about

As the rising voice of America's most ethnically diverse generation of young people, singer-songwriter Amanda Pascali writes music that speaks to the experience of growing up as a first-generation American. After her songs went viral on social media, she amassed hundreds of thousands of fans around the globe. Now, her long-awaited new record, Roses and Basil (a collection of Sicilian-English translations and original music produced by Robert Ellis,) is slated for release in June 2025. Her music, coined, Immigrant American Folk delivers a powerful narrative on being, “too foreign for here, too foreign for home, and never enough for both.”

The internationally acclaimed, bilingual singer/songwriter and 2021 Houston Chronicle "Musician of the Year," was born in New York City, and is based in Texas. Amanda has performed internationally, from the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to the European Union Parliament in Brussels, and her song Over the Sea was featured as the soundtrack to the opening scene of the new Italian film Indelebile (English title: Family First) (2024). Endorsed by the US State Department and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Fulbright Fellow, she pioneered the first comprehensive project to translate and revitalize Sicilian folk songs.

Blending folk/Americana influences with Mediterranean, Balkan, and Latin rhythms Pascali’s songs are powerful tales of America told through the eyes of immigrants and those who have always felt like the “other”. With a father who was thrown out of his home country for rebelling against the government and an immigrant mother who built a career from scratch in 1980s Brooklyn, Amanda was driven from a young age to be a messenger of her family’s stories and diaspora.

In 2024, she collaborated with the US Embassy in Italy to open the first “American Space,” in Sicily where she gave performances and masterclasses on translation and American music. She has received awards for her songwriting and poetry from the Calandra Institute in New York, the Lions Club International in Sicily, the Kerrville Folk Festival, the Houston Arts Alliance, and others. She is currently a Mid-America Arts Alliance Interchange Fellow, a Fulbright Ambassador, and serves on the board of the music-activism non-profit, Music to Life.

“One of  Texas’s most acclaimed and promising young songwriters.” - Jesse Sendejas (Houston Press)

"Pascali paints a visceral portrait of the immigrant experience; deftly cloaked in old-world style." - Noel Paul Stookey (Peter, Paul and Mary)

"Listening with eyes closed, you are catapulted into a cinematic atmosphere" -Salvo D’Addeo (Giornale di Sicilia)