Jana Mashonee Makes a Name for Herself in Music and Philanthropy

You may not know her name yet, but Jana Mashonee is a rising singer with an abundance of talent and a very unique background. With her fourth album out, New Moon Born, Jana is slowly breaking her way into the pop music mainstream. It doesn’t stop at singing though – Jana is also an active philanthropist who, being Native American, has not only started Jana’s Kids, a nonprofit organization that benefits Native youth, but also travels around North America giving motivational speeches to Native youth. Talking to Jana, an outgoing and lively spirit, you realize that she really does try and practice what her album preaches, which is to embrace change in your life and go with the flow. One of her passions in life is obviously music and as you listen to New Moon Born, you’ll hear for yourself that she is very good at what she does.

YT: Was there ever a particular moment in your life where you knew you wanted to be a singer?
J: It really didn’t come to me until I was 15 or 16, so I kind of call myself a late bloomer because, you know, people say, “Oh you know I’ve been singing my whole life since I was a child.” I took piano lessons when I was eight years old but I really didn’t think I had a voice until I was much older. I started doing high school choir and my teacher told me I had a nice voice, I was like, “Really?!” I was singing in my church choir too…and I really started to like it. I was always into music although I grew up wanting to be a doctor! I was into books and I graduated from college even though I got my first record deal when I was 18. I knew I had to get my education – that was very important to me. After that I’ve been into music ever since!

YT: Who were your musical influences while growing up?
J: Well my parents played music all the time at home. My dad is a singer and a drummer and my brother is also a drummer; he’s in my band, so there was always music in the house but not pushed in my face. My parents did want me to play piano and be into music, but I also danced since my mom put me in everything! You know, jazz, tap, ballet and piano and let’s see what you’re good at! But again I really didn’t discover it until much later in life and I had this thing where I wanted to try this out. But the influence in terms of music – I am a big Barbra Streisand fan, I think she’s an amazing singer and I love Stevie Wonder and of course I grew up with Mariah Carey, I love Mariah Carey! I listened intensely to her records! Of course Whitney Houston; I love big voices as far as female singers. I listen to gospel music too like Bebe and Cece Winans, they’re a big gospel group. And yeah I love Annie Lennox and Alicia Keys; she’s gorgeous, she’s talented, she’s amazing. I just love her [and] I love soul music – Kelly Price, Jill Scott –my influence now is very similar to R&B.

YT: In what ways has traditional Native American music impacted your love for music and your singing career?
J: Well I’m Native American, so I feel like my culture is very important and I want people to see my culture and it’s sprinkled in my music and my current album has instrumentation that’s kind of like traditional Native but it’s still pop music; it’s like R&B pop music. My last album was very traditional Native music with a little bit of new age because I wanted to have an album that is very much dedicated to my culture; so I wanted to have that traditional album because I thought it was important to do and I loved writing it. I feel like I want people to know me as a Native American singer, but really to me it’s about my music – I want people to know my music first and then say, “Oh she happens to be Native American, that’s cool too!” You know, it’s just like a little extra thing but I don’t want to push it in people’s faces because I think people like to discover on their own about other artists and I want people to know about the music – that to me is the ultimate goal. But it’s definitely important also that they know about my culture. I had a record company a couple of years ago that wanted to market me as a Latina artist! Like, “You could be the next Jennifer Lopez!” But that’s not who I am! So I had a struggle with that because people want to put me in a certain group because I could be Hispanic or other ethnicities, but to me it’s important that I’m true to myself. My attitude is: “Take it or leave it, this is who I am and hopefully you’ll like it!” It is ironic though because on my album now, New Moon Born, I have [a] Spanish track! So it’s like, “Wait a minute! What?” But I love the language. It’s cool to explore different cultures and different rhythms because to me, music is a universal language.

YT: What inspires you to write a song and what is your songwriting process like?
J: I usually write music first and then the lyrics although I’m developing in my writing. I mean, I wish I were a poet! But that to me is the struggle, to find the phrases. I know what I want to write about because I write about things that are my experiences and I look at other people’s experiences and I like to draw on that. Finding the perfect phrase on the other hand, that’s hard! Music comes easy, I’ll just play something on the piano and say, “Oh this would be great!” I get very into that and then sometimes I’ll hear the melody and think, “Well this kind of feels like a moody atmosphere,” so I would want to write about a concept that I already have in my head, for example, a lost love or something like that. I will put that together, then write from there. I also have a writing partner, Stephan Galfas, who has worked with Cher, Kool & the Gang, KC and the Sunshine Band; all these major bands. We write together and he has helped me go through rock and roll school! I feed off of him and we’ll usually just write together, but yeah, that’s a problem for me. I’m always trying to get better, you know, anything you do you feel like you want to get better at that craft and I feel like I have a long way to go and I know I can get better and better at it. At the time that I wrote New Moon Born that was what I was feeling. I just finished writing it last December so it’s just like that point in my life and my next album could be a completely different concept because I’m in a different place. Everyone’s growing in every stage of their lives.

