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I love Tina Turner and I remember singing Private Dancer (1984) before I was old enough to fully understanding its meaning. Perhaps because of this memory, apparently ingrained in the deepest corner of my mind, I remembered this song while redoing, for the third time this week, the calculations of the texts I need to deliver by the end of the month. An article here, a review there and let’s not even talk about the podcast I need to record. Phew!

If you imagine a day in the life of a jazz musician as a creative adventure plenty of improvisation and magical moments, I must say you are half right. The other half, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with it. Well, ok, the improvisation part is true. Actually, each musician has a personal list of things not related to being on stage, nor to rehearsing to deal with daily and a lot of improvising is required in order to get it done.

Now do not you get wrong here: I love all those activities: writing, reviewing, researching, recording, promoting my music… Ok, the marketing part is not so exciting. I am not an enthusiast of social networks, and probably would delete my accounts in half of them, if it was not for the music promotion sake.

Technical chores (audio and video recording and editing) can also be very challenging for me. No wonder it is where I am usually way behind schedule, but all in all, I like to know how things related to my career are done and, as we know, learning new things is good exercising for the brain. But, come on! It is really a lot of stuff and I am not an enthusiast of multitasking either.

So, at least up to the end of the month (and, according to my last calculation, most probably for the first half of the next month, as well), I am more a writer than a singer, whether I like it or not.

In such moments, when it is easy to lose motivation, my trick is to remind myself that: 1. if I get tasks it’s because my opinion matters to someone and I should be proud of my professional reputation, and 2. I may not see the whole point now, but at some moment all the pieces will come together and voilà! That seemingly less interesting task can be the connecting point to other (more interesting) projects.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Earth, Wind & Fire is a super groovy disco, soul, R&B band from the US formed in 1969. Their name evoques the four classical elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. They represent the attempt of ancient cultures to explain the nature and complexity of all matter.

Although this concept is no longer embraced by science, it is very useful for establishing relationships and explaining complex processes. For example, when we define photography as the art of writing with light. In the same way, I like to think that singing is the art of playing with air.

Before you say that the same definition could apply for all wind instruments as well, let me reply by reminding you that, in the case of singing, there is no instrument “between” the musician and the thing air. In other words, musicians play with air in pairs (musician and instrument), while singers face the same task having nothing but their own body.

As I hear my neighbor blowing her nose so loud that, well I can hear it from here, for the millionth time today, I was wondering how fragile this balance is. A mere cold or a sore throat and you are out of the singing game.If you cannot breathe well, you will not be able to sing well.

Personally, I prefer to stand up when I sing. The clearer the way, the easier the flow. And the flow is a crucial element to keep your voice sounding fresh, doesn´t matter if you are singing the the first or the last theme on the set. Again: if you do not breathe well, you will not sing well. Probably you will not speak well either.

I remembered my appointment last week. I was waiting for my treadmill exercise stress test to be done. Finally, they called my name and a few seconds later I heard that the workout top I was wearing was not suitable for the test, although the e-mail sent by the clinic clearly said “workout top” in the description of “what to wear during your test”. Crazy world.

A few minutes and a frank exchange of ideas later, there was I, wearing a bra and with a lot of tiny cables connected to my chest. Oh, sure, and the lovely detail of a face mask. Frankly, I thought the doctor would ask me to take my mask off, so I could proceed the test on a more, let´s say, accurate way, concerning my lungs and heart capacity. Never happened. I kept my mask on did my very best.

By the end of the procedure I asked about the mask and the answer was simply: “The patient may feel uncomfortable, but for test itself, the mask makes no difference.” I beg your pardon? Is it the best you guys could think of?

I was not asking too much. A generic: “we´ve adapted the parameters for the new protocol” would have done the trick, but trying to convince me, with a single sentence, that the mask does not interfere at all was simply to cheap.

As much of a mask enthusiast that I might be (and I am), I am also a singer, and I can certainly tell the difference of singing with or without a mask. I did not bother replying.

Remember the flow? Sometimes, you just have to go with it.

G.F.

p.s: last but not least, I just wanted to remember a very special person, my late aunt, who was born on this day. I talk more about her and the super power that she gave me here.

