How Jazz singer Gregory Porter discovered his voice
Jazz singer Gregory Porter's honeyed baritone is famous over the world, but it was in church where he first found his voice, he says.
Gregory Porters' mother was a Baptist minister in California, and he would sing in church with his siblings, he told RNZ's Saturday Morning.
"It is where I found my voice, I think, and discovered the power of music. I never thought that the things that people were clapping about or becoming excited about was just me.
"I thought it was this gift, this music. And so, at a very early age, six, seven, eight years old, when I would sing and the audience would get excited in the church, I always equated it to the power of music."
Grammy Award winning Jazz-Gospel singer Gregory Porter
Supplied
Porter, 53, a two-time Grammy Award winner, headlines the Wellington Jazz Festival this October.
His family formed the choir in the churches where his mother preached, he says.
"The churches that my mother was preaching in were often small churches, often in very difficult parts of whatever town we lived in because she was like the preacher that believed in going to the dark places, the lonely places, where hungry people were and lonely people were.
"And so those are the first people that I sang to, people who were a bit broken. We didn't have these mass choirs. We had a big family, five boys and three girls. That was the choir. And I was the lead vocalist."
Gregory Porter brings liquid gold to New Zealand
Porter developed his professional singing chops in a legendary small Harlem jazz club, St Nick's Pub, where he had a weekly residency in the early 2000s.
"The alcohol was very cheap, $3 for a beer, $5 for a mixed drink. You could take that beer, that drink, and you could nurse it all night long and listen to two sets of music. You didn't have to pay $100 to listen to music.
"The characters, the type of music, the soul and the energy in these clubs, in particular this club in Harlem, St. Nick's Pub, is that type of club that's in between the space of the heart and the head. It's absolutely cerebral music, but it has to have some soul and some feeling."
Now performing on some of the world's most prestigious stages, Porter says he still brings that small club energy to his performances.
"Indigenous music in every culture has their own blues, the music that speaks to power, that speaks of the condition of people, that speaks of the desire for a better life, for more freedom, that music that exists in the small clubs, in the hearts of oppressed people, that music has to come out, and when it does, there's an authenticity to it, there's a realness to it, and there's a soul to it, and you can hear it no matter if it's from New Zealand or from Harlem or from the Mississippi Delta."
Although from an earlier jazz era, Nat King Cole had a profound influence on his approach to music, Porter says.
"I think hearing the music of the great Nat King Cole, in my writing, and in my own singing, trying to achieve something, even if it just be one time, trying to achieve a song or a feeling that is as beautiful as a song like 'Nature Boy'.
"The influence of that song has been profound on me because it gives me a desire to say something positive.
"The whole song is constructed for that last line: 'The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return'."
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