When Stax Teixeira graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2024, she had a decision to make. She had a job offer from her dream talent agency in Los Angeles, but heard a call to something greater than herself in her own backyard. “I felt something calling to my spirit to create something that would fill a void that I saw in Boston,” she said.
She remembers having bi-weekly visions of her own brand rooted in the act of staying grounded in oneself and moving with purpose and integrity; ROOTD. Management was founded shortly thereafter, representing local artists, including Boston Music Awards New Artist of the Year nominee Jo Saza.
Her journey has not ended with holistic language and a small business owner. Teixeira has been everywhere since 2023, connecting with non-profits, artists, and community members whose impact she resonated with. Inspired, on September 19, she espoused that Boston was “a bubble about to burst” – or that a great awakening to the untapped potential of this city is on the horizon.
“I’m just seeing so much talent. I’m seeing so [many] high-potential creatives. I believe it takes one to pop up out of the ground and really start to make waves for the whole city to change,” she said.
Teixeira says that when artists take their talents out of Boston, they should do so to champion their city and ultimately bring the success home.
She called Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny the prime example of what Boston needs. “Doing the tour residency in Puerto Rico, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the economy, hiring local technicians, local craftsmen into the production, like, that’s how you change the narrative.”
Teixeira is not sure if she is that person. “I think I see myself as more of the basin versus being the water that’s inside,” she said. “So if anything, I feel like I’m just the stage and then the people in our community are the spotlight.”
She has created a Discord server, The Beantown Scene, as a virtual hub for creative people to connect and receive her own curated list of arts and cultural events going on in the city. She also hosts “Beantown Talks,” an open-forum style livestream where she talks about reconnecting with Boston’s past, present, and future every Saturday at 2 p.m. on Instagram Live.
In doing so, she found a deep divide between different generations within Boston. She’s seen younger residents, herself included, have a much more optimistic view of the culture of the city. “[Older residents] didn’t see any productive change. Any type of positive change they had to create for themselves. It’s a lot less balanced from a viewpoint. I don’t blame them at all,” she said.
Teixeira hopes that by fostering inter-generational conversations, especially with artists, older Bostonians can pass down the oral history of the city that younger residents can learn from and build upon.
“It has to be this cycle where older folks are willing to take the younger generations under their wing, but also be open to learning from them,” she said. “It’s also our responsibility to be open too. We can’t just forget about the older folks, because they are walking, living, breathing archives of history, and they can teach us a thing or two.”
“I think we can all agree that Boston is a work-in-progress,” she said on Threads. “There are many people who believe in this city’s potential and are actively making real change & impact — don’t let the darkness of the past override the light of the present.”
