Zeeteah Massiah on Music, Performing and Life during 2020

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Zeeteah Massiah on Music, Performing and Life during 2020

Zeeteah Massiah is a Number One Billboard Dance Chart star who specialises in Reggae, Jazz and house music. Like many artists, the last year has provided many challenges for Zeeteah, but also a host of new opportunities and ventures that would have never otherwise have been possible. We asked her to tell us about her experiences over the last year whilst we count down to Jeeni's online JAM festival.

It’s been the craziest year ever, but we’ve made it through thirteen months in and out of lockdown. At the beginning of 2020, I unveiled a brand-new sound and a wicked new band, and I was full of high hopes for the year. I was excited and ready to go. And then Covid hit.

It took me three weeks into the first lockdown to come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be going on stage again for a long time. I was in a fog for weeks and then I thought: just because I can’t be on stage doesn’t mean I can’t make music. I suddenly had an impulse to record a new version of an old song that I’ve always loved – United We Stand by Brotherhood of Man. It seemed so right for that moment. Paul, my husband and musical partner, understood immediately the sound I was looking for, and we set to work in our studio.

Three of my favourite musicians played on the track – remotely, of course – and family and friends in London, Germany and the Caribbean filmed lovely cameos for the video. It was such fun to do, and it got a wonderful response. You can check it out on Jeeni.

And then a man called George Floyd died in Minnesota, and we were all plunged into a very different mood.

I didn’t realise how painful many of my feelings about race were, and how deeply they were buried, until I started telling Paul, with tears in my eyes, about growing up in London as a young black girl from Barbados. I was constantly made to feel a certain way simply because of the colour of my skin. Here we are in 2021 and, sadly, many things are still the same.

At one point I blurted out to Paul, “You don’t know how it feels to be Black”. He took those words and turned them into a song called You Don’t Know. We recorded it and made the video in July. It’s one of the most heartfelt things I’ve done, and I’ve been amazed by the incredible response it’s had and so grateful for the wonderful feedback.

I did manage to squeeze in three London gigs in the gaps between the lockdowns: a reggae gig in Chelsea, and jazz gigs in Hampstead and in the West End. Better than nothing – and in fact, they were all lovely events.

When it became clear that there weren’t going to be any more gigs, I decided to start doing live sessions at home with some of my favourite musicians and sharing them on YouTube. And so, the Massiah Sessions were born. We’ve released nine videos so far, in a variety of styles, and there are more to come.

I was also invited to add vocals to a new rock album by a dear friend in Germany. Thanks, Günther – it was a blast.

In February, I did a livestream with guitarist Marcin Bobkowski for a charity called Educ’aid Africa, run by Isa Bell, which is helping to provide music education to schools in Benin. A recent DNA test revealed that many of my ancestors were from Benin, and so the project had a special meaning for me. It was my first livestream, and I loved it.

I’m going to be doing another one on 10 April, and hopefully regularly after that – join us at zeestream.live if you can!

And so now here we are, approaching the end of what we pray will be the final lockdown. And soon I’ll be back on stage in front of a live audience doing what I love best. My first live gig of 2021 will be on Thursday 27 May at Crazy Coqs in London’s West End.

Maybe see you there?

In the meantime, I wish you all the best for what will, hopefully, end up being a much better year.

Zeeteah will also be performing in the JAM festival which is a collaboration between Jeeni, AmplifyX and MultiView Media and will be held at 12 noon Los Angeles time, 8pm London time on Saturday April 10th 2021. To find out more about the JAM Festival check out our events on Facebook. https://fb.me/e/1etPauFMV

