Jayanti's Blog
The mundane is merely Magic in disguise…Archive for July, 2011
Inside My Love – Tribute to Les Fleurs
Three November babies in a room, one holding the camera, one strumming the strings and one behind the mic, for a tribute to one of my favorite singer/songwriters, also born in the 11th month: Minnie Riperton.
Guitarist Rory Ronde (aka Kofi Anonymous) and I adore Minnie’s work, and we’d been talking about doing a cover for a while. In my personal little storybook, Inside My Love (by Minnie and Leon Ware) is jotted down as one of the best songs ever written: so layered and intricate, so delicately light yet filled to the brim with divine sensuality… We were both delighted to play this song together, I hope you can hear and feel our deepest respect and admiration in this tribute to one of our favorite Fleurs of the musical Garden.
We heard about Amy Winehouse’s tragic demise right before recording this take, and Rory dedicated it both to her and Minnie: two unique songstresses who have graced us with their extraordinary talent before passing on to the next Garden. May they bloom in love and light.
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Thank .you
I need to get up early tomorrow and yet here I am, almost 2 am, writing to you, writing to me. I still have and need the temporary day jobs to support my dream. But the dream has expanded. I’ve got my eye on Los Angeles, and LA has got her eye on me (Laurel Canyon!). We met briefly at the end of 2010, but this intense month was all we needed to fall madly in love: what an amazing place! The electric energy of a town filled with passionate dream seekers, the sweet souls I spent time with, the music! The music!!! I’ve gained focus in my work, my music, my writing: I know what my goal is, I know where I’m going, even though I’m ready for life to take me by surprise (please, Life: surprise me!!).
I am surrounded, embraced, by a warm and dedicated team of people I lovingly call “Sexual Chocolate“: my people, my friends, my crew. I am pushing hard, because I fall apart when I don’t follow my passion: I need to sing or I don’t feel right. But they are pushing hard for my dream because they believe in me. Just that. They just do. When I get tired and frustrated, when I’m feeling “meh” and I’m ready to fling my drive out the window, they’re all still there. And that circle of support has expanded, too.
Two Blue Monsters from Canada Sesame Street made me a facebook “Like” page, including a bio that is so beautifully written, and so humbling, I just want to run around my apartment, jump on my bed and hide under the covers while bouncing up and down. They are fully responsible for the page and post whatever they want to post, videos they like and whatever they feel is worth sharing. As my own personal facebook page is called www.facebook.com/jayanti.me (feel free to add me as a fb homie), I thought it would be cool to name the facebook Like page www.facebook.com/jayanti.you. We used the .you page to host my Revolution in B-Minor live stream, and the Blue Monsters monitored the chat while I was performing, providing live info about the songs I did. And I plan on doing more livestreams in the future (studio sessions as well as live shows) and I would love for this to be a place for song requests and (random) questions about my art.
I got featured worldwide on the YouTube homepage about a week ago and I was chosen as one of four Fresh Faces of July on YouTube’s Music Tuesdays channel. It gained me over 100,000 new views on my no budget video Girl from Mars, and the response has been overwhelming and so loving! People who have been following me on YouTube since the Life is a Musical videos, homies I hadn’t talked to in a while, folks I met in LA 9 months ago, have been writing me messages, that I’m on the right path, how happy they are for me, not to give up, that they’re behind me and have full faith in me. Wow.
Thank you.
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Revolution in B-Minor
My mini-concert at a Revolution in B-Minor at Grounds in Rotterdam was the perfect venue for me to share my songs and lyrics in an intimate setting with guitar magician Kofi Anoymous by my side, while broadcasting the show live on my livestream channel. People from all over the world (Canada, Korea, US, UK) tuned into my little party and chatted with me during the break and afterwards: intimate, reloaded!
I started my set with Indulge, a song I wrote when I was 15. It’s a fictional tale of love at first sight, including a hug and kiss that lived inside my mind… . This song came to me at once, from beginning to end, while I was sitting in my bedroom, dreaming of some magical romance in my future: wishful thinking poured into melodies and words. The song is now included as one of the four Fresh Faces of July on YouTube’s Music Tuesdays along with my no-budget music video Girl from Mars!
The second song of the first set was the only cover I did that night: For the Love of You, my 2nd rendition of this beautiful Isley Brothers song. The first time was with a full band (and what a band that was!!) during my trip to LA. I had a poll on facebook, asking my fb homies what song they’d like me to sing at my upcoming acoustic show and this song won by a landslide, and I’m glad it did, cause I love to sing this song!
I started the second set with a ballad version of High on Life, originally an uptempo song I wrote with producer Al Mar (we also created Girl from Mars together), a song about my outlook on life. We were arranging the song and slowed it down to really work on every note, when we realized it would also work as a ballad. When I got booked for the Revolution in B-Minor gig, with the objective of stripping down your songs to the core, I decided to do the ballad version of this song with a guitarist, as the chords work beautifully on strings.
Nightlight is a song I wrote with the guitarist, Kofi Anonymous and this was our first time performing our song together. The story is: I’m in bed, anxiously waiting for my lover to enter the room. We haven’t seen each other in a long time, so I don’t want to miss a moment of him and want him to see me as soon as he comes in. Thus… I leave my nightlight on.
I concluded the night with my song Girl from Mars. The music video got featured on YouTube’s homepage (worldwide!) last week, which gained us an extra 100,000 views!
