heatherb | 
12 20th, 2008| 
The living room-sized Old City club was packed like a Baptist revival. Music lovers waited all week for the jam session where anything that could happen did and the singer that you thought would never show up was already there.
A five dollar bill and an extra dose of patience for the line that snaked around the building was all patrons needed before stepping foot in The Five Spot on Black Lilly night.
Regulars, like Fatin Dantzler and Aja Graydon of Kindred the Family Soul, mingled as the drummer counted down.
Jazmine Sullivan stepped onto the hardwood – no stage – and grabbed the mic that India.Aire melted, Floetry bent and Jill Scott smashed.
The opening keys of Ella Fitzgerald’s “Round Midnight” ushered the newbie into the stormy jazz ballad.
“Do you know the lyrics to that song,” Aja squealed. “You’re looking at a 14-year-old girl sing that song and you could close your eyes and you would not remotely even be in the same world believing that a child was singing that song,” Aja says, recalling the first time she heard Jazmine sing. “I just loved her from the beginning because I just sort of saw myself in her.”
Much has changed since that night in 2000. The Five Spot went up in flames – literally – Black Lilly has morphed into a film festival – for survival – and Jazmine, the youngest performer in Black Lilly history, is now 21 and the crème of the industry’s batch of new artists. Read the rest of this entry »
