Every year, Indaba Music hosts a number of different music competitions where artists can enter in and have an opportunity of winning. I have entered quite a few contests myself in the past because I wanted to see what would happen.
This year, Indaba Music once again hosts the 7th annual Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Artists are supposed to enter into the competition and submit three selections; one ballad, one mid-tempo or blues tune and one upbeat jazz song; one of which must be a cover of a song that the Divine One Sarah Vaughan has done.
So I decided to enter into the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and I am hoping that perhaps you will take a listen and hopefully vote for one or more of my submissions.
This is my Ballad entry: "Tenderly - Stephanie Jeannot"
With every new endeavor, I can
say that I had my father there, in his genuine nature, infusing me with mental strength
and love that made me feel adequate. Today, I am turning up the volume to his
truth because I never had to vie for his attention. Our relationship from its
genesis has always been rooted and grounded in love and for every powerful memory
that I have, I can say that he has been there, even when I tried to burrow away
from his instructions to take my own crazy paths that resulted in what we call,
experience. But I was never too far from the safety of his love because it was
always there for me regardless of how rebellious and stubborn I was.
And so, to savor the good things
that we have had over the years because of his answering the call to the duty
of being a real dad, I twittered with delight writing some poetry in dedication
to his being in my life and for every calming moment that he gave me his
shoulder to cry on and comforted me to know that I was loved.
He made a huge impact on this
woman that I am becoming. Today, I bring wild cheers in the form of a book of
poetry that you might be interested in sharing with your own father, as this
week brings to us the traditional celebration of Father’s Day.
As I retraced the steps of
every moment that we shared, thoughts augmented my reality which manifested
into a new verse of poetry. I had much to say deep inside and I hope that
perhaps you might take a chance on my latest book of poetry, Songs for My
Father by Stephanie Jeannot which is dedicated to all the quality dads. You
can find it on Amazon here: Songs For My Father
It is definitely a time for dads to shine; especially those who always seemed to grace the
stage with concern and love and left lasting impacts on their children.
It is always a pleasure for me
when I can indulge in the sweetness of jazz. It captivates me like no other
genre and I joyfully indulge in it when presented with the opportunity to
embrace the pomp and pageantry of it.
I remember the day when my
good friend presented the thought to me of being the featured vocalist at his
weekly jazz event. Imagine how filled with curiosity the Roman Catholic church
raised choir girl that I was who was more accustomed to singing R&B than any
other genre was. How could I not look at him with a quizzical gaze? The idea
made me take a hard look at myself, but I decided to try my best to handle the
weight of the idea and I did it.
If for nothing, my good friend
affected my life like none other because from that point on, I
have been on
this non-stop journey of discovery, research and mind-blowing experiences to
remember. If it were not for him, I would have never decided to approach jazz
with more intentionality or accumulate knowledge of its history to base my 30-paged
college thesis on jazz and racism. Or, I may not have ever decided to become more indulged in studying music theory and practicing my craft. And if it were not for him, I would have
never started my radio show on jazz. And so, whenever I am afforded with the opportunity to
sing in this beautiful genre of music, I simply rejoice because I love how jazz
has truly made a personal connection with me.
Jazz Appreciation Month
Every April is Jazz Appreciation
Month. The Smithsonian Institute started this cultural
celebration in 2001 and since, it has been a way to honor those influential
innovators who have come before us in history and jazzed up the world with
their beautiful music.
And so, it was with great zeal
to have joined in the plethora of performers in Eric Frazier’s 2018 Fort Greene
Park Spring Jazz Festival which happened in the midst of Jazz Appreciation
Month in Brooklyn, NY. Jazz is not a fossilized genre of music; it is very much
alive. So, with that in mind, I must say that the afternoon was filled with a
full swath of emotions.
What makes jazz so appealing
to me is that no matter who is playing their instrument or vocalizing, each
comes with their own individual expression and create very genuine reactions.
Each comes with their own spunk of character with their difference in method
based on culture and environment, and the joy of the company and the spirit of
the music is what is felt in the air.
And so, it was a pretty nice
event from the music, to the musicians, to the beautiful spring day that it
was, to the people and everything that made the afternoon a splendid occasion. To my delight, I felt
enchanted to sing one of my favorite jazz standards. It is by Harry Warren and
Al Dublin and what makes me like it so much is for one simple reason. I am a
big English nerd and there is a play-on-words in the song. Its title, September
in the Rain, would suggest it is a song for the fall season but in the song,
the lyrics say, "though spring is here." I think it is the way the writers wrote these tunes that give me butterflies the most. They truly had a way with words and I just love that. In that particular Brooklyn environment and in the warmth of that spring day,
it felt right to sing this song.
