We are delighted to announce our featured musician, singer Joy F Brown.
Born and raised in Newark NJ, Joy’s introduction to music came through her parents. “My whole family is musical – my father was a big advocate of music growing up, there were always instruments around; a piano, fender Rhodes, guitars. Music was life to my father, a Pentecostal preacher. He was very strict in that secular music was not allowed at home though I heard it at friends or cousins’ houses. I grew up with lots of gospel. My parents grew up during the depression and I listened to a lot of music from that era. The Dixie hummingbirds, Sam Cooke and the Soul stirrers, 5 blind boys of Mississippi, Roberta martin singers. The gospel sound of Chicago particularly. The elders of the upper Midwest came from the south”
Joy attended the High School of performing arts in NJ (where she learned afterward that Sarah Vaughan attended the same alma matter) and then went on to study engineering in college. Years later, Joy went back to education to study music where she was immersed in classical music. “Studying classical and growing up in the church, jazz is the perfect landing spot – like goldilocks – jazz is the perfect combination – it’s the technicality of classical but the soul, improvisational and depth of the gospel”. “My exposure to jazz is really only a couple of years old. WBAI talk radio, Grandpa Munster had a show on Saturdays that I would listen to every week. Around Nina Simone’s birthday he played a song called “images” – her voice grabbed me. Unaccompanied. He talked a bit about her – they developed a good friendship as activists. I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased her album and I put it in my Discman. I repeated “I love you Porgy” over and over and over. I needed to hear more of this. “Black brown and Beige” was the next purchase, which I felt I could get away with playing in the house. “Blues in Orbit” featured Mahalia Jackson, which was just about ok with my father! Many artists, Coltrane, Washington etc started in the church. That’s why I'm grateful for my upbringing. I don’t consider myself religious but I learned about the presence of feeling something deeper. It’s that intangible tangible. With good authentic music you will always feel something.”
Fast-forward to 2015 and a friend volunteered Joy to sing at a café for seniors. “I didn’t know what to sing so I sang the music of their day. I didn’t know anything about the etiquette or even how to sing the songs, I just went from lyrics on an Ipad. It was then I realized that I sounded like Dinah Washington. My favorite singer growing up was Gloria Griffin of the Roberta martin singers. She had the ability to sound gruff and then also become very small and intricate in how she sang.” So someone heard me and I got invited to a jam session, Nov 2015. I fell in love with the live music, which connected me back to the Pentecostal church. It was nice to be in an environment where musicians played music live. I was invited to Winard Harpers’ jam session on Fridays in Jersey. He said ‘you need to go to NYC and go study with Barry Harris’. I looked him up, went to a workshop and it changed my life. I remember walking in and thinking how can I learn in a room full of people. I sat there and listened and the things he said were so vital I went every Tuesday for 2 years. He is truly the keeper of the bebop flame. Murray Wall and Richard Clements, they took me under their wing (Monday night’s at 11th st bar) – Murray invited me over to his house and taught me songs, tempos, keys etc. For that reason they were like guardian angels to me. I met Rome Neal – he gave me my first gig at the Nuyorican poets’ café in the west village, which I stumbled through but he believed in me.”
Despite her late start, Joy remarks that whilst she is aware of the difficulties of being a woman in jazz, they are not her experiences. “I came into it older, I wasn’t a young girl so I think that changes things a bit. Not only that, I made up in my mind that I needed other musicians to respect me as a musician. I curbed the BS and got straight to the music. There have been one or two isolated incidents but I grew up around strong male influences so I’ve never been too much of a diva and I think that was appreciated – I just get on with it. Joy also spoke of the importance of KEYEDUP! to the city and also candidly about the difficulties of pursuing music full-time “I'm very grateful for KU – they supplement many venues that would like to be involved but cant. It’s important that we receive fair payment and also that we are treated well – we are providing the ambiance. Jazz is probably the one genre that you have to be in love with – you’re very lucky if you can make a living from it. I quit it 3 times a day – when the bills are there, there was a point where I was sleeping on park benches because I was determined to make this jazz thing work. Every time I would make my mind up to quit I would hear something new or sit in on a good set and be reinvigorated. I remember listening to “She” – a George Sharing tune at 11th St bar that did something to me. It was amazing. I felt like I was transcending time and space. I closed my eyes and went somewhere else. Moments like that make you realize that you can’t give it up. Corporations are pushing the pop industry; do I sell my soul to become less than I know is pure to pay my bills? As musicians we ask ourselves this question over and over. It’s definitely a love affair. So what has Joy been listening to this month? “Bouncing with Bud – Bud Powell and his trio has been on repeat for days. His technicality, his spirit – it’s a combo. He is a genius. You can hear Joy Tuesday nights at Mezzrow for vocalists, 10:30-1am. She is planning on recording an album in June and will be singing at Dizzy’s with Ruben fox’s big band in tribute to Duke. Finally, every Friday 5-7 at church st “the hang”. She will also be touring in Italy in October.