Even before she was born, Jazzmeia Horn’s superstar future was assured

Jazzmeia Horn’s grandmother knew that Jazzmeia’s mother was pregnant before the mother did herself. Her grandmother told her she would have a musical child, who should be christened Jazzmeia. Her mother’s response? “Hopefully, it’s a girl!”

Despite the name, it was gospel and soul music that filled young Jazzmeia’s early life. She began singing in an adult church choir aged three, and given everyone she knew in the world could sing, she was shocked when she first encountered children who couldn’t.

Growing up, everyone in Jazzmeia Horn’s life could sing.Credit:

“When I went to primary school,” she recalls via Zoom, “the teacher was asking some of the students to sing This Little Light of Mine – I went to this Christian school – and some of the kids were yelling. I remember being like, ‘What the hell is going on? You guys can’t hear?’ So I went home and I told my mom, ‘Something is wrong with the kids at school. Their brains aren’t working or something.’ I didn’t know that everybody couldn’t sing. I didn’t know that my family had a gift. I was five, and it messed me up for a long time.”

Jazz entered her life at the same Dallas high school that previously nurtured Norah Jones, and she soon became a singer of startling virtuosity and imagination, winning the most prestigious awards and enjoying a blossoming career. She’s also a composer and lyricist of note, an arranger, a band leader, an educator, and a record label boss.

She happily acknowledges the influences on which she built this success and shares what she learned from each. “Sarah [Vaughan] taught me that I could be myself when it comes to my [four octave] range and my timbre,” she says. Betty Carter taught her “that it’s okay to express myself with my stage presence. She also taught me that it is okay to write my own material and be free of having to sing standards all the time.”

Abbey Lincoln taught her about caring for her musicians, including cooking for them when they stay in an Airbnb rather than a hotel. Donny Hathaway taught her that it was possible to be a touring musician and a parent.

“Motherhood is not for everybody, especially if you want to be a musician.”

Jazzmeia Horn

“It’s been the hardest shit I’ve ever had to do in my entire life,” she says. “Motherhood is not for everybody, especially if you want to be a musician.” And from Aretha Franklin? “She wasn’t afraid to just be her entire self. I definitely took that from her.”

Such is Horn’s mystique and stature that some fans now feel they own a slice of her. “When I’m out on the road,” she says, “sometimes people will come and touch my head-wrap, or if I have my hair out, they’ll come up and pick at my hair or ask me questions about my gown. Instead of just saying, ‘Oh, I admire you’, they’ll come and touch me! That’s, seriously, the only thing on this planet that makes me angry. But sometimes people cry, and they say, ‘This song touched my soul.’ Those are the moments that are really positive.”

She cherishes that she can share such experiences with other leading women in the jazz community. “I saw [singer] Diane Reeves last week in Denver, Colorado, where she lives. I had a show, and she came, and she waited until I finished talking to my fans and signing CDs, and she was like, ‘So, what’s up?’ She was literally just checking on my mental health and my wellbeing. She doesn’t owe me anything. I’m standing on her shoulders. But the simple fact is that she has a heart big enough to just say, ‘How you doing?’ That’s my community.

“You’re out here on your own, and there may be moments where you feel like, ‘Do I really need to do this? Should I just stop?’ And then there are moments like that where a Diane Reeves or a Dee Dee Bridgewater comes and says, ‘Hey, honey, what’s going on, baby girl? How’s everything?’ I’m thankful for that, and I need that. And I pray that I can be there for some other young musician woman coming up.”

Jazzmeia Horn will perform at Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival, St Stephen’s Church, Sydney, November 1.