Claiming my Unique Voice.
by Monique DeBose
For the longest time, I hid what I really love to do. I mean, people knew I sang, but the true passion and energy I have for this expressive art was often muted by insecurity and feeling ‘not good enough’ yet.
What it means to be a ‘real singer’ has shifted by the season for me. At first, I had it in my head that only little white girls with long blond locks got to get on stage and sing and play. I grew up seeing that. And then I had it in my mind that only large shapely black women who went to church were the ones who could ‘really’ sing. So since I didn’t have either look or sound, I had no hopes of ever truly being a singer. Later, I had it in my mind that I had to be able to riff like my life depended on it like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey and be hyper sexual like Beyonce in order to be considered the real deal.
I didn’t know about Marian Anderson or Tracy Chapman or Lena Horne during my first seasons of doubt.
There were always reasons I couldn’t claim what I secretly believed was my birthright. There was always a reason I had to hide the elation I was feeling inside when I heard music and felt called to let it out.
I’ve been living in New York this summer, the hotbed for vocal entertainment. I’ve been surrounded by Broadway voices, jazz voices, cabaret voices and soul voices. It’s the mecca of music in my book. I remember a few weeks before coming to New York feverishly drawing up a list of all the ways I could support myself while living here. I shared the list with my mother. She looked at me in astonishment.
‘Monique, aren’t you going to sing while you’re there?’
It never dawned on me to list ‘perform’ as an option for earning money.
That’s a lie.
It did but I’d scratched it off the list before I’d even gotten all the letters down on the page. S-I-N…This coming from a woman who’s traveled the world, been paid handsomely I might add, to sing for some of the worlds most influential people.
It was a sad moment for me realizing how little I thought of myself and my voice.
**
What I love to do is sing. What makes me forget the struggles of my life, the incessant whining of my ego and the sadness of the world is singing. It brings me such a deep peace and fills me with a joy that is indescribable.
Why would I neglect myself of this gift?
Looking back, I’ve mostly lived my career from the bleachers, through others and have felt a great deal of resentment and jealousy most of the way through. Recently, I had the privilege of seeing John Legend at Madison Square Garden with my sister and literally broke into tears…not of joy, but sorrow for that frustrated singer inside that’s been dying to break out of the prison I’ve locked her in. My sister looked at me in horror once she saw what was going on. I told her it was too painful to see someone so in their element. I wanted this for myself.
I’ve always known that to have any true success (read-fulfillment) I have to put myself in the game, but I have cowered away from it because Who do I think I am? Do I really think there’s something special about my voice? I can’t even hit those notes the way they’re supposed to be sung? The music industry isn’t for people like me.
The list goes on and on.
I’m really tired of the old story I keep telling myself like a broken record. Because I haven’t had any formal education in the art of singing, I can’t be legit. Every time I’ve walked past Julliard to copy sheet music or check out cd’s at the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center this summer, I feel a pain in my gut. If I could get into Julliard, then I’d be a real singer. People would take me seriously.
I’ve got to take myself seriously.
Why would anybody else if I can’t even give myself that respect? I’ve also realized I’ve negated something equally important. My experiences and my desire.
It’s simply not true that if you graduate from a school in a particular discipline you are automatically capable of doing that discipline with mastery. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a better than average GPA in Applied Mathematics and can honestly admit that I am a pretty lousy mathematician.
**
We’ve always sung as a race. It’s how we communicate, how we emote. I don’t think ancient peoples decided they shouldn’t or couldn’t sing because they hadn’t gone to some program that told them it was okay to open their mouths. This is in no way a discredit to institutions like Julliard, I definitely see the value of them and would love to study more to hone my craft, but what I mean is that it isn’t the only way we arrive.
I’ve taken countless classes at community colleges, university extension programs to simply improve how I form a note. I’ve studied with a plethora of voice teachers in all kinds of styles including jazz, broadway and even opera. I’ve explored different kinds of singing from scatting to a capella circle singing to choirs. I’ve traveled around the world performing to crowds in New Delhi, Beijing, Amsterdam, Paris, Vientiene, San Francisco and my hometown of Los Angeles.
People come to me after performances and tell me how moved they are. Some simply stand in the periphery to be able to continue the experience for just a little bit longer. People are changed by my singing and it’s time I really allow myself to get this.
**
The point is, I am a singer. We all have our roads to travel and lord knows I’ve traveled mine seemingly without a map, with a flat tire, with a destructive hitch hiker I all to willingly picked up…on the side of the road…early on in my travels. But god damn it, I am a singer.
Singing is more than how a person looks, or the notes they make, or how they phrase a lyric. It is an expression of energy, a release of love that pours from the mouths of people who are willing to surrender to its power. It rings through the ears into the hearts of its listeners. It is a force that connects us to our histories, to each other.
I can’t sing like anyone else because I am not anyone else. I can only sing in that unique way that is me. In embracing this fact and letting go of the false ideas that I have to sound a certain way, I’ve found real freedom in my voice.
I like my voice and I think my voice likes me better when I get out of its way and let it be what it was intended to be.
Uniquely itself.
