David Bell
David Belle is both a British and American citizen, known as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and award-winning film producer and social entrepreneur. His debut album, The Beginning, was released in 2024, and he continues to bring his personal and ever-evolving body of work into 2025 with the release of his sophomore album, Raspberry Flow, on Friday, August 22, 2025. Both albums were recorded under his label, Ma Belle. Having traveled the world from a young age, he speaks English, French, and Creole and splits his time between the United States, the French Caribbean, and Europe. A breadth of influences unites in David Belle’s Raspberry Flow, a reflective yet celebratory expression of strange times in our strange world. English, French, Creole, and Spanish find harmony in the opener, and the songs range from funk, Americana, rock, and a variety of global sounds.
The album features guest appearances by South African singer Thando Skwatsha and California native Josie Maran, backed by David’s Los Angeles band members: AM Dandy (guitar + bass), Lorenzo Meynardi (drums), Riccardo Gresino (piano + organ), and Hayley Mandel (backing vocals). The Beginning and Raspberry Flow were co-written and co-produced with Alessandro Meynardi and recorded at his and Belle’s hybrid analog-digital Black Lotus Recording Studio in Los Angeles.
David describes the title track, “Raspberry Flow,” as possibly the most ambiguous in meaning, focusing more on feelings than specific interpretations. It’s about memories of a time, place, and feeling from the past. The album is bookended by two renditions of “Run Away.” The first version is a carnivalesque invitation to join David on a far-reaching global musical adventure. David says, “The chorus is sung by me in English, French, Creole, and Spanish (Run Away, Allons-y, An Ale, Andale) with a hint of the South African language isiXhosa – sung by my friend Thando Skwatsha who is featured on “Run Away II” at the end of the album. For this project, set in these times, I want people to feel it’s ok to be both serious and upset while also celebrating life and those that we love.”
David is currently working on his third album, which he plans to release in 2026. He aims to continue releasing one new album each year thereafter. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Kanpe Foundation and Crowing Rooster Arts. He is married to the model, actress, and leading clean beauty entrepreneur Josie Maran. They have four children and live between their homes in Los Angeles, New York, and the French West Indies. Bio on David Belle: David was born in New York City in 1972 to the renowned Welsh architect John Belle and the Chilean Academy Award-nominated documentary film director Anne Belle. His parents, both artists, loved music, and his mother’s side of the family was the musical side. Her brother, stage name Sugar Mike (87), is an OG blues expert, with a particular love of zydeco. He was the lead singer and songwriter of the San Francisco Bluesville Bombers. “The home collection of vinyl – which we still have in the family to this day – was classical, jazz, musicals, poetry, reggae, folk, R&B, soul, blues, British and American rock, and a ton of other random, eclectic stuff from Ravi Shankar to the sounds of crickets from around the world. In my early school days in Greenwich Village, later in Chelsea, it was Michael Jackson and the emergence of hip hop (then known as rap). Then later in school, it was New Wave, then psychedelia, and then with world travel came a love of world music.”
David's career highlights include co-producing the album Let the Rhythm Lead (Warner Bros, 2020) with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne and singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Jonathan Wilson. Belle and Browne co-wrote the track "Love is Love" for the album. David also won the Alfred I. DuPont Award, the Pulitzer Prize of Broadcast Journalism, for his PBS Independent Lens Special documentary film Abandoned. He was also part of the team that created “We Are the World 25 for Haiti” (2010), and he has raised over $30 million for poverty reduction and humanitarian relief efforts worldwide.
Since 1992, David has been involved in the production of dozens of films and videos across various genres, including narrative, documentary, music video, and commercial advertising. Other notable projects include Co-Executive Producer with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and others for Bending the Arc, which premiered to a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival and is available for streaming on Netflix and Apple TV. For commercial clients, David has co-produced and shot advertisements for Apple, Nikon, Aciphex, Sebivo, Brand Aid, BRANA, and Josie Maran Cosmetics.
As a social entrepreneur, with the support of Academy Award winning directors Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather) and Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs), David co-founded Haiti’s national film school Cine Institute, which today is called the Artists Institute, and operates as a creative arts campus for local underprivileged artists.
To nurture and maintain his authentic creativity, independent thinking, and productivity, he is neither a user nor a consumer of social media or artificial intelligence.
Website: https://www.davidbelle.net/
Vents Magazine Interview:
https://ventsmagazine.com/2024/06/05/interview-david-belle/
