Alameda's Monique Benabou Competes on 'The Voice'

Alameda voice sensation Monique Benabou’s rise to television fame has taken a long and circuitous route, shaped by having to care for her once-ill parents and not being able to afford professional musical training growing up.

But, today, the budding star, who describes her style as “gypsy pop rock," is poised to release a music album and is a contestant on the popular NBC television show, The Voice.

Benabou made it onto the show after a daunting round of auditions and is now on Team Christina, headed up by Christina Aguilera. Other celebrities on the show include Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton. Carson Daly serves as the show’s host and Christina Milian joins it as a Social Media Correspondent.

You can read about Benabou’s experience auditioning for the show here.

On the show’s website, the singer said she joined the competition in hopes of making her family proud after a life filled with turmoil. Her parents escaped from Morocco with only $500 in their pockets and lived in Israel before coming to the U.S.

Whether or not she ultimately wins the grand prize (a recording contract, the chance to go on tour and $100,000 in prize money) the 24-year-old performer has already amazed and delighted her parents, Mazal and Elie Benabou (40-year residents of Bay Farm Island) and her two sisters and brother who range in age from 39 to 45.

Benabou grew up in Alameda, part of a large and close-knit extended family. She attended Lincoln Middle School, Alameda High School, College of Alameda and Laney College. Contemporaries in town may remember her singing the national anthem at their high school athletic games.

While she was still in middle school, both of her parents became ill, her mother with breast cancer and her father with a life-threatening heart condition. Both recovered and are fine now, but Benabou remembers that period of time as one of great uncertainty in her life. She was worried beyond measure about her parents and with her father, the main breadwinner, incapacitated there was no money to spend on private music instruction as many of her peers were doing.

She taught herself to play the piano and moved to Southern California and study music at Santa Monica College.

To support herself while her singing career jelled, she took jobs as a personal trainer, a nanny, a barista and a makeup artist. She had just taken a job with Apple and had only been working there three weeks when she got the call to come audition for The Voice.

She applied to compete on the show at the urging of a friend. Benabou said she was reluctant at first because she had previously auditioned twice for American Idol, with no results.

“I decided to take a leap of faith and put myself out there again,” she said. Her effort paid off.

On August 31, she auditioned at the Los Angeles Forum along with 10,000 other would-be contestants. (There were reportedly close to 100,000 people who submitted auditions for the show.)

After performing with a group of 10 contestants, she alone was asked to stay behind and was later called back the following week to sing two songs of her choosing. Later she went through another round of interviews.

“It then became a hurry up and wait game,” she said, adding that the time between the initial auditions and being selected to be on the show taught her a lot of patience.

In October, 200 singers were invited to come back, work with wardrobe staff and be further assessed. Still later she was selected for an executive audition in front of NBC higher-ups and joined 127 contestants selected to proceed on to the show’s blind auditions.

“I called my family via Skype,” said Benabou, “and initially told them I didn’t get on the show but immediately told them I was teasing and I did. My parents burst out crying with joy. It was a moment I won’t forget.”

A few days later she joined her fellow contestants at a hotel and stayed a few weeks to prepare for the next stage of the competition. “We worked with hair and makeup professionals and received vocal coaching,” she said, “and most importantly we made lifelong friends with each other.”

The blind audition was filmed and aired in February. Next to come is what the show is calling “battle rounds” that will first start airing Monday, March 5 from 8 to 10 p.m.  Benabou does not yet know whether she herself will appear on the March 5 episode or whether her battle round will be aired during a subsequent weekly episode of the show. She said she will be shown performing a duet during her battle round segment.

The show’s finale performance date, when the ultimate winner will be announced, won’t run until later this spring, probably in May.

No matter the contest results, Benabou has ambitious career plans. She hopes to gather financial backing to launch a West Coast tour with a band after her album, tentatively titled “Take the Ride," is released this summer. The album, she said, reflects her eclectic musical style. It will offer a blend of genres with an indigenous-nomadic-tribal feel incorporating reggae, blues and jazz.

 “This has been an incredible journey so far and I cannot believe how supportive people on the show have been," Benabou said. “I can’t wait for people to get to know and see me through my music.”

To see video clips from the season you can visit the official show site here.   You can follow “The Voice” on Facebook and on Twitter at @NBCTheVoice and #TheVoice.