YT: Congratulations on winning best pop album for New Moon Born at the Indian Summer Music Awards. What has been the response so far from the public and has the success of the album exceeded your expectations?
J: Well we just released it here in Canada on October 13th, so you can get it at HMV and it’s going to be in the States in February. I’ve had it on my website, iTunes and Amazon since March of this year and it’s been very good. My fans have been very supportive so we’ve just taken it to the next level and we just signed with Sony Records, which has been a huge help to get it out there. We’ve had some really good exposure and great feedback for it, so hopefully – I’m crossing my fingers!

YT: What is the significance of the title New Moon Born? Does it tie into an overall theme or message you wanted to portray through this album?
J: Yes, it’s a title that I felt exemplified that time in my life about change. I felt like my last album and the one before that [contained] a lot more traditional Native music and this album is completely different, so it’s changing to a different style and different direction. Also it’s my life, you know, changing as a person, growing and writing about who I was five years ago as opposed to who I am now. It’s a positive thing, so it’s more about renewal of myself. New Moon Born is also a lyric in one of my songs but it had a nice little twist to it and I like it a lot!

YT: How is your latest album different from your previous work?
J: We wrote about 25 to 30 songs, and then from there we have the 16 songs that are actually on there, so we did write about twice as many. My last record, which was very much about the story of this young girl and historical of the First Nations people from thousands of years ago, was a concert record. And when I was thinking of a story behind this record I couldn’t really think of anything; I was stuck! Then I decided to write what I feel and hopefully it would all gel together. But yeah, when you listen to the record it takes you on a journey and there are some ballads and some up-tempo, but it is really more like a relaxed feel. I had a couple of dance records several years ago which were kind of like Lady Gaga style and that’s how it started. So I was thinking with this album I can do these cool chill songs then. I’m already working on a remix album, which will be like up tempo dance stuff with some of the songs. A different style is great because I also have an audience, which is my dance audience and I still do club shows and stuff. I have two sides; it’s like an alter ego!

YT: Are there any songs on your new album that you feel a stronger personal connection to compared to the others?
J: Well some are definitely reflective of relationships that I’ve had, not just personal relationships with myself, some are more reflective and more heartfelt and deep – I know where they come from. But I do also have a couple of personal relationship songs, they’re all meaningful in some way. It’s like I always had someone in mind. Either it was myself or someone that I know or a situation that I might have encountered. I might not know the person but I encountered it in my life and I wrote about it because I thought it was interesting. So everything has a meaning – every single song. It isn’t as if I just said, “Okay I’m going to write my hit song today!” They all have something special about them.

YT: What are you hoping listeners will take away from New Moon Born?
J: New Moon Born is a lot about change, and accepting change because sometimes people are afraid of change, they like to get in their familiar comfort zone. It’s about getting out of the box and exploring different parts of you or of different people as well as not dwelling on past mistakes, accepting that we’re all human and we make mistakes and it’s OK! Sometimes there’s not always an answer; we just have to live life without the perfect answer. You know, people want to have something defined in their life and sometimes you just have to go with it and you have to accept it and move on. You can control things to a certain point, but to me I feel like life is a journey and you need to sometimes let yourself go. I know it’s hard for some people to do that and it’s something that I need to preach to myself everyday: “OK Jana, remember you wrote about this!” because sometimes it’s hard for me to let it go too, you just want to hold on to things and not change. I want people to feel that they can be more open with their lives and explore different parts of themselves. It’s definitely more introspective!

