We’re talking about your book that’s come out. I want to start, first of all, more current as to what you’re doing right now with the V&P Foundation. It has this mission of supporting music education, giving access to underprivileged youth, and helping support artists. Tell us more about how that got started and what you’re really proud of with it.

I recently started the foundation in honor of my husband to keep his legacy alive. We started, over sixty years ago, with our main objective to help young artists and producers be able to sustain themselves. So we’ve been doing that for over sixty years. But recently, since my husband passed away, I was thinking of making a foundation in his honor. So that’s how we started with it. To really embrace music, music education, arts, and to give a voice to the young, and to help the underprivileged kids. That is why we have a partnership with Alpha Boys’ School. They’re the ones that have really helped the young. I think they’re over 100 years old. Having a foundation now is just making it all official with the main objective of music empowerment and really help the underprivileged, to give scholarships, to let them know they can be part of something very powerful which is music. And hopefully it will be carried on when I’m not here anymore.

How has the foundation’s role been amplified because of COVID? 

COVID has caused a lot of disturbances, with live shows now happening anymore. Last year, we had planned a big concert to release my book and tell people about my journey, but it didn’t happen. We hopefully can go out, when it’s safe, and share my journey with others and support the foundation. It gives me more time to reach out to other people, and I see the suffering and hardship they have. So many musicians have passed on, and I know how difficult it’s been for their families. Just in three months, Bunny Wailer died two weeks ago, U-Roy, and then Toots. Toots, I saw him in January, and we had a good time. In February, I saw Bunny Wailer, and we gave him an award, and he was such a beautiful soul. I’m happy he was at peace for the last year and really embracing his culture and his music. I’ve known them for over 50 years.

Lee Perry, I saw him two years ago, and he’s never changed. He was the one that really started Studio 17 back home in Jamaica 50 years ago. Created a lot of good hits with Bob Marley, and the journey continues. So here I am! [laughs] Trying to reflect back 60 years ago and try to share it in my book.

When I started my book four years ago, it was just an idea for my grandkids. My parents were immigrants from China and India, but they didn’t talk about their struggle and how they reached Jamaica years ago. I said, ‘I want to change that, I want my great-grandkids to know what I did when I was alive.’ And it started with a scrapbook. Then it started with little words. Then it started with a real book with artists and sharing my journey.

That perfectly goes into the importance of family for you. All of your businesses really started as family businesses. In the names, you have the names of family members. In your book, you talk about the next generation with your kids, your grandkids taking it up.

Well, you know, my dad and mom really gave us that feeling of community and helping others. So it was instilled in me, and I brought it onto my kids and grandkids. Whatever we did, we were very conscious of others that we can help and of giving back and respecting people regardless of their status, their color, or anything. It’s something that was passed on from my generation. We know the value and interest of helping community. It all happened organically, step by step as we go along. From selling used records to selling new records, then building a studio, and really trying to help others in the music industry, then coming to America in 1977 and continuing to do the same.