Still Can’t Get Out Of This Mood: The Excellence of Samara Joy
Graphic by Maddie Cohen
by nathan hilyard
Two summers ago I witnessed the best live performance of my entire life. At the suggestion of my awesomely jazz-knowledgeable friend Virginia, I stood myself in the crowd for a new jazz singer who I really knew nothing about. The Quad Stage at Newport Jazz Festival was comfortably full, but some other artist on the main stage were clearly pulling more bodies, so when Samara Joy took stage to polite applause and some buzzing excitement from those in the know (not me… yet), I buckled in for another hopefully great set of jazz.
Right from the opening notes I was swept up in a blank-mind trance of a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Her voice waltzed through late July air like butterflies, looping and dancing around her band with an absurd dexterity. It was perfect: hot blue sky, breeze off the Narragansett bay, big ass ice cream cone melting in my hand, and Samara Joy blowing my mind note after note (I just got chills even typing that sentence. It was THAT good). By the end of the set my elbow was dripping forgotten chocolate fudge brownie ice cream just as my face was dripping tears. The only match for Samara’s vocal prowess was her personality, taking a few moments between tunes to tell the story of her rise to fame with humor and grace, humbly thanking the crowd as the band snapped into action and whisked her voice off to a perfect falsetto.
Safe to say I have a lot of positive thoughts about Samara Joy, sentiments which have only further deepened after the release of her latest album Portrait. If the vocal Jazz legends of yore were theatric, Samara Joy is cinematic. All the expectations of a Jazz singer are met and developed into a newer, cleaner, more bombastic sound. Following in the tradition of the Jazz greats, a majority of Joy’s prior work has been covering and contorting the standards into her own. Like her 2021 album Linger Awhile, and it’s take on well known classics like “Misty” or digging up Nancy Wilson deep cuts and contorting them into her own as on “Guess Who I Saw Today.” Portrait is spattered with a mix of older classics and fresh new tunes, growing her catalog as a songwriter and lyricist while borrowing from an all star roster of collaborators. Take “Reincarnation Of A Lovebird” which (sorry to be that guy) I saw Joy debut with her own original lyrics. It’s a Mingus tune from 1957 with lyrics recently penned and recorded by Joy. The recording on Portrait begins with a winding acapella introduction, the band hopping in around minute two with a controlled disorder that is oh so Mingus. To put it plainly: these cats are cookin’!
Joy’s willingness to let the band play makes Portrait such a strong jazz record because it sheds the individuality of many modern recordings in favor of that collaborative jazz spirit. It’s undeniably Samara Joy’s project, but she colors in this portrait (boom!) with the best players she can find, each looking to pull out the best from one another. The songs are conversations: sometimes pillow talk, like the gentle sway of “Autumn Nocturne,” and other times a lively debate, like the whip smart melodies of “You Stepped Out Of A Dream.” Joy passes the baton to her band of all stars, musical ideas skipping and jumping between them just in time for those backing melodies to click in, each frosted by the delicate touch of Joy’s mezzo-soprano.
Portrait is a masterclass in modern jazz. Joy forgets none of the legends who built up this genre, pulling on Mingus, Jobim, Sun Ra, and a huge roster of writers and musicians to sew together what jazz sounds like right now. She’s not trying to remake the wheel, but rather rev it in the mud and zoom off to somewhere new. By the end of her set two summers ago I turned to find the entire field chock full, thousands of people deadly silent, hanging onto Joy’s last note as it floated through them and onwards out to the ocean beyond. Her pull is magnetic. Listen to Portrait like a lesson in all things good, and dear god, go see her sing live.