For UCLA alumna Sasha Brookner, exposure to avant-garde music and culture is nothing new.
Brookner, a Berkeley, Calif. native, grew up alongside Telegraph Avenue and the East Oakland music scene. Now Brookner, 29, is successfully heading Heliocentric Public Relations, a publicity firm just as eccentric and culturally conscious as her hometown.
“During my senior year at UCLA, I began interning at various entertainment-related companies solely to obtain school credit,” Brookner said. “It was never my intention to formulate a career for myself in the entertainment industry, (but) when I discovered PR, I realized that I could work with writers and editors who were creative people similar to myself.”
In 1999, Brookner graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis on Egyptology, without ever intending to go into the field of public relations. However, after falling into positions within the publicity departments at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and at the short-lived independent record company Red Ant, Brookner found the industry connections necessary to build her burgeoning career in publicity.
Though Brookner worked at renowned publicity firm The Courtney Barnes Group for a few years, doing work for multi-platinum artists such as TLC, Usher and Sisqo, it was not until Brookner ran across a magazine article featuring Eryakah Badu’s backup singer N’Dambi that she found the initial inspiration for starting up Heliocentric Public Relations.
“I was intrigued by (N’Dambi’s) story and decided to call up her management,” Brookner said. “I wouldn’t have been able to simultaneously work with her on the side while working with The Courtney Barnes Group, so I put in my letter of resignation and ordered my business cards the same week.”
After booking N’Dambi as Heliocentric’s first client, Brookner’s then-upstart company was able to obtain visibility for N’Dambi in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Vibe, inciting a torrent of independent soul artists to hire Heliocentric to represent their projects.
“I started HPR because I had a growing desire to help publicize and promote artists (such as N’Dambi) who I felt were making positive and constructive contributions to the industry and our society in general,” Brookner said. “I enjoy helping independent singers reach that level of mainstream exposure without having to conform to a major label’s idea of who or what they want them to be.”
Growing up with strong musical influences such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba, Brookner has created an unwavering ideal for her company and selectively chooses artists who reflect that ideal of artistic progression and social nonconformity. Though HPR has represented household names such as Andre 3000 from Outkast, Ciara and Cee-Lo, Brookner explains that the real satisfaction behind her company is its ability to bring often-unrecognized artists into high profile media outlets like Rolling Stone, GQ, Essence, BET and MTV.
Disturbed by what she considers a trend toward material glorification, violence and misogyny in current urban culture, Brookner explicitly promotes artists who reflect an urban vibe without compromising the passion and socio-political awareness that she feels is essential to artistry.
“We are trying to promote avant-garde, activist, innovative, creative and revolutionary new talents who are contributing to the community through their artistry in order to combat some of the subliminal beliefs and ideologies that we are inundated with by Hollywood on a daily basis,” Brookner said.
Currently, Heliocentric works with a variety of both mainstream and independent artists, further fostering its mission to revolutionize the entertainment industry by publicizing diverse and proactive artists such as Cleveland, Ohio songstress Conya Doss, alternative rock/soul artist Joi and rising Columbia Records soul singer Goapele, who can quote Nelson Mandela in her music just as easily as she does Prince.
For Goapele, working with Brookner has provided a kindred spirit.
“My career has gradually grown and HPR has been able to support that from the grass-roots level all the way to the national level,” Goapele said. “Starting out as an independent artist, it was very important for me to have a publicist that understood my music and where I was trying to go.”