FLEX Choir Performs on April 7

Here is a picture of the FLEX Cuban Choir while they were having their performance at the Festival in Havana. They performed "Keep Walkin' On" and they have advanced to the next level of the competition with my song. There were 44 youths in the choir, though 10 boys were missing in the picture. Their next performance will be on April 28th. I'll let you know how it goes!! They are having a blast with their shows!

Rehearsal of FLEX Choir Singing, "Keep Walkin' On"

Here is a video of the FLEX Choir practicing "Keep Walkin' On". You can tell they were having a lot of fun with this song!

Flex Choir, a Cuban Choir, Will Sing "Keep Walkin' On" During the Annual Festival "Flex Cultural Festiva" in April 2010

The Flex Choir, a choir of University students between the ages of 18 and 23, will be singing "Keep Walkin' On" as one of their featured songs for FLEX Cultural Festival! The festival is held every year in a large theater in Havana, Cuba. Last year, there were just over 1000 people in the theater and they had a great response from the crowd during their performance. The choir has about 40 voices and the students sing in English. The festival is organized by the Federation of University students and it comprises many artistic expressions such dancing, singing, choirs, story telling, jokes, pantomimes, fashion shows, etc. The word FLEX is the acronym in Spanish for School of Foreign Languages. During the festival, the choirs compete among different schools of Havana University to become the best choir. If they win the competition, they will compete among different universities all over the country of Cuba to be the best choir. Last year, they won the competition at the festival as the best choir! Let's hope theyw in again!

I will post 2 more pictures of the Flex choir in my photos section. I will also post a video or audio recording of their performance on my website. "Keep Walkin' On" is making an international impact!

Jami Jackson's Rendition of the classic hit "Greatest Love of All"

At my performance at the Broadway Baby Bistro, I performed "Greatest Love of All", made famous by Whitney Houston. David Berry played the song on the piano and it was a perfect song to perform live because I did not need background vocals or more instruments that a piano. It was a real hit! I first performed the song in high school with my school choir. I remember when the choir director played the song on the piano and I was singing in the big stage of a theater all by myself in front of a huge audience of the parents and teachers. I was betwee 15 and 16 years old. I was so nervous, but the song turned out great! It was nice performing this song again at my own show.

Jami Jackson's New Version of "Sista Girl"

For my performance at the Broadway Baby Bistro, I performed a new rendition of "Sista Girl". "Sista Girl" is an original song off of my "Call My Name" album. It was co-written by my mother, Sandra Carr Jackson. My mother was inspired by my sister to write the song and wanted to write something uplifting for all women out there, in addition to the men that support them. I really like the version that is on my album, but it was difficult to recreate that song for a live show with no background vocals. So, we changed the music entirely to fit the show. I really like how it turned out, but it's a work in progress. If you like it, let me know!

The Audition for Dreamgirls on Broadway

So on Saturday, November 22nd, I auditiioned for the Dreamgirls Broadway Show. I was soo excited to audition because I thought it would be a great opportunity for me. They were looking for African American females in their twenties for the parts of Effie, Deena, Lorrell, and Michelle. It's an equity broadway show, but they had open auditions for people who were not equity. I'm not an equity actress, so it worked out for me. Equity is a union for actors and actresses, but one hasto do an equity show before they can join. There were a couple auditions for the broadway show, so it worked out with my schedule.
However, I did not know what I was getting myself into! The audition was at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, which I originally thought was cool, until I had to wait outside in the cold for 3 hours! It never got above 30 degrees outside! And the wind was vicious. Of course, silly me, I was trying to be cute for the audition, so I decided that I didn't need gloves or a hat. I did have enough wherewithal to wear a wool coat, but still! What was really funny about the audition was that a girl that I knew from college, who graduated before me, came right in the line after me! It was very unexpected because I hadn't talked to her for about two years, but I was so glad to see her there, and she was glad to see me. Had she not been there, I might have thought really hard about turning around and going home. But I didn't!
Not only was it freezing outside, the line was extremely long! It wrapped around the corner of the building. I was number 376 and I think there were more than 450 people there total! I had no idea that many people were going to show up. I had previously auditioned for the broadway show Rent and I literally walked in and walked out of the audition. As soon as I got there, I was able to audition because there was hardly any line. Apparently, though, the producers of Dreamgirls on Broadway advertised the auditions everywhere!
Now let me tell you about the demographics of the line. The auditions were supposed to be of women in their 20s, but seriously, there were women who were in their 40s and 50s auditioning too. I'm like, really? It was clearly written what ages the producers were looking for, but these women were in denial. It goes to show you that dreams never die! Not only were women way over their 20s, there were a good portion of women singing songs from the Dreamgirls soundtrack. Not that there's anything wrong with singing those songs, but it is too predictable. And the chances of someone else singing the same song is high. There were more "And I am telling you" renditions than I could count!
I ultimately auditioned with the song, "Never loved a man (the way that I love you)" sung by Aretha Franklin. Thankfully, they let us sing 16 bars, so that ended up being the first verse of the song, which was exactly what I wanted to sing. I love that song because it's got a lot of attitude, dynamics, and hits it hard at the end, in a short amount of time. We also had an accompanist which was nice because I didn't have to sing acapella. It was like deja vu because I had auditioned with the same song for the Amateur night and Showtime at the Apollo auditions. It was very cold when I auditioned for that as well and the line was extremely long. But this time felt different from then. The casting directors that I auditioned for seemed to really like me. They said I should definitely hear back from them is a week. Of course, I am to putting that much stock into those words. I definitely felt like I did great in the audition, but you never know about what these people really want. My look or voice may just not be what they are looking for, or it may be exactly what they are looking for. But it's got nothing to do with talent. So we'll see...maybe I'll hear something soon!

Jami Jackson is Presented the Rock Star Artist Award by LIFEbeat

For Halloween this year, I tried to dress up as a Dreamgirl. However, everyone swore I looked like Diana Ross, so I decided to tell everyone I dressed up as Diana Ross. A choir member from my church gave me a gold dress that she used to wear back in the day with gold shoes to match, so I thought it would be great to dress it up for Halloween. I had actually auditioned for the Dreamgirls Broadway show in this same outfit, with the wig and everything. It was a lot of fun wearing this outfit, because I would never have another opportunity to wear an outfit like it and not look wacky!

LIFEbeat had their annual Volunteer Appreciation Party on October 27th. I had a great time there! I went to it last year, but I didn't dress up then. When I went last year, a lot of other people were dressed up in really cool outfits. One couple was dressed up as Huggies Kisses, with full aluminum foil outfits. I felt really out of place, so I wanted to make sure that I dressed up this year. There was a really good turnout of people at this event. There must have been a least a hundred people. There were a lot less people who dressed up, but there were a couple of really good outfits. One couple dressed up as Marilyn Monroe and JFK. There was also really great free food served. There were hor d'oeuvres throughout the event: coconut shrimp, pigs in a blanket, and chicken sticks. I made sure to be first in line each time the waiters came out! There was also an open bar of champagne provided by Barefoot Bubbly and dance music provided by DJ Boo. We were all jammin' to Michael Jackson and some people were even breaking out the Thriller dance!

LIFEbeat also presented the Hearts and Voices Rock Star Artist award to me for this year. I was really happy to receive the award. They cited the work that I did with the NY AIDS Walk 2009 and with "Keep Walkin' On" as the reason why I won the award this year. It was nice getting recognized for doing something positive. I hope to continue to help others and make an impact in this way in the future.