Gia Miran, it’s a name you may or may not know yet, but she’s on a mission to ensure that you know her name and to get onto music’s world stage. She has already made moves into that arena, including having released two albums, a number of singles, and opened for R. Kelly and Wyclef Jean, but unfortunate circumstances forced her to step back in order to regroup, and now she’s ready to do her thing.

Born Gianna Miranda in Rock Sound Eleuthera, Gia Miran began singing at the age of five in school plays. At the age of eight she commenced piano lessons with Barry Ward. Between Ward and her teachers, they recognized that she was vocally talented.

It was in the early 90’s that her parents, Andrew and Sarah Sturrup gave her Mariah Carey’s “Music Box” CD for a Christmas present. She says they had no idea they were unlocking her musical talent.

“The first time I played it [‘Music Box’] I fell in love with Mariah’s voice and started mimicking her. That in a way was how I ended up with a five-octave range voice … the whistle tones.”

She did not know she was unknowingly training herself to hit high notes. And she performed nightly to sold-out crowds of stuffed animals.

While she says she can still do a level of whistling, she says it’s not as high in her adult voice. Her child’s voice was much lower.

Gia Miran says she knew she loved the stage when she played Santa Claus in a Christmas play at age seven and had to sing. The audience response she said put it into her head that she could be a stage performer. At that time she also started putting pen to paper and writing after her grandfather Ivan Sturrup died.

“I wrote something in memory to him, and from then it was just me writing down thoughts … what can a seven-year-old write?

She started singing in church and sang her first solo at age 11. When she enrolled in Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, to study business administration, Gia Miran says she just knew that she was going to get her big break. While at the fine arts university she recorded where and when she could — in closets and dorms rooms and even made use of the school’s vocalist practice rooms.

The powerhouse vocalist who is also known for her songwriting skills who considered herself a R&B/Soul artist, dipped her toes into the hip hop world when she met Smoke D from UGK Records and recorded some hooks. She says she was scouted by a number of top labels, but everything fell through.

“Right place… right time kind of thing, that didn’t happen.”

She said her dreams were killed by the lies and dreams she was sold.

Gia Miran did not get the industry break she had anticipated, but she earned her bachelor’s degree. The vocalist said she returned home after college depressed, and moved to New Providence to basically start from scratch.

“I honestly thought that my music career or my music dream were pretty much shattered and finished, because I didn’t know that the music industry [on New Providence] was where it was at until I moved home and started networking and realizing okay — we actually do have a level of music here.”

She began networking and met Gregory Collie, the founder of the iCreate Music seminars when he was still producing. They did some music together and then she branched out doing music with other people in the industry.

In 2012, Brian Campbell, an EDM music producer out of Fort Lauderdale turned her song “Don’t Get Me Started” into an EDM that she wasn’t really into, but the track got good response. That lead to a busy 2013 for her — opening for R. Kelly in New Providence; performing at Bahamas Invasion; she was the sole act at her hometown homecoming and opened for Wyclef Jean during the Haitian Flag Day celebration in New Providence. That year she also performed at an LGBT event in Atlanta. But in 2014 she went silent.

“Some business deals did not work out in my favor so I had to step back, regroup, and do a lot of business things on my behalf,” she said. “So now I’m actually an independent artist completely releasing under my own record label, Rock Sound Music Group.”

The vocalist who now considers herself to be a Pop artist because it covers both R&B and Dance music has started releasing music again. She’s gearing up for the release of the album “Addicted” from which her first single “Side Chick” dropped in May. The second single “End of the World” will be released in July. She says that future that she once looked at through very dim glasses, now looks bright again as she expects a lot more from her music and herself, and is determined to make it onto the world stage.

“I’m not quite there yet, but I’m gonna be,” she said. “The time is right, and the right time is now. I’m excited. It’s time to finally step into what I know is my destiny.”

To Gia Maran, music in one word is “everything.”

“It makes me feel a certain zeal for life. It brings me up when I’m down. It even makes me cry when I’m happy. It makes me happy when I’m sad. It’s a lot of things. It’s my passion,” she said.

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