Feel the Vibe of the New Year

 Tip for 2026: Enjoy the Music

It is a new year. A new set of 52 weeks. Don’t let the New Year’s Eve ball drop into 2027 without dipping your toes in 2026.

Feel it.  Let the ubiquitous appeal of it take over. Lean into it like it is your favorite song. Groove to its rhythm. Experience it. Embrace every miniscule bit of it.

Enjoy it. Let your spirit guide you to the smile to keep that joy vibrantly pulsating through your body.  

Feel the rhythm of the unique fusion of this new year. Find your smorgasbord of influence and stick to it. Let it splash over you like the waterfalls of Saut D’eau, Haiti. Submerge yourself into each day with fresh authenticity.

Feel the vibe of every single moment of these next 365 days like the morning alarm. And make sure you stay prayed up in the stretch of your every day as God carries you through each minute that comes embedded in it.

Hope that you are wooed by it and that this year sets your soul aflame to make it your most explosive year ever. I pray that your song and dance gets you relevéeing successfully as you progress forward through the year. May your 2026 be as refreshing as Negroni Sparkling Wine; but don’t get too drunk because I’ll be navigating through it too. Lml. 

Enjoy and be blessed!

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As I continue to share parts of my identity and grow into the new year, here is an aspect of a musical atmosphere I was blessed to be in with the wonderful guitarist John Smith, drummer Camille Gainor, and Keyboardist James Preston at the Red Rooster Restaurant and lounge in Harlem, NY.  They are consummate professionals and the music they shared swelled in the air like a bird in the sky. They made it easy and fun to join in and sing with them. So thankful for that. 

I hope that you feel the strophe of each line as I did. Here is the link:

https://youtube.com/shorts/zNhBaYEBSpg?si=4_4bCysOXOCuJIRr

Who Inspires Me To Think Of The Endless Possibilites

 “An appearance of prosperity attracts attention always, 

with no exceptions whatsoever” 

(Napoleon Hill)

I grew up with the intense experience of being compared to my older sibling and so my whole life, I tried to be the boisterous audience, watching her and drawing nourishment from her influence.

I wanted to be like her volcanic self. She was cool. She was popular. She was beautiful and she had this supple rhythm to her life that made me want to take a quantum leap away from who I was. Her intelligence was just the tip of the iceberg. She found ways to caress the hearts and minds of our parents and impressed them on every level.

But I came to terms with the idea that we might never be the same because we were so different. She knew how to extend herself individualistically and get things done. I did things in my own customary fashion but never with the concerted effort that she would put into it to get things done in the fashion she did and in the time that she did.

She has always had a great influence on me. With thought and care, she followed through on her goals and made things happen and never seemed to lose that sense of continuity. Nope! She absorbed a nice groove and kept it steady on the beat.

I look up the balance of my life and consider all the intense experiences that I have lived through. She has always been an intrinsic part of my life except my days were spent more with this turbulent sensibility. I lived my life on the brink. I danced to the rhythm of my own songs. I lived with all these emotional struggles which I guess you can call middle-child syndrome.  And the only thing that made my heart flutter was the beauty of nature, books, food and high-voltage music. I was growing up as a future artisan of the world and still with a penetrating influence from the only big sister I would ever have. I can honestly say that of the good things that I planted my feet on, the flurry of activity was often guided by what I thought might gain me a glorious response from her. She was living this model life and I was living with the penchant for getting on the stage and caressing a ballad with a live orchestra. Yet she always had forward momentum and I was battling all the negative energy that would be conjured up in my mind that somehow held me as prisoner in the space and time of the lewdness of my youth where it had happened.

So, I can honestly say that being around my sister is to be in an atmosphere of

tremendous power. She creates ideas in me that opens doors to new life. I can only hope to be like her one day. And then one day out of nowhere, when my parent comes and explores my world while I am on the stage giving all of me into a performance, it leaves me feeling strong and accomplished and that somehow, I used her modally based improvisation in my life to get their hearts propelling towards me with interest. All I know is that having a big sister in my life has definitely made me tweak my design a bit and lately has raised my morale. I guess you can say that you should never let family fall out of your favor because even if it is with a briskness of tempo that it takes them to come around and think that you are more than the equivalent of a tough Monday morning, when they turn their attention towards you, it is like the joie de vivre to feel valued in their presence.

