She also fronted a local Venice rock band 'Truvair' in 1974–1975 the band's members were her high school classmates. While attending Venice High School, Brockert joined the Summer Dance Production and was the female lead in the school's production of The Music Man. There, she would acquire a strong spiritual influence from neighborhood matriarch Berthalynn Jackson, a black woman who would become her godmother. In the early 1970s, after the family moved to Venice, Los Angeles, Brockert spent her adolescent years in the historically black Venice enclave of Oakwood, nicknamed 'Venice Harlem'. She would go on to form a semi-professional R&B band with her younger brother Anthony and their cousin. She later taught herself the guitar, bass, and congas. When she was eight years old, her parents began sending Teena on auditions which, among other things, netted her an acting role on The Beverly Hillbillies, credited as Tina Marie Brockert. She took to singing naturally, performing Harry Belafonte's ' Banana Boat Song' by age two. In 2005, while visiting Louisiana, she discovered that her paternal ancestors once lived in New Orleans. She said that her ethnic heritage was Puerto Rican, Portuguese, Italian, Irish, and Native American. She spent her early childhood in Mission Hills, California. Mary Christine Brockert was born on March 5, 1956, in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of construction worker Thomas Leslie Brockert and home renovator Mary Anne. Life and career 1956–1978: Early life and career beginnings 1.4 1991–2003: Hiatus and Passion Play and Black Rain.1.1 1956–1978: Early life and career beginnings.

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