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23
Feb

A Legendary NME Journo, his New Book and Other Tales

About to release his third book, a novel entitled 'The Unstable Boys', legendary NME journo Nick Kent, is interviewed by his stable-mate, Kevin EG Perry about his new book and other tales from his extraordinary career. The Unstable Boys - Nick Kent's new novel Nick Kent started writing for NME in 1972, which was a good year to be a rock’n’roll writer. And no writer in Britain was more rock’n’roll than Kent, who was soon as notorious for wearing a perpetually ripped pair of leather trousers and dating Chrissie Hynde as he was for writing novelistic profiles of enigmatic figures such as Syd Barrett and Lou Reed. Even now, almost half a century on, stories of Kent’s escapades and expenses-claims get passed down like lore at NME. There’s a good one about the time he flew to LA to profile Jethro Tull in 1975 and somehow wound up on a bender with Iggy Pop. Holed up in the Continental Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Boulevard, they hit upon the cunning wheeze of telling visiting drug dealers that they could help themselves to whatever they wanted from the luxury shops in the lobby and charge it to Kent’s room – leaving poor old Jethro Tull to pick up the tab. Truly, a grift for the ages. NIck Kent - Legendary NME Journalist Kent published the best of his collected rock writing in 1994 as The Dark Stuff and followed that essential tome in 2010 with his ‘70s memoir Apathy For The Devil. He’s just published his third book – his first novel – The Unstable Boys, which concerns the unhinged frontman of a mostly-forgotten ‘60s band appearing on the doorstop of his biggest fan after many years in obscurity. Over a video call from his home in Paris, Kent – 69 and just as louche as ever – discussed the book’s origins and held court about a life spent at the unforgiving coalface of rock’n’roll. On his no-fucks-given style Things weren’t looking good for NME when Kent first slouched through its doors in ‘72. Sales were so bad that the editors had been given just 12 issues to save the magazine. They hired Kent and other new writers such as Charles Shaar Murray and Ian MacDonald from the alternative press. The magazine then saw a huge jump in sales – but not for the reason Kent wanted to believe. “The assistant editor Nick Logan called me into his office at the end of the year and said, ‘Well, we’ve got great news – we’re outselling the Melody Maker’, which was a big deal at the time,’” remembers Kent. “He said: ‘In fact, we’re the biggest selling music weekly in the world!’ Pats on the back all round! I was standing there thinking he was gonna say: ‘It’s all you, Murray and MacDonald, you wonderful, beautiful people!’ “Not at all. He said: ‘We’ve done a survey of new readers to ask them why they buy the thing. They don’t buy it for the articles. They don’t read the articles, except for the quotes. They might look for a David Bowie quote, but they’re not interested in what the writers are writing. The only thing they actually read is the gossip column on the last page.’ What they really wanted to know was: What did Bowie’s latest haircut look like? And were Led Zeppelin playing a gig near where they lived? “After I picked my wounded ego up off the floor, I came to the very quick conclusion that I was writing for an audience with an extremely short attention span. I realised I had to go to extremes, because I would not be ignored! 300,000 people were buying the NME and the idiots weren’t reading it! That affected the way I wrote. You’ve got to grab them with the first sentence and say: ‘The action starts here’ you cannot not read this.’ I’m living proof that going to extremes gets results. The problem is that they may not be the exact results that you set out to attain.” Access all areas Kent went to extremes on the page and off it, where he found that the road of excess led not to the palace of wisdom but to a debilitating heroin addiction. His best work included an epic feature about the tortured genius of Brian Wilson, which ran to 10,000 words and was published across three issues of NME. He was also granted unprecedented access to a Rolling Stones tour and wrote memorably about the strange, distant atmosphere backstage and the darkness lurking in Jagger and Richards’ “numb, burned-out cool”. “There’s this whole idea that the writers of that time were the reason why the NME was so successful,” he says, “and that’s partly true, but the main reason was that we had more access back then to Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and the other big names of the ‘70s. There was a kind of give-and-take there, and I was lucky enough to get into that.” That time he was a Sex Pistol Kent first met punk impresario Malcolm McLaren in December 1973, when he went to France to interview the New York Dolls and found McLaren among their entourage. The pair became close and regularly dined together – along with their partners, Vivienne Westwood and Hynde – at what the writer describes “the only Indian restaurant in Clapham South”. When McLaren sacked guitarist Wally Nightingale from an early line-up of The Sex Pistols because he didn’t think he fit the band’s look, he asked Kent to replace him. Kent spent three months playing with guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook, but says he never quite matched the Sex Pistol temperament. “What I learned from playing with The Sex Pistols was that there’s a big difference between a middle-class guitar player and a working-class guitar player,” says Kent. “For a working-class guitar player, it’s all about repetition. It’s like that Johnny Ramone thing of playing the same chords over and over again. If you’re a guy like me, I’ll play a three chord riff like ‘Louie Louie’ for a minute but then I’ll get bored and throw something a bit jazzy in, and immediately that’s like going into Radiohead-land! My Sex Pistols experience taught me that I’m a middle-class guitar player.” On the rocker who reminds him Trump Kent’s new novel The Unstable Boys centres around the titular band’s grotesque, narcissistic frontman, known as ‘The Boy’. Given his abrasive personality traits, it’s no surprise that The Boy idolises Donald Trump – and Kent says he noticed plenty of parallels between the former President and some of the more self-absorbed rock stars he’s encountered over the years. “The rock star that really reminded me of Trump is Axl Rose,” says Kent. “I went out to America in 1991 at the height of Guns N’ Roses mania. They were the biggest group in America at that time. At almost every gig they played there would be a riot. Axl would usually be late, and then he’d come on stage and spend 10 minutes putting down whatever celebrity had said something in the press about him. I saw him once put down Warren Beatty because Warren Beatty had dated his girlfriend. “We got 10 minutes of: ‘What an arsehole!’ He was using the stage as a forum for his own narcissistic shit fits, just like Trump. At least Axl Rose could perform and could sing well, whereas Trump has neither talent. He doesn’t have any talent! He’s the ultimate huckster.” And the horror story behind The Unstable Boys In The Unstable Boys, things take a turn for the worse when ‘The Boy’ turns up at the home of a wealthy crime writer who also happens to be his band’s biggest fan. Kent says he was inspired by a real tale involving the British rock’n’roller Vince Taylor, who sang the 1959 hit ‘Brand New Cadillac’. “He was one of the best early British rock singers – one of the only ones, actually,” says Kent. “He’s probably best-known now because he became the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust. Bowie had met him in the ‘60s and became fascinated by him. By the ‘70s, Taylor had gone from bad to worse and he was basically penniless. He would just turn up on the doorsteps of people that he imagined were fans of his. He turned up on the doorstep of his fan club president in Switzerland and of course the guy invited him in – this was his hero! Things didn’t go well. Before long his wife left him, his dog disappeared and his pub burnt down." Kent adds that he’s been working on the novel in some form or another since his wife Laurence first told him Taylor’s story back in 1990, so he’s delighted to finally see the story in print three decades on. “When I’d finished it, for about two or three hours afterwards I felt really, really good,” says Kent. “High in a way that eclipsed all the drug highs I’ve ever had.” – Nick Kent’s The Unstable Boys is out now via Constable www.jeeni.com www.nme.com