YT: Touring and performing seems like it could get stressful and tiring. What keeps you going and performing with such amazing energy?
J: I definitely feel that it’s good to centre myself before shows and have calm before the storm because like you said, when I’m performing, I just go crazy! Then when I’m not performing I’m just calm and I try to keep myself still and I don’t party too much! People might think it’s like a rock and roll lifestyle; drugs and rock and roll, but no it’s nothing like that – for me at least. I see it as a business, it’s my craft and I want to take care of my voice so I make sure I have all my teas and my honey and everything else because it’s who I am and what I want to do; I want to be good. I do like to have fun though and I definitely put that out on stage. But really I get a kick out of meeting new people like you and visiting new places because that’s exciting to me. The traveling is exhausting in terms of the plane and everything, especially now with H1N1, I have to wear a mask and I get a little freaked out about the traveling. Other than that, once I get to my destination I’m cool, but getting there is the hassle! I would love to get to the point in my career, hopefully soon, where I can travel on a bus and have my band because right now, we’re just flying everywhere so I’m hoping that could happen.

YT: How would you describe your live show?
J: Well I have a full band and I also mix in upbeat cover songs because I like to mix it up with some upbeat tempo stuff. I have these traditional Native dancers but they’re young guys and they do have full regalia. They mix traditional with hip-hop dancing so it’s kind of like what I want to represent in terms of culture – traditional and contemporary. They also do hoop dancing, which is a traditional native thing where they have about 30 hoops and they do crazy configurations with them, it’s really cool! So they mix in with my songs and come on stage and dance with me and it’s really fun – we have a fun time. Even though the album is relaxed, my stage show is very up-tempo and overall it’s really fun, I have a really good time.

YT: Raptor Ranch is your first movie. What made you want to get involved in film and how was the experience?
J: I’ve always been interested, I feel like being an artist these days you almost have to do everything in order to get people’s attention. I mean you have to be like a quadruple threat nowadays. You can’t just dance, you can’t just act, you have to do everything! At one level I felt like I needed to challenge myself and do something to compete with what’s going on and also I’m just interested in it – it’s something different for me. With music it’s collaborative in many ways but a lot of times, it’s just the singer and the studio and you’re writing your own songs. But with acting, you’re working with about 30 different people, like a whole ensemble, so it’s like a different part of myself. It’s also challenging me, having no control over what I’m doing; I’ve got a director telling me what to do whereas I’m used to saying my own words and now there’s somebody else telling me, “You have to say these words,” so I’m always like, “Well can I change that a little bit?” because I’m so used to controlling everything! It’s really nice to get into a different head completely and I loved making the movie. It’s about this horror but at the same time [the movie is] campy, like I fight dinosaurs in Texas, that’s all I gotta say! So yeah the movie is definitely comedic. We just finished. It’s been on and off because we did filming in Texas about a year ago and we did that for six months and then we stopped because of a whole funding issue and then we went to Russia…I had to go all the way to Russia to finish a movie that started in Texas. I was thinking, “I guess this is the movie business!” But it was really fun because I play this regular girl from Texas and I have a bow and arrow and everything – it felt so awesome!

YT: Your non-profit organization, Jana’s Kids, is meant to help Native American kids throughout America go to post-secondary institutions. Why did you feel this was an important area to focus on and do you hope to expand it further in the future?
J: For me, giving back is really important, as an artist giving back and having that responsibility is a really big thing. Also, education is so important, not just for Native youth, [but] for all youth it’s important. I focus on Native youth because on the reserves a lot of times they don’t know all the opportunities that are available to them, like scholarships or schools to go to. It’s important to educate them so they know how many opportunities they have. So I’ve just extended the scholarship to aboriginal youth as well in artistic, academic, and athletic scholarships. I gave my first one out in 2006, which is a great thing for me because I get to interact with the youth. I am older than them but I’m still young enough that they don’t feel like they’re being preached to because we don’t really just talk about education, we talk a lot about cultural identity and having pride in themselves, just positive motivation. It’s like an exchange, I feel great about it too – it’s a really cool thing for me to do. Also, I think that youth need to be heard. I mean they want someone to care, but they don’t want to feel preached to either so I try to do it in a way that I’m not telling them what to do or what not to do. It’s more about giving people options so that they aren’t going down the wrong path.

YT: What legacy would you like to leave in the Native American community and in the music industry?
J: Wow that’s a hard question! I would really just like to be known as someone who cares and someone who has a positive impact. Not like I have a huge influence on Native Americans, but I would love to at least spin the stereotype so there isn’t a negative image, and it’s not just about people in the past, it’s about the Native people of the future as well. So it’s my mission to get us into the mainstream, you know, there aren’t many of us! I know in Canada there is a lot more of a network of Native Americans, but it’s not really that big in the States. So it’s really just about letting people know that we’re here, and making an impact in a positive way.