"I went to Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas and took this jazz composition class with [longtime music instructor] Roger Boykin there. He would always come out and start scatting and talking about certain singing vocabulary, and in the beginning, I looked at him like he was crazy. I had never heard anything like that before—it was definitely a culture shock. Then he gave me this CD compilation of different singers and musicians. It had Eddie Jefferson, Al Jarreau, George Benson, and others—and I have to admit it was very weird to me and I wasn’t attracted to it at first, not until I heard Sarah Vaughan. And then I fell in love! After that, I tried to mimic everything she did—her intonation, every little flair she did with her voice, everything. I learned how to scat by listening to her, and I really got into it after I listened to John Coltrane and Miles Davis, because they sounded like vocalists though they had a different type of vocabulary.
"When I first started scatting I thought that there was a certain language that you had to maintain. I didn’t know you could have your own style but after a while, I found my little niche in it and it just became me, it became a part of me and I never looked back from that.” ~Jazzmeia Horn
Horn’s talent grew and began to garner attention. In 2013, she entered and won a Newark-based contest fittingly named for her initial inspiration—the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition. Then in 2015, at a gala concert at the Dolby Center in Los Angeles, she won what is arguably the most coveted award a young jazz musician can claim today—one that would lead to her recording A Social Call—winner of the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition. Congratulations Jazzmeia!
"I was excited but I was overwhelmed at the same time; there was a lot going on in my personal life—I had just become a mother—so I didn’t really have a chance to really notice exactly what was going on until a couple of months later. I remember as soon as I got the award, and finished meeting Mr. Herbie Hancock and some of the judges—Patti Austin, Dee Dee Bridgewater—I had to go backstage to feed my baby. That was really the top priority for me. It was crazy time for me.”
"A SOCIAL CALL"