10
Jun

Nextfin independently rates Jeeni 77% investment opportunity.

This morning Jeeni were independently rated by Nextfin and our pitch was rated 77% overall. Management rated 68%, Product 76% and Investment Opportunity 88% with 80% being their gold and highest rating. If you would like to see full report check out our pitch rating here: https://lnkd.in/ecq6xG3 Jeeni, the social music platform that brings artists closer to their fans – and shares revenue ethically – is poised to become the first Portsmouth-based start-up to go on Crowdcube for its third round. Jeeni overfunded in 6 days. If you want to see our pitch click HERE. We have 11 days left to invest. With 350million streamed music subscribers and market growth up by 39% this year, Jeeni is likely to ride the wave and be a huge success, not only with unsigned musicians and performers but with their superfans. “We’re standing by to raise £100,000 for 2.4% with a pre-market valuation£4M,” says Jeeni founder Shena Mitchell. “And while we are already negotiating with several major investors, the beauty of Crowdcube is that the artists themselves can actually own a stake in the company for as little as £10.” Shena continues, “Jeeni’s mission is to support unsigned music and performers, by helping them build a fanbase. We aim to fast-track careers in the music business, and make sure they take the lion’s share of the revenue that’s raised. Jeeni is needed more now than ever and we have proved that the demand is high. Currently we can only support 100,000 videos, so we must now move up a gear as we head for global roll-out. This Round Three investment will be used to scale up again and launch our next-generation platform. It will also be used to develop our IoS and Android apps." When the financial backing has been secured and we go live, we’ll be creating new jobs in the area, which is great for the local economy. When you consider the wealth of music talent in Portsmouth – hosting over 2,000 music events a year with Victorious, The Guildhall, Band Stand, Wedgewood Rooms, and all the Portsmouth Festivities and pubs – we’re alive to the opportunities of our local music culture, creativity and talent. But with live venues locked down for now, the online opportunity of Jeeni is needed more than ever. It’s so cool to think someone reading this might choose to invest in Jeeni now with just £10, and then use Jeeni to build their own fanbase for fame and success! We’re going to try hard to make sure that happens.” JEENI is currently inviting investment on Crowdcube. To find out how to get involved please join our mailing list for updates or check out our fundraising pitch. If you want to see our pitch click HERE.

06
Jun

Portsmouth-based music platform gears up

Jeeni, the Portsmouth-based music tech start-up, has raised over £230,000 to support unsigned artists and performers achieve their dream. Today, Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds and help the cause. Founding director Mel Croucher says, “We are ahead of our original schedule, yet there is still so much more to accomplish. We need to scale our online platform globally, build our mass artist showcases, and achieve our foreign language roll-out. Then we can hit all our targets, and give our new artists the recognition they deserve.” If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Jeeni is launching their next generation platform online, with over 27,500 artists and performers subscribe to their database, and will start trading ahead of schedule. Along with Mel Croucher, who founded the UK leisure software industry, Jeeni was co-founded by Shena Mitchell, who has already raised over £20million for start-up businesses in the Solent area. They have created a formidable management team including Roger Watson, the record-label boss responsible for over 500 million record sales, Kelli Richards, who worked with Steve Jobs for over 10 years and launched Apple Music, Eddie Levy, the founder of ATV Music who owned The Beatles catalogue, and Danielle Woodyatt, former Head of Global Communications at Virgin. Jeeni is also supported by celebrity ambassadors, including John Altman, conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tony Klinger, producer for The Who, and Dee “Thunderbirds” Anderson. Jeeni’s Shena Mitchell urges Portsmouth-based businesses and investors to take a look at the campaign and support the development and global roll-out of Jeeni. She says: “We are raising £100k for 2.4% with our pre-money valuation at £4M. So if you want to support a Portsmouth-based tech start-up to harness the wealth of genuine unsigned talent, then get in touch.” If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Contact details: shena@jeeni.com

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