SARASOTA – Jennifer Msumba has faced adversity her whole life.
“Everyone has something that they can do that’s special and a contribution to the world,” said Msumba.
Msumba says she was diagnosed with autism from an early age. She says she faced bullying at school and was too shy to even step in front of a crowd.
“I use to be really shy to get up in front of people even meet new people,” said Msumba. “When Music Compound started up and they had a stage I was terrified to get up here but they encouraged me.”
Three years ago Msumba joined the music compound to challenge herself and find an outlet that would help her.
“I saw like the little kids doing it so I said all right I’ll give it a try and it was hard the first couple of times. I would shake really bad and just kinda run off stage when I was done,” said Msumba.
Msumba learned to play the piano, violin, guitar, and the ukulele. Soon after she began to make videos and post them on YouTube.
“I started YouTube way back, years ago, posting piano covers that I would learn, and I was starting to get views like from other countries and comments like whoa this is good and stuff. I realized I can do this,” said Msumba.
With now nearly 10,000 followers on her YouTube channel, Msumba hopes her videos encourage others with disabilities to follow their dreams.
“You belong in this world as much as anyone else so you can go out there and do those things that you wanna do,” said Msumba.
Msumba has already auditioned for America’s Got Talent three separate times thanks to her new found confidence and plans on continuing creating content for her YouTube channel.
