Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna Freelon (born July 28, 1954) is an American jazz singer, composer, producer, and arranger.
Nnenna Freelon
Early life and education[edit]
Freelon was born Chinyere Nnenna Pierce to Charles and Frances Pierce in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was raised.[1] She has a brother Melvin and a sister named Debbie. As a young woman, she sang extensively in her community and the Union Baptist Church and at St. Paul AME. She recalled, "I started singing in the church, like so many others...."[2] Nnenna graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a degree in health care administration. For a while she worked for the Durham County Hospital Corporation, Durham, North Carolina.
She suggests that her influences included several "not famous people" as well as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, whose records her parents played at home. "It's important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says. "I did something that my grandmother told me: 'Bloom where you're planted', 'don't get on a bus and go to New York or L.A., sing where you are'."[2]
Babysong workshops[edit]
Freelon is the national spokesperson for the National Association of Partners in Education, an organization with over 400,000 school and community partnership programs across the United States, dedicated to arts education.[4] Freelon has maintained ties to her hospital-work as her jazz career has flourished. Her Babysong workshops, which she started at Duke University Medical Center in 1990, teach young mothers and healthcare providers the importance of the human voice for healing and nurturing. She emphasizes the importance of parents singing to children to enhance brain development.[5]
Personal life[edit]
In 1979, she married architect Philip Freelon.[1] She and her husband raised three children, Deen, Maya and Pierce, before she decided to perform professionally as a jazz singer.[6] Their son Pierce Freelon is a hip hop artist, a Visiting Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Central University and the founder of the website Blackademics, for which he has interviewed many notable figures such as Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Jesse Jackson.[7] Deen Freelon is an associate professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying social media and politics.[8] Daughter Maya Freelon Asante is a visual artist.[9]