Chris Ndeti: Soulful passion

By Alice Wynn

Chris Ndeti who is drawing comparisons to Tracy Chapman

AUGUSTA, GA – Chris Ndeti started playing the violin at age 11, but when a substitute teacher in her orchestra class walked in one day with an acoustic guitar, something clicked.

“I was just fascinated from that point on,” she said.

Kids will be kids, though, and her fervor quickly died down. She didn’t pick up a guitar again until she was in college. Majoring in music therapy, it was part of her required course of study. It was also then that she started taking her singing seriously.

“Singing has always been a passion that I liked to do and it wasn’t until I started playing guitar that I was actually able to manifest something into it, really focus on finding my voice,” she said.

Being both a singer-songwriter and a black woman, comparisons to Tracy Chapman are inevitable.

“When I first started playing, it used to bother me,” she said. “I’m not her — I think she’s awesome, definitely one of my favorite artists ­— but as far as my style, I wanted it to be something different.”

That style is something definitely different; it’s what Ndeti terms “rockin’ soul.”

“The voice is definitely a soul voice, but the music is a little bit of rock, a little bit of funk,” she said.

Ndeti has a variety of influences, including Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Al Green and Otis Redding. But on the rock side, she cites the Beatles, Radiohead and Janis Joplin. She also throws a little bit of Bach in the mix and the rhythmic beats of the music her father, who is from Kenya, listened to.

“I’ve got a lot of influence coming from a lot of angles that I do try to incorporate,” she said. She is also a big fan of ’80s music that she mixes into her set, which she says she pays homage to, not necessarily covers note for note.

“I like to put a little bit of a different twist on songs that I play,” she said. “I’ll do a song by a popular artist but not in the way you would hear it on the radio.”

She says her original music is both “fun” and “memorable” and, in her songwriting, she draws from what’s happening around her, not just setting out to write a song about a subject.

“Everything inspires me. I might hear a commercial on the radio or a conversation with someone or someone else’s conversation, and they’ll say something that I’ll pick up on and say, ‘Oh, that would be good in a song’ and I try to either write around it or try to incorporate it just on what I hear and what I like.”

“I can’t sit down and say I’m going to write a song about loving this person or write about a hardship that I’ve had,” she added. “I have to be in a mind frame where it almost just hits me.”

Ndeti is not only a performer, she is also one of the lucky few whose full-time job revolves around music. She teaches guitar at the Jessye Norman School of the Arts, where this year is the first time they have offered guitar classes. And her job as recreation therapist at the VA Medical Center calls for musical interaction with the residents who suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

“Not all aspects of living go at one time,” she said. “You want to focus on their strengths and being able to maintain them for as long as you can. It’s definitely a challenge but it’s a positive challenge.”

Music is a constant in Ndeti’s life, one she would be doing regardless of the rewards.

“It’s not something I can just turn away from. It’s more than just a hobby for me. It’s my lifestyle,” she said. “It’s in every aspect of my life. It’s in my occupation. It’s in my hobbies and my passions. It’s in my teaching. It’s in my beliefs. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t get away from it.”

Chris Ndeti The Fox’s Lair Friday, December 18 9 p.m. Free myspace.com/chocolatemusic

Source: http://metrospirit.com/index.php?