find success with her musical endeavors.  As she approached her thirtieth birthday and accomplished more with her music, the power differential between her and her abuser started to become clear. What she could not recognize as Stockholm Syndrome in her late teens, she could no longer deny as an adult. Between the difficult and terrifying decision to finally leave her abuser, and the frustrations born from interactions with producers, labels, and managers pushing her to be ‘more pop’ and ‘less intellectual’, Rame walked away from music, deleted her social media accounts, and exiled herself. If she couldn’t make music as an authentic expression of her life experiences, then she wouldn’t make music at all.

After eight years of therapy, personal growth, musical development, and a stark shift in her purpose and passion, Hester Rame reemerged, evoking truths she had been previously conditioned to bury while dodging none of the darker, more painful topics that ‘mainstream’ music avoided.  She jokingly called it “sad girl music”, but it was more. It was an exorcism, not just of her eight years of silence and self-banishment from music, but from her life.  

Rame is now using her music as a vehicle for unapologetically exploring the brutal psychological depths of Stockholm Syndrome and the enduring grief that comes with the abrupt loss of one’s innocence. “You Had it All” embraces the painful need to let go of relationships and people who are long standing anchors in one’s life, as Rame herself states, “It's about being a recovering people pleaser”. “Blood In The Water” comes to terms with feeling the weight of a family’s responsibilities as a young girl and losing an entire childhood. “Stockholm” is an eviscerating indictment of a predator through the eyes of his victim. Rame’s music is more than a catchy chorus or nursery rhymes over a loop, it is composition for catharsis and facing one’s demons with undulating melodies that deliver righteous truths. 

In a world that has fractured into sub genres that allow for the likes of Ethel Cain, Emma Ruth Rundle, and Chelsea Wolfe, Rame’s veracious, potent declarations now find fertile ground, where those who need a sister who understands them can meet her and embrace their personal truths along with her music.