Thankful for my sister. Thankful for her influence on me. And thankful to have a reason to even try; even if the bedrock of my work is to try to impress the people who made me feel at home in my own house when I was growing up all ebullient and innocent. But, even until this moment and seeing her thrive and thrusting through with this ferocious intensity and with this rhythmic acuity, makes me want to push harder with a jolt of urgency to be like her. She gives me a reason to think of the endless possibilities if I never give up. Today, I am clapping enthusiastically for her as she celebrates life. Pardon my outpouring of words but you deserve to know the truth; you inspire me and thank you for the wellspring of influence you provide for me. Hope your day is all that and more.  

Ode to Lewis (Did you mean Louie? No! Louis!)

This poem is a dedication to one of the greatest influences in jazz history. 

Ode to Lewis 

(Did you mean Louie? No! Louis!)

by Stephanie Jeannot (c) 2016

Louis Armstrong’s horn was blasting the night away.

Communally! With the backdrop of the stage,

and he was singing lullabies

and I joined into the glories of jubilation time.

He was sketching compositions with his brass.

I burst into flames so fast I got whip lash.

Hot, fiery sounds coming at me like high tide in the afternoon

I mean, for all intents and purposes; 

culture runs through the body of his tunes.

Five stories down on the dancing streets folks heard him.

Their emotional tones were slightly altered when 

they give his melodies a swim.

And suddenly we all gained the power of the Amazons.

The onus of trying to move peeps worked; that shit was on!

Could you hear how he ornamented his character 

with them caterwauling cries?

With the grace of a jaguar, they took his music up for size.

I can’t believe I had to tell some 
to not abnegate from enjoying his cheeky calls.

But it didn’t take long before they started to 
own the air around them and into the buttery mix fall.

The waves of sound, they let move their feet as 

love flooded all up in their ears.

You could tell by the way everyone moved that there were 

no veils of silence in the atmosphere!

The greatest influence of music of all time, 

Satchel Mouth, was sparking up minds.

The blues he lived was being articulated and 
we took his expressions for a pulchritudinous ride. 

Married to "The Sound of Music"

"Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.” – Wynton Marsalis

Something New

There is no truer statement than this. As a music lover, sometimes you connect to songs and genres of music without even realizing it until you find out where the song comes from.

I have been in the process of trying to gain more strength in my piano playing, referencing books of sheet music and trying to play while reading, which is not easy.

I have come to a point where I have begun doing research on music, trying to find out more about jazz and within the process, I got a sheet music book of Ragtime songs. The book consists of over 20 tunes that were popular during that era by some of the most famous ragtime musicians of that day and time.



Something Borrowed

I am not sure if this applies to all young people, but I know that when I was a little girl, the sound of the ice cream truck during the summertime would draw my attention and caused me to be uneasy because I wanted some of the tasty treats offered. Even if I did not run to the truck, the music was sonorous and delightful. Until today, I remember it and have tried to repeat the phrases of the nameless song that used to call attention to children, on my keyboard, still not knowing much about the song except for what it sounded like. And then, I opened up the Ragtime piano charts book, started with the first page and when I began to play the song, to my surprise there it was.

The title of the song is “The Entertainer” which was written by the King of Ragtime also known as Scott Joplin in 1902. How interesting to find that after decades of first hearing a song and loving it without even knowing anything about the content of its music, that  I'd come to realize I enjoyed Ragtime music all my life. This could possibly be why when “Ragtime” was in the theatres in NYC, I had been with desire to see it. Though I never have, I am grateful to have a book featuring songs of this type that I can use in my own unique way.

Check out more about "the Entertainer" here:

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(rag)

The Best of Scott Joplin on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFeF_yFtssk

Something Blue


By unique I mean, I have kid sized hands that I have to stretch more than most people to play with both hands. My left hand has been underutilized and it feels like lifting weights trying to get it into piano playing mode.

Yet, I practice until my left hand is sore and my fingers are blue and numb. Hopefully I will get better at it, but for now, coming to more of an understanding of music is wonderful and helps me to value the art more than I ever considered.

Strange to be married to a simple sound of music without even knowing how much it has affected you as a person. And that's when you realize how influential music really is.  

The idea of being a musician and lover of what I do, makes my heart leap!