Jazz Sensation Samara Joy

THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED BERKSHIRE DEBUT OF THIS MULTI-GRAMMY® WINNER

By Anastasia Stanmeyer

SAMARA JOY’S musical lineage stretches back to her grandparents Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, both of whom performed with Philadelphia gospel group The Savettes. It runs through her father, a singer, songwriter, and producer who toured with gospel artist Andraé Crouch. Joy sang in church at home in the Bronx and then with the jazz band at Fordham High School for the Arts, with whom she won Best Vocalist at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition. That led to her enrolling in SUNY Purchase’s jazz studies program, where she was made an Ella Fitzgerald Scholar. In 2019, she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. With support from a GoFundMe campaign, Joy recorded a self-titled album that earned her spots at Manhattan jazz clubs and the Newport Jazz Festival. Joy signed to Verve jazz label and released her 2023 Grammy® Award-winning album, Linger Awhile. She also won Best New Artist, only the second jazz musician ever to join that coveted club. (The first was Esperanza Spalding.) Joy’s non-album single, “Tight,” earned her third Grammy® in 2024 for Best Jazz Performance. Joy will make her Berkshire debut with her large ensemble at the Mahaiwe Peforming Arts Center’s gala on Thursday, August 1. From her home in the Bronx, Joy talks about her love for jazz music.

What is it about your music that touches so many people and so many generations? I know people listen for different reasons—maybe for nostalgia sake, or maybe it's unfamiliar. Either way, my goal is to connect with people with my voice and with my music and find some sort of common humanity.

Can you tell me about your journey? I grew up in a family of singers. I knew that I loved singing; I loved imitating everything that I heard, even if I didn't get it the first time or if it didn't sound quite like the recording or the musician I was listening to. I absorbed music, listening to things over and over and over again, trying to pinpoint what I loved about it and how I could express it in my own way. I did that with gospel, with R&B, with soul music, even with instrumental songs. I was introduced to jazz in high school. I learned a couple songs because I enjoyed singing, and I just figured it was another song for me to learn. I used those same songs to audition for school. I didn’t audition for many schools because I didn’t know whether or not I could afford to go. I auditioned for three, and SUNY Purchase was the school that I ended up going to. It’s not only because it was a great program. It’s not just because it was close to home, but because I could get state aid. Quality education and New York being the kind of incubator for jazz, I didn't feel like I needed to go abroad education in music. I took what little knowledge that I had about music technically and completely immersed myself.

What happened while you were in college? I ended up really, really loving it and falling in love with the singers and musicians and the artists within this genre. I can't say that I was thinking about a career like this. I was just thinking, wow, I really love singing in this way. I really love not only the challenge of the technique of learning my voice, learning how to practice and to discipline myself in that way, but the creativity that is required of you to always have to be thinking, always have to be exploring, always in situations where you have to improvise. That was my first time doing that kind of thing—going to jam sessions and playing with people I'd never met before. But somehow, we know the same set of tunes, we can find a song that we can play and create something. I am still kind of mind blown by the fact that there's so much to learn and there's so much music to inspire and so much to be made.

What is it about jazz music that makes it unique for a singer? I learned that you have to be your own musician, and you have to practice in the same way that any other musician would. It's not just you up front and you're singing the melody, and then the solos happen. You’re as integral to the music that's happening as anybody else on stage. It requires you to train your ears and be open to receiving ideas and also giving ideas to other musicians around you in creating some sort of musical conversation.

You've said that jazz is a home for your voice. What do you mean by that? I don't feel like I have to change anything about myself or the way that I sing in order to fit into what people's perception of jazz is. I can honestly and openly be myself and incorporate all of the musical elements that inspired me before jazz entered my life and freely express myself.

What changed everything? Choosing to pursue music in school was a turning point. I met so many peers and professors. The Sarah Vaughan competition in 2019 is where I met my current manager, and the competition introduced me to the jazz world. It was my second semester of junior year, and I was, like, I’ve won this money, I'm gonna perform at Newport, and hopefully gigs will start rolling in! It didn't happen that way, but I'm kind of grateful for that. When the pandemic happened, we all had to take a step back and resort to posting online. I posted a thank you video to the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation for offering me a scholarship for my last year. And it went completely viral. People were asking where the album was, and I hadn’t recorded anything at that point. So I thought, maybe now's the time. I don't have anything to lose.

You find new takes on jazz greats like Ellington and Mingus, and you write original lyrics over famous compositions. Tell me about your creative process.

It spawned when I was in school, and I had assignments to write lyrics to solos. Maybe the songs already had lyrics, but I was just writing to the improvised section. Then I realized, wow, these solos have so many beautiful moving lines, and they're beautiful melodies of their own. I'm attracted to that. I want to know more about that. Some of the most beautiful melodies come from jazz musicians and come from that repertoire. They're not necessarily songbook standards, and they don't have the same harmonic approach or even the same melodic approach. They're a little bit more complex. They are influenced by classical music. Each jazz musician’s background also isn't the same, so each song is different. But it has their identity in it. I was fascinated by that. For example, I wrote lyrics to a Mingus tune called “Reincarnation of a Lovebird.” I was introduced to it by one of the musicians in the band. The harmony is insane. It's not in a standard key for a singer at all. The melody has so many different jumps and so many wide intervals, not easy half steps or whole steps or anything like that. Still, it sounds like a complete song. It's not a 32-bar form. It's a long song. It's almost like through-composed. It took about a year before I said I was going to try it on stage. I find that even though people have no idea what the song is and who wrote it or anything like that, it still reaches them. Hopefully, the words that I wrote to it only enhance the power of the melody and what was already there.

It must make you feel really proud and excited to share this music, this history, and your reinterpretation. It does, because I'm not trying to reinvent anything here. I'm not trying to save anything. I fell in love with the music and with the exploration of music, and the exploration of who I'm going to become by studying music and how that's going to impact and affect other people. I don’t want people to think that I’m preserving something; I’m singing a music that is alive. It's for people to create and to expand.

Who are some of your heroes? Charles Mingus is definitely one. Betty Carter. Abbey Lincoln. Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald. As far as musicians go, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Benny Golson….

Is there anybody alive today that you would love to collaborate with? Cécile McLorin Salvant.

Yes, she was at the Mahaiwe last summer, which is where you will be performing. What's your advice to musicians just starting out? Keep practicing. You have a lot of time right now to harness your strengths. Use this time wisely, use it as preparation, use it as planting seeds in your mind for what kind of musician and artist you want to be. Do your best to listen to and surround yourself with musicians you like. And listen to interviews of musicians that you maybe wish to have worked with and what their perspectives are on music and what their creative process is. Be hopeful, because there's something for everybody

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