Timeless Voice, Modern Spirit article @ All About Jazz

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Nina Simone that made me be true to who I am and feel okay with doing that, no matter what the world says.

And it was a very difficult journey because sometimes things are not so easy. It’s not easy to get up in front of an audience and express yourself truly. But after a while, you just kind of learn to forget about what people think. They’re there to have the experience. And sometimes the experience may not be good for others even though it’s good for you.

AAJ: Your scat singing is remarkably fluid and inventive, and often tells its own story. Is it purely intuitive in the moment, or is there a conscious harmonic and rhythmic architecture you’re building upon? How has your approach to vocal improvisation evolved over your career?

JH: No. All the texture, harmonic structure, theory I’m thinking about when I’m practicing at home or when I’m studying with my teachers. I’m never ever thinking about that on stage. Because if I start to think about all these things, then it’s not freedom. I’m just trying to think about doing it right. So sometimes, maybe even in the concert last night, you heard some of the pitches were incorrect. It’s because I don’t care. At this point, it’s like, you got to do it. So, you practice the right pitches at home, and then when you get on the stage, you just let go. For me, I just have to let go because all that stuff, it clouds the mind and then the judgment is off and you can’t interact with the band, and it just doesn’t go well. So, on stage, everything is just intuitive, just whatever happens, happens.

AAJ: Do you practice a lot? Do you still have a teacher?

JH: Yes. I have three. I have a teacher who helps me to maintain, kind of like a pathologist, to make sure that my speech and my diction is still proper. That I’m not ruining anything because I sing so expressive, so I need to have a person to make sure that I’m still in line with what I’m supposed to do, my technique. And then I have a teacher who kind of like goes through different things in the scene with me, like improvisation and different things that I want to work with. And then I have a piano teacher.

AAJ: While you’re a masterful interpreter of standards, albums like Love & Liberation and Dear Love showcase your significant talents as a composer and arranger. What typically sparks a new composition for you? Is it a melodic idea, a lyrical theme, a rhythmic feel, or perhaps a response to social currents?

JH: All of the above. Everything. Sometimes I’m taking the train, and I hear something [mimics a short melody] in my head, and I take my phone and I record what I’m hearing in my head. And when I get home, I sit at the piano and make a song. Sometimes it’s only lyrics because something happens and then I will just write down my thoughts. Like while I’m driving or on the airplane or something. And then later, I’ll try to put a melody to it. Sometimes it doesn’t always work. But I write down my thoughts and that becomes lyrics. And then I write down my melodies and they become songs. And then later I put it all together. Sometimes I will wake up from my sleep and I heard a song in my dream, and then it becomes a tune. That’s very rare though, I have to have like perfect sleep and not be touring.

AAJ: Your albums feel conceptually cohesive. A Social Call carried strong social awareness, Love & Liberation explored autonomy and feeling, and Dear Love delved into romance with a lush, big band sound. How do you approach crafting an album as a complete statement? Does the theme guide the song selection and creation, or does it reveal itself as the music comes together?

JH: Sometimes both. So, with Dear Love each song had the theme of love and a message of love. So then when I looked at all the pieces, I was like, oh, it’s love. This is my like dear diary, but dear love. So, it’s like to my love. But then with something like A Social Call all the tunes, some of them are not my own. So, I was just picking and choosing the for the theme, Social Call. So, it varies.

AAJ: Jazz has a long and vital history as a vehicle for social commentary and change. A Social Call felt like a direct engagement with that legacy. How do you perceive your role within that tradition today? How do you navigate balancing potent messages with the intricate artistry of the music?

JH: I think that all artists should have some social justice and political statements in their artistry because it’s hard to be a human being and not be political. Like you walk outside of your home and all the things that are happening in the world are put on you. Like when you’re home, you’re safe. But when you walk outside, you know, somebody might feel like, oh, well, you’re not dressed perfectly enough, or your makeup doesn’t look right, or I don’t like your skin color, or you live in the wrong neighborhood. Like, it’s always something.

