feature: get a first listen to unique singer-songwriter jazzmine garfield #soundcheck

This 24 year old singer / songwriter has only an EP and a handful of tracks up on SoundCloud to her name, but these days that hardly matters. Just because JazzMine Garfield hasn’t collated her fresh tracks into a downloadable package yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the lush production and raw emotion of tracks like “Simply You” and “Missing Identity.”

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Her raspy but warm voice floats inside a bed of jazz chords and shaggy beats. Part folk, part jazz, part trip-hop, with bits of R&B thrown in, JazzMine makes the kind of music that rewards headphone listening. You just want to kind of live inside this sound. “Missing Identity” is a subdued piano ballad built on layers of ambiance and texture. Chopped up beats cut against echoing guitar lines, before exploding in an unexpected solo that battles its own feedback. Her self-produced tracks have a depth and personality rarely found in self-produced singer / songwriters at the beginning of their careers.

JazzMine’s collaboration with Suaze One, “Introduction of A WOMAN” pays tribute to one of Maya Angelou’s most famous poems over a looped jazz bass line and slinky electric piano. Her repeated “phenomenal / phenomenally / phenomenally woman” is especially poignant in light of Maya Angelou’s death last week, but this would be an amazing song in any context. All 9 original songs she has on her SoundCloud point to an artist with a unique voice and a lot of potential moving forward. Phenomenal indeed.