Monica Swaida

Monica started her professional career as a teenager in Nigeria at the age of 12. She was part of a rap group called Sound on Sound. Members of the group included Ebony Bankole, Mr. Kool, Scratch and the late Mustapha Amego. She later left the group and and became a backup singer for top Musicians like Majek Fashek, Sunny Okosun, Evi Edna and many more. She did a lot of studio work for lots of artists, voice over and jingle for adverts. Since she did all these as a teenager, she didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. Opportunity came for Monica who later left Nigeria and traveled abroad in. She returned back to school ending up with graduate degrees in 1997. Monica faced the world of business owning an Insurance company and several real estate investments. While at the university of Massachusetts Lowell, Monica was the dance leader at Alumni association. She lead her group and did live shows at the university and she wrote poetry for in the drama club that were published. She also published some of her own poems. In 2012, She was one of the people selected to perform at the 200 years celebration of Charles Dickens in Lowell titled ” What if Oliver was a Lagos boy” One of Charles Dickens many books titled Oliver Twist. As faith will have it, a close friend came to her with a proposal for a movie production. Though she didn’t follow through with it, but it gave birth to another dream of show business. Another friend did a Nollywood movie in her town during that production she met top Nigerian producers like Desmond Elliot and Robert Peters. She played a few roles in that movie titled Love Song in 2012. Not long after, a childhood friend Reward James approached her to play a part in a movie in Atlanta titled the Mailman. After her second movie, she started taking classes to perfect this new found love of acting. A person that had a long relationship with the cameras and crowd, this was something that came natural to Monica. She later produced her award winning movie titled faces of Love with Robert Peters. Starring Razaaq Adoti, Syr Law, John Dumelo among many others. Monica wrote and sang the music sound track for the movie Faces of Love. Going back to the studio brought back so much memories and her long time childhood friend and mentor Leon Majek convinced her to do a full album. He didn’t understand why Monica Forgot about her dreams in the first place. A new dream was born. All the years of touring Africa and Europe has finally brought Monica back to her first love which is show business. Monica released her full album titled Monicazation in September 2014 She has acted in a various movies including, Affairs of the heart with Joseph Benjamin, Stella Damasus in 2014, She played lead in a movie written by director Obed Joe titled Burning Love in 2014. She formed a talk show with 3 other ladies titled The Real African House wives which aired 13 episodes in 2013.