I think nobody else is going to speak about it, so we have to as artists. That’s my take on it. You have to say something, you can’t just sit by and watch the world just be bad. I mean, there are some very positive aspects about the world, but that’s already being displayed. The things that are negative nobody wants to talk about. And I think as an artist, not necessarily ruining your career, but I think there should be a little bit of something that you can share with the world. It’s important to me.

AAJ: From your vantage point as a leading artist, what excites you most about the current state of jazz? And conversely, what challenges do you see facing the music and its community?

JH: I get excited about singers wanting to step up and do the good thing. The challenging part is that in school, a lot of teachers, a lot of professionals even, don’t know how to give the proper direction to singers. So, it’s not that they aren’t trying, it’s just in school you’re mostly taught classical. And the jazz comes from a very Black place, like Black America. And a lot of people have not experienced real Black America. They don’t know what it’s like to be Black or to be in a Black neighborhood, to just even go visit and see what it’s like. Even television doesn’t really tell the truth about the Black neighborhood. So, a lot of the times, there is this struggle of how to do certain things because that part of the culture is missing. That is a huge struggle. Another struggle is, in school, vocalists are separated from musicians that are not vocalists. It’s like vocalists, and then it’s like all the rest of the musicians. And this is also problematic because when you go out in the real world as a vocalist, you are still a musician. You should not be separated from the boys; you know what I mean? This is a huge problem.

But what’s exciting is that all the singers know this, they are researching and reaching out to the elders and reaching out to me and my colleagues. This is exciting because it’s like we get a chance to educate people on really what’s happening instead of what they’re learning in school. What you learn in school, you take from it what you need, and what you don’t need you leave it there. And I think that’s exciting.

I’m also excited about singers writing their own compositions instead of always singing standards. And I like to help with that.

AAJ: Navigating the demands of a global performing and recording career is intense for any artist. Adding motherhood into the mix presents unique challenges and perhaps unique rewards. How do you manage everything?

JH: Well, the first thing I will say is discipline. Like, in order for me to be able to give all of my effort and energy to my children when I’m home, I have to have discipline. So, I have to get enough sleep, have to get enough rest. I have to say no to some things. Like, you know, if people want to take some part of my time that I need, sometimes I have to say no. And that doesn’t always do well with like press and management, they get upset. But I’m also a mother, I’m also human being. So, I have to have time with my children. When I go back home from the road, I am their teacher. I homeschool the girls. They don’t go to school.

AAJ: What creative paths are you currently exploring? Are there new sounds, collaborations, or perhaps thematic territories you’re eager to delve into in your upcoming work?

JH: Now I’m working on an album for children. They need something more than just the silly sounds that they get from the cartoons and things like Baby Shark. That’s sweet and cute but they need something more meaningful.

So now I want to work on something, and I’m collaborating with other artists like

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Theo Croker,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Brandee Younger,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Marquis Hill,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Keyon Harrold and

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Orrin Evans, artists to kind of bring a collaborative effort on this project. So, I’m very excited about it.

AAJ: As you are a dedicated educator, what do you think about studying jazz today in terms of academic studies versus traditional way of learning?

JH: I think it’s a problem.

I think that the schools don’t really know what they’re doing at all. And I don’t care about saying that. I don’t think they know. The problem is when you study something like, let’s say you want to be a landscaper. You don’t go to school for landscaping, you go to the land. And you pick and you learn, and you find the landscaping artist and they tell you, okay, this is a season of fruit, this is how you plant it. You have to make sure you test the soil. You have to have enough water, sunlight, you know, all these things. You’re learning from the individual. A lot of the professors that teach at school, they are not professional musicians. So, they have old way of doing things. But the system, for example, this year alone, I’ve applied to 17 universities for teaching position and all of them said no. There’s three I’m still waiting to hear back from.

AAJ: Because of your diploma?

JH: Because I don’t have a master’s degree.

They train you a certain way. Having a degree guarantees that they get a return on their investment. Meaning, everything is structured one way. It’s a box. Everybody has to do the exact same thing versus everybody being eclectic. Artists are not all the same. All of us have our own sound, our own passions, our own dreams, our own inspirations and our own sound of music. So, the students in school should be taught this way, not “you have to have this and this and this.”

