Finally! My Esperanza Spalding interview

It seriously took me like two weeks to make this. Be merciful, this is the first YouTube video that I made all by myself, so excuse the rough parts and hasty fade outs.

My thoughts upon listening to this for the fifty millionth time…

— wow, I really do sound like an American now. I miss unconsciously speaking like an island girl, instead of this weird proper amalgamated Americanese that I speak. Like I Come From Foreign, I struggle with speaking in my Trini accent in American-only situations. I talk most like myself when I speak with my family on the phone. And once again, I hate being asked “why don’t you have an accent.” I’ve had enough of that question to last me a lifetime.

— I knew very little about Esperanza before this interview, and my rambling non-questions reveal that. This was such an off the cuff, “so…. whaddya think about this?” kind of interview.

— If you listen to the background, you can hear my cat Max meowing a LOT during this interview. In the morning he begs over and over to be let into the backyard. It’s super annoying, especially when I’m working. And he definitely distracted me during this interview.

— Esperanza is so passionate and fun, and I’m so glad the interview went the way it did. She was refreshingly honest about image in the industry, and I dug what she had to say. She surprised me with her forthrightness, as you can hear from my squeal during the Beyonce discussion, and my pause as she revealed her favorite hair products. That’s early morning mental processing at its finest.

So here you have it, 10 minutes of clips from my rambling interview with Esperanza Spalding. All in all, we talked for like 35 minutes about her music, our shared admiration for Jill Scott, pop star image transformations, the future of jazz, and of course, hair.

Whew. So there goes my first foray into the wonderful world of video. What do you think?

Next time, I hope to learn how to lay down a second audio track to fill up the space of those pregnant pauses.

Thanks again, Esperanza — you were real, honest, fun, and an absolute pleasure. Click here to order Esperanza’s debut CD. I told her in one of those audio clips that fell on the cutting room floor — she’s going places. I can tell!

I’ve got a backlog of great interviews coming up, bellas and fellas! Amanda Diva, Janelle Monae, and more in store. Please feel free to give me pointers on the finer points of editing, or to just tell me what you think of Esperanza and what we had to say.