Today’s blog post was prompted
by love and I threw myself into writing mode with that in mind and come to this
point with a roar of satisfaction. I hope that I sparked in you, even a small bit of
interest n my story. The warm feeling in my heart can’t even truly define my
gratitude. You richly bless me by taking the time out the routine of your day to read my thoughts and
I thank you for your continued support.
“Life is
nothing but a dream, and if we are artists, then we can create our life with
love, and our dream becomes a masterpiece of art”
(Don Miguel
Ruiz)
I remember reading James Weldon
Johnson’s “The Diary of an Ex-Black Man” and in it he spoke about an experience
where he realized he was black and ran home to ask his mother if he
really was black because he did not know until a teacher told him.
The innocence in that amazes me.
The beauty of his writing thrilled me. The masterpiece of his song that came to
be known as “The Black National Anthem” moves me.
He showed people of color that we
can lift our voices to be heard because we have identities and we can own
our own ambitions to march on being perfectly black even though we labor to
open eyes to a vision of being not so different and lovable though we are different simply because
our skin colors are not the same.
Beyonce and the fierce fighting
woman that she is, proved how the hope that this song has always built in people of color and also provides a a sense of empowerment in using our voices to daily renew the fire within. She did it with visual presentations
of what reporting to active duty as a soldier in the war for true equality looks
like when she levels the playing field and makes black life across the globe
know in truth that beauty in identity is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing when she
showcases the beauty of the normal physiology of her skin and sings James Weldon Johnson's song live. Her performance on
Coachella resonated with me and I tried to capture my thoughts of it in a poem since it is National Poetry Month. I
hope you will read it.
James Weldon Johnson’s Masterpiece Takes Beyonce
Black Woman
Strong
Woman
Good Woman
I am Woman
I am
Daughter
I am Sister
I am Cousin
I, the
Writer
I am
Blessed
I Confess
I am Set
I am First
I am
History
I Have a
Ministry
I the
American
I the Woman
I the
American Woman
I the Black
Woman
I the
Strong Black Woman
I who Lift
My Voice in Sing
‘Til Earth
and Heaven Ring
I’m down
with the Kings
Because, I
the Queen
I Am the
First
To show all
the Haters
I Did it
Like a
Teacher
Schooling
us to own our Blackness
To possess
Pride
Of being
who you are
In your Blackness
In your
status
In your
number
Because you
are a Number
Because you
are in the Number
Because you
Are
Because you
have an Identity.
Rings with
the Harmony
Of Liberty
Like a
church bell on Sunday Morning
In Brooklyn
High as the
glistening Skies
March on
Beyonce.
I respect
who you are.
You are
Cultural!
You are Strong!
You are
Fierce!
You are
Black!
You are a
Soldier in the Army of God!
And you are
Shining Your Light!
Now Even
the Young, Gifted and Black Youth will be able to Sing the Black National
Anthem
I wrote a
song about the beauty of my family’s culture.
The video
does a better job of displaying it though and I hope that you will take a
minute to watch my video entitled Saut D’eau Song written and produced by Stephanie Jeannot. Though it only shows bits and
pieces of beautiful Haiti, I am glad to have been able to see it with mine own
eyes. The beauty in culture moves me.
Thank you so
much for stopping by my page and for taking the time to read my blogpost. Be so
wonderfully blessed.
I fall into the arms of love
every time music fills the air and I am blessed with the opportunity to enjoy
it. I am left with a cheerful disposition and a sunny temperament; especially
when I can experience the great reward of performing songs that I wrote.
It is not every day that I am
bursting in creativity. There are times when I have writer’s block and it kills
me in so many ways. I can make up a cacophony of excuses for the days when trying
to put words to the paper does not happen in the manner I would like, but at
those moments when a flood of good thoughts just doesn’t seem to push through,
there is nothing I can do to change that. It just happens. But then in that
season of your life, someone comes along and inspires you with an idea and
boom, there you go with a feeling of empowerment that allows you to once again,
regain control of the writing process and productivity happens. I guess such was the case with
the song my mom asked me to write.
She had this confident expectation that a
song would come out of her mere request. I guess the intention and hope that I
had of being able to fulfill it was all I needed to be able to write Saut D’eau
Song, a song about a region in Haiti where one of the most beautiful
waterfalls in the world lives.
The words came like an army of love, marching
with intention to tear down the mountain that once blocked the free flow of
words and at that particular moment, had a burning need to be released. If you are interested, you can check out the original tune here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6OgJmDcNvmBdnQzoNwOkp7?si=bILPJgF3SiObfMI92URzUw
I will admit that it was a bit
different for me to write a song like this and I still can’t say why I had never intentionally written
about the Haitian culture that was introduced to me as a child and that I grew
up coming to know. But this tune gave me a reason to go deeper into my
thoughts, share my own experiences about a place I had seen with my own eyes
and confidently share a bit of my identity and story. And so, you can say it was a
spirited event to actually perform this song live with my band for the first
time.
