JAHNAH CAMILLE

The scene in North America’s southern state of Alabama is rich and thriving one. Its diverse blend of artists and genres has long been a melting pot of deep and varied talent. Emerging from this eclectic soup is Birmingham native Jahnah Camille. Having honed her skills over many years, cobbling together a personal style from her time absorbing the full width and breadth of the state’s musical spectrum, she has now released her debut record which provides a tantalizing glimpse of what she has witnessed and is now ready to share with the wider community.

Hi Jahnah and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology. Can you share with us your musical journey so far? Your influences, your entry to the musical world, your earliest musical memories, and some of the highs and lows you have experienced?

My musical journey started extremely young since I picked up guitar at like four and started writing religiously around ten and it’s something I’m super grateful for. Having it in my life at such a young age made it something that became fixed in my path so I’ve just never been able to leave it alone. My mom was always making me sing for people as a kid which happened to include my apartment complex’s maintenance man and he brought me my first electric guitar which was a red Kent SG and it was sick. I still use it sometimes. And it was also around the time that I saw Paramore live which kind of set the foundation for my interest in alternative music. I would definitely say a high was using that guitar to open for Soccer Mommy when I was a senior in high school. I feel like the lows have more so dealt with how music has affected my relationship with myself. It’s something I’ve always cared about growing up to the point where much of my self-esteem has been married to my musical sense of self but it’s been a great thing to learn through.

In what ways has your native Birmingham, Alabama shaped and informed your musical style?

Birmingham has a really accessible DIY scene so there was one summer that I was just going to shows, working shows, and doing everything I could do to be at shows like five nights a week and it has given me the ability to see all different kinds of shit, shit from other sides of the country and from other countries, for really cheap and at a really young age. I think the insane exposure to live music has just made me less afraid to consider that my music could always be weirder.

The name of your debut EP is fantastic and begs the question, where did the name originate from?

The name of my EP is from a line in ‘Flesh’ where I’m essentially detailing the sweetness of my everyday memories. ‘i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl’ is just referencing a memory I had as a kid around when I started to realize that I don’t really have the choice of what I can and can’t remember. So I would try to see if I could go really long periods of time remembering really mundane moments. I was trying to consciously make a memory like that one day in music class but I only remember the girl I was sitting next to.

The collection of tracks is representative of the swirling mix of your thought processes that went into conceptualizing and constructing the EP. That beautiful mess can be both hard to contain and, equally completely free of inhibition. How did you coalesce your thoughts and sentiments into a sonic state?

All of the songs were written without much intention of them ending up on a project but as responses to whatever I was dealing with but they all sort of go together just from being from the same time period. I really can only write something good when I’m overwhelmed so I guess they came to exist through surrendering to my emotions and doing something with them.

In exploring the subject matter for ‘i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl’ what was your lyrical approach? Was it one of autobiographical and raw honesty, or one of abstraction and writing from a distance in some disjointed form of expression?

Lyrically, all my music is extremely autobiographical. I do get caught up in certain concepts that bleed into my writing but it’s mostly just me talking about my life.

Meeting and performing with many artists as you have done, during those occasions were there any words of wisdom spoken to you that really resonated and in turn altered the way you approach your craft?

I met Dylan Brady after a 100 gecs concert in 2019 and he told me to not to make music with fear of how other people will perceive it and while it may seem like a no brainer, it kind of clicks to hear something like that from someone so talented. I definitely try to separate my creative process from the way I think people will receive it because it’s also kind of the only way it can stay fun and the only way I can keep going.

You have evolved as an artist and musician. From ‘Middle School’ to ‘Carnival Sounds’ it is an unfolding story and given everything that went into the EP, has that created some guidelines that govern the new music you are working on and the direction you want to take it?

I am really happy with how the EP turned out, more specifically ‘Flesh’ I am hoping to continue in that direction and to make my sound just more and more intense.

On something of a philosophical note, what does music give you that nothing else does?

Music gives me a place where I can feel secure, where my chaos has order, and it gives me the ability to return to life feeling like maybe my issues are digestible.