Art should not be in the same way, the same infrastructure as people who work that are not artists. If you’re going to school for tech, that’s different than art. So yes, there’s a structure, you have to do things a certain way. But artists are very eclectic. We learn differently. I just, I don’t like this way of teaching. And every time I go to a university, I see holes. Like, singers don’t know stage presence. They don’t know how to count off the tunes. This is like simple stuff. The school is so worried about theory, theory, theory, that the simple things they don’t even learn. I think that students should be allowed to express themselves and that’s not the thing. Also with women, it’s a huge difference with how women are educated versus how men are educated as well.

Like for example, when I was interviewing at a school recently. And they just emailed me a couple of days ago to say that I didn’t get the position. But while I was there, they have a conference where the student can ask the teacher, the prospective teacher, questions like, “When you come to the school, what will you do differently?” So instead of me answering their questions, I asked them the question. I said, “What do you like about the school and what do you not like about the school? Your teachers are here. I want you to tell me in front of your teachers. And then I’m going to give the teachers 20 minutes to leave, and I want you to talk to me.” The teachers never came back because the students had so much to say.

And the women said, and this is most of the schools, because there are so many male instructors, I cannot talk to them about things that I would speak to the women instructors about because they don’t understand and they don’t care. When I go to advocate for myself, I want to sing this composition, I want to write this composition, they tell me no. This is the assignment, and this is what you must do. But the boys, they don’t tell them that. The boys, they can do whatever they want to do. And this is not just, you know, one school. This is like many schools that I go to. I started asking questions because of this one conversation. I was like, wait a minute. What do you mean? And so, I started asking other schools, like from that one school, now when I went to other schools, I was like asking all of them and they all said the same thing.

So, it’s very male-dominated, even in school. So, like you go to school, you learn, it’s male-dominated. You get out of school and you’re like, okay, I’m a professional. No, and it’s still male, still male-dominated.

AAJ: Do you want to go to university to teach as well?

JH: Yes, I want to.

AAJ: Are you considering doing master’s degree for that?

JH: No, I don’t want to do a master’s degree. I have all this experience in the world. I’ve been performing for 15 years. I read, I write, I arrange. I don’t need a man’s degree to tell me what kind of artist I am and what I have to offer.

AAJ: How do you think what can make jazz studies better?

JH: If you have a nice balance, like if you have some teachers who are not professional and some teachers who are, I think that would be better for the students. But the academy is not going to have a bunch of teachers who know what they’re doing. It’s not going to have all the teachers. You know, it’s going to have some academic and some… I think that would be better. I’m okay with a happy medium.

You know, happy medium is okay because they’re still going to learn from those academic teachers. Like I had a lot of academic teachers that I learned from. It was not how to be myself; it was not how to perform. It was how to maintain myself academically. So you need both because the world is very academic. I think there has to be a balance. Otherwise, they’re not going to listen to our side.

AAJ: What are the most crucial lessons—musical or otherwise—that you aim to impart to the next generation of jazz artists navigating today’s complex music world?

JH: Two things. One, you must practice. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be easy right away. You must practice. You must always practice. Even in my life now, I remain practicing.

Two, you have to be authentic. It’s important to be yourself. Don’t try to be like somebody else. When I first started, I just sounded like Sarah Vaughan, because she was my introduction to jazz. But after a while, people kept saying, “Sarah Vaughan already existed. Now it’s time for you to be yourself.” And so, a lot of the times when I’m teaching private lessons, students just say, “I want to scat like you.” And I say, “You can’t.” Because I can teach you my role, but it may not sound the same. I can teach you my methods, but it may not go the same way. You have to be authentic to you.

So those are the two things that I want to impart upon all the vocalists all over the world: practice and be yourself.

AAJ: Jazzmeia, as this is your first interview feature for All About Jazz, is there anything specific you’d like this dedicated community of jazz listeners to know about your music?

JH:Just thank you. Thank you for your support and for trusting me with your ears. I’m very happy and thankful.

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