Music adjudicator Professor David Hoult paid gospel singer Justin Zephrine one of the greatest complements an amateur performer could receive, telling him his cool style of performing was reminiscent of listening to the music of Nina Simone.
"Such a soulful performance! I almost thought I was listening to Nina Simone," he said of Zephrine at Scotiabank sponsored 31st Biennial T&T Music Festival at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, last Tuesday.
The late Nina Simone–born Eunice Kathleen Waymon–was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist who worked in a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel and pop.
One of eight contestants appearing in the Gents Gospel Solo Class OP-A10, Zephrine took the spotlight performing the selection Yes, God Is Real, by Kenneth Morris. His performance was scintillating.
The Queen's Hall audience came alive in response to Hoult's likening of Zephrine to Simone. Patrons offered lusty applause and cheers in support of the adjudicator's remarks. The vibrant atmosphere accompanied the blushing Zephrine as he took the stage to accept his first place certificate.
Hoult said, "Make sure you really project your tone to the back of the hall, without in anyway forcing it. It's intensity just like in any other spirituals. It's presentation. You've got to look as though you mean it and making sure the tone is really strong enough to carry it to the back of the hall. The best of these performances certainly did achieve that. A lot of this music does require a fair amount of vocal tone and when you are in a hall this size, you do have to project your tone."
To contestants not making the cut, he added, "You do need to make a bit more tone in here. Sometimes, it wasn't very easy to hear you. Of course, if you can't hear the melody, then you can't hear the words either. It's a matter of adjusting, even when you are singing piano in a place like this, you have really got to make it a healthy piano."
In the Negro Spiritual category it was Maxine Greaves' ability to bring the right mix of audible lyrics, good tone and wondrous expression to the stage that saw her win the solo category.Rendering the selection titled You Can Tell the World, the charmed entertainer won favour with Hoult to get the better of her nine rivals.
Christiana Lemessy, Chena Roberts, Atiba Perouze, Kory Mendez, Nakita Gadsby, Mahalia Curry Medina, David Springer, Wayne Sealey and Candice Sylvester were her musical opponents.But competition in this mixed class was dominated by women. Hoult called it, "Ladies night in the Negro Spiritual."
Second place went to Curry Medina doing the selection Deep River, while Nakita Gadsby placed third. Come Down Angels was her tune of choice.Citing that many of the contestants appearing in this class had taken the spotlight at the festival, the adjudicator underscored the need for contestants to embrace the different conventions as it relates to performing.
"You can be a bit extreme in a Negro spiritual. There is nothing wrong in letting it all pour out in a really passionate way. If it's joyful, it's exuberantly over the top joyful. If it's tragic, make it impossibly melancholy and really, really down. If you try and find those extremes of mood that would help you. If you stand up and sing an operatic aria or a song by Schubert, or you sing a folk song or you sing a Negro spiritual, the performing conventions are completely different. So that's a challenge. Some of them rose to it very, very well. Some of them need to loosen up their presentations.
"On the whole, no type of folk music is sung standing still. You have to move a bit, but you have to move in a natural way. And you've got to move in a way that is motivated by the song. Think about the words. Think about really projecting the words and get inside the character and live it," said Hoult.
Using his experiences as an educator Hoult communicated to the contestants and the audience that Negro Spirituals were in essence folk in genre, that was, music that was never originally notated but over time was.
"Because of that, there is an expectation that it is performed within the folk music tradition informally, apart from anything else and I think that means that the style of presentation needs to be relaxed but intense. Above all, you look as if you mean it and you sound as if you mean it. Those things are really, really important. In other kinds of singing there is a completely different style of presentation. One of the interesting challenge of being a singer is you have to switch from one performing convention into another and do it painfully well," he said.