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Do you know the sound of a black hole? NASA does. The agency has recently released an audio recording of a black hole and the first thing I thought was: Wait a minute! What happened to all that talk about space being a vacuum and therefore being no medium for sound?

Whenever I find the news to be disturbing, I try to get more information about it. This is what I have found so far about the sounding black hole: according to NASA, “the popular misconception that there is no sound in space originates with the fact that most of space is essentially a vacuum, providing no medium for sound waves to propagate through.”

Misconception? Wait a…ok, ok, let´s read their statement further: “A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas that envelop the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing a medium for the sound waves to travel.”

Gas is the medium. Got it or…. have I? Actually, I still had a lot of questions, such as: how come the travelling sound waves became audible by human ears? And, most important of all: how do they sound?

Again, a little research can do wonders for you: the process of data sonification consists in re-synthesizing the sound waves and scaling them up in order to make it possible for human ears to hear them. According to NASA, “another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 quadrillions and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency.”

Anything involving quadrillions is simply too much for my mind to imagine, but the whole process is so fascinating! Music is indeed everywhere.

I couldn’t help wondering that all this talk about how this “new thing” sounds is quite similar to describing a new genre. People will get it sooner or later. Just give them time to process it.

And, as for my last question, click here and find out how this music without music sounds.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Last Sunday I went to a birthday party and the most amazing thing happened: I met a former elementary/high school colleague! The birthday kid was a common friend of ours, but we both ignored it for years. Meeting V. was awesome, but the really amazing thing comes now: she recognized me from my voice.

V. talked about me in the most affectionate way. She described me in my teen years in such a lovely way, it made me feel more than flattered, but the fact that she remembered my voice made me feel unique. In the last episode of Quaranjazz, my series of interviews produced during the hard time of the pandemic I talked about this aspect of the voice: it connects us to a a very intimate zone of ourselves.

It can be very hard to hide emotions from your voice and even more to fake them. Depending on your talent, you may fool people saying things you do not mean, but can you do it without changing the pitch pattern of your voice? I strongly doubt it.

Being able to contemplate my early self through the eyes of V. felt like hopping on a time machine. It starts as a great adventure, but you never know whether the trip down to memory lane will be nice or very unpleasant. Did I change? What have I become? Am I now the kind of person that little me would like to be around? (the playlist inside my head starts playing Amy Winehouse: I cheated myself, like I knew I would...”)

The time machine made a detour from V. and brought back to my memory a cute short story about my birth, told by my godmother, the first one to see me through the nursery room window. Her comment to my mother was: “It´s a girl and her mouth is huge!”

Back home, I hopped off of the time machine and I was glad to realize that I still recognize myself: I am a girl, with a unique voice and a huge mouth to let it out.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Victime de la mode is one of the most famous songs from the album Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo, by the French rapper of Senegalese and Chadian origin MC Solaar, but surely the title also fits someone you know.

I never had neither the money, nor the inclination to be a fashion victim. My motto has always been: “do the most with the least”, meaning: handling well a limited wardrobe, and this applies to what I wear on stage, as well. Since the pandemic made us un-learn how to dress (don´t know what I am talking about? Lucky you!), I had to to exercise my special skills as never before.

In fact, I owe my little super power to my dear late aunt, who was a seamstress. She taught us from an early age to pay attention to the fit of the fabrics, the cut of the clothes and the details of making, even when buying fast fashion pieces. And once you´ve learned how to buy well, it is much easier to create several looks wearing the same dress.

It is amazing what you can do with the help of a few accessories! The choice of colors is also very important and it can make a lot of difference in the final result. I talked about my many reasons for wearing only black on stage in this podcast episode, but among the most important ones is the fact that this color allows you to recycle dresses better than any other.

As I get things done for my Jazzday 2022 event, I think that every return is like a premiere. You know what you´ve got do, but the butterflies in the stomach seem more intense than ever, the production details to handle seem more numerous than usual, and even the choice of a combination of accessories for my little black dress seems particularly difficult. Despite all that, it feels great to be back!

Talking about elegant women, Sammy Stein is an awesome writer and jazz lover and I´m sure you are going to love her website and her blog: The Jazz Report. I had the pleasure of collaborating with an article on the birth places of Bossa Nova. Enjoy your reading.

Be seeing you!

G.F.