Most people who follow jazz music and its history will acknowledge that Billie Holiday is one of the greats. She had a smoky, pleading, almost heart-breaking style of singing. Not surprising when you know how difficult both her childhood and adult life would be. The pain of her life became the pain in her voice. She could be sultry and angry and smoky and pleading–she had plenty of pain and struggle to draw from.
Musicians, like many artists, know that some of the greatest songs come from the deepest and darkest pain — pain that comes from experience. So it was shocking to the judges of Norway’s Got Talent when a young 7-year-old girl, missing some of her baby teeth and waiting for the adult ones to fully grow in stood up and sang “Gloomy Sunday”–as if she was channeling Billy Holiday. It was as if the soul of Billy was with this silent, very talented little Norwegian girl. Once you got beyond the magic of her voice, you noticed she was shoeless. Was some of the pain in her voice from her own experiences with poverty, homelessness, or suffering? No. She was a healthy young girl from a solid, middle class family. Then why no shoes?
When Angelina Jordan was 6 years old, and long before she began her meteoric rise to fame, she was walking along the street and saw a little homeless girl with no shoes. Angelina, a tiny thing herself, stopped to talk with the girl. Learning of the girl’s plight, Angelina, on the spot, removed her own shoes, gave them to the girl and carried on barefoot.
She resolved that day, in that circumstance, that she would never wear shoes on stage again (if she could achieve her musical dreams) until every little girl in the world had at least one pair of shoes. And so, many competitions, successful singles and albums, concerts and interviews later, Angelina Jordan, still sings barefoot. She decided, in a moment of little girl heartbreak, to be with all the kids without shoes rather than just knowing and feeling sorry.
Angelina is changing the world with her voice, but she is changing one life at a time–barefoot–as she finds homeless little ones and makes sure they have at least one pair of shoes.