To grow up in the margins of cross-culturalization is to know a bit of
more than one cultural background, practice the mores and behavioral patterns from a bit of each
yet to dance to the beat of where you are, because you are there. But to be able
to share a piece of what makes you different with people from all walks of
life in the atmosphere of a musical gathering, and without fearing being exactly
who you are, feels good. All I can say is that if you see a beatific smile
across my face, it is because the other evening, under the brilliant sparkle of
the moon, I turned the musical focus of interest to Haiti and shared a
glamorized view of my ancestor’s home through song and had appreciable results.
Drums by Richie Johnson echoed through the room as Kenny Alston plucked his
bass with fierceness, Prrrl tickled the ivories with peculiar phraseology and Herb
Lewis added a nice shaft of light with his saxophone which made me sing my
lyrics with a heart of love. Together we performed this song for the first time
at Silvana which is located in the Harlem section of New York and I would so
love it if you would check it out here.The song is called Saut D’Eau
Song and this is the live version that I was telling you about: https://youtu.be/Lls4VddAe_8
Thank you for allowing me to enthrall
your attention to the detailed content of my story for just a bit. I admit that I can be a
bit dramatic when reporting the good things that happened to me in my daily
life, but such is the art of conversation.
I hope my words did not meet you with a frozen silence, a blank gaze or find you determined to reach to the end of this post without any interest for what was being discussed but rather, that it reproduced a blossom of joy through your mental boundary in
some way or another. Everybody is full of opinions which is something that cannot be avoided, I know. Yet still I hope that yours of me, based on this post was a good one. I must
thank you for allowing this interlude from your song and dance, to waltz into
the seductive tempo that is my life. Much love and respect to you!
“When you are totally in the
moment, you are showing genuine enthusiasm” (Franzblau)
Sometimes you just happen to
come across that someone and for curiosities sake, you want to navigate your
way through that individual’s world to see what he or she is all about. Then
suddenly, you find your energy is sapped because thoughts about the twinkle in
that beautiful person’s eyes creep in and you are lost in the borders of a
daydream.
The desire to go beyond the
limitations of simply knowing that person’s name and smiling at each other
leads to fertilizing knowledge about each other by spending time together and
watering your hearts with love and the dream is no longer a possible utopia
because you have taken a big leap forward towards that realm of reality.
And then you discover that in
each other’s embrace, there is this tremendous reservoir of harmony that uplifts
you and makes you feel happiness. At that point, there is no denying your feelings;
you know that you have been infected with the emotion of love.
If this story relates to you
in some way or another and you have experienced something of this nature, then
you might be able to relate to my song that I just added on Soundcloud entitled,
“Blindly Into Love.”
The truth about love is, you
may walk blindly into it because it can hit you when you least expect it and
then the love story that is conceived, hits the ground running and you take it
on with this indomitable courage and it is simply time and nature that become
the most brilliant of authors of the irony of love.
Two of my favorite singers in the world share
the same birthday. There has to be some irony in that!
Both put their entire body and soul into
everything they sang and made me want to work hard to not only sing songs I
love, but to understand some of the methodologies and theories behind music and I
am thankful for that.
One of the two is Mariah Carey. She came into
my life when I was in the fifth grade and I became mesmerized with her
instrument. At one point in my life, my entire repertoire was comprised of Mariah
Carey songs. I love her voice and her music. The second is Sarah Vaughan. Her
timbre is amazing, and she just has this incredible way with her voice. My Ipod currently has more Sarah Vaughan tunes in it than any other artist and she is who I listen to the most. Happy
birthday to Mariah Carey and to Sarah Vaughan.
Stephanie Jeannot as Sarah Vaughan
Earlier this month, I wrote a short one-act play which
I entitled “And Then There Were the Ladies of Jazz” which went into production
as a women’s History Month tribute at the Roosevelt Public Library in Roosevelt, NY. I played
the role of both Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan which for me was wonderful
because I was happy to be able to honor two jazz vocalist who I absolutely love
while also sharing some historical data with the crowd before me that I felt
was important for people to know; especially for those who did not know about
the identities of these international women in jazz and how their roles in
music played a role in the racial order or the time.
I want to share a short video clip from the
show, where I rendered a cover of the song that Sarah Vaughan sang which was
somewhat of the Genesis to her career entitled "Body & Soul" which
she sung and won the Amateur Night at the Apollo contest and became who the
world came to know as The Divine One. Hopefully you will watch it and enjoy
what you hear as much as I enjoyed embracing it on stage with Charles Bartlett
on trumpet, Daniel Dalelio on piano, Herb Lewis on Saxophone, Napoleon
Revels-Bey on drums and Rachiim Sahu on bass.
Thank you so much for checking out my blogpost.
Have a phenomenal day!
Hey everybody.
So I decided to enter into the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and I am hoping that perhaps you will take a listen and hopefully vote for one or more of my submissions. 
