Meet Janie May

We were lucky to catch up with Janie May recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Janie, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.

I think to an extent it is how I am wired. As a child I used to climb out of my crib in the middle of the night, much to the frustration of my parents. As an adult, that anecdote has been a great metaphor for my personality; I have always been a bit of a contrarian and sought to break out of confines that were placed on me.

From a young age I had an interest in business and investing as well, things that necessitate an element of risk.

In addition to this, I grew up with a family member who struggled with bouts of a serious mental health condition. This was a significant factor in my development of empathy and a sense of compassion, despite being something that might be seen as traumatic or depressing.

Seeing this as a child, however, also ironically taught me that our perceptions are not always our reality. People are often afraid of taking a risk creatively because they think they will look silly or think they will fail. I realized that people are often inaccurate in their assessments because of what I saw my family member experience.

Accordingly, for me, it has felt riskier to regret not taking a chance at doing the thing that you know deep down you want to do and could be quite good at.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a pop/R&B/soul recording artist based in NYC. I am currently finishing up work on my second album which has been heavily inspired by Gloria Gaynor’s hit song “I Will Survive.”

A Brooklyn, NY native, I have been singing, writing songs and dancing since childhood. Only now, however, do I feel like I am truly writing songs that fully reflect what I want to say and how to say it. As I have matured as an adult, so has my voice as a writer, and I’m proud to feel like like I finally stepping into my element as an artist.

By day I work as a psychotherapist; the overlap between music and therapy for me is its ability to inspire hope and provoke transformation. Both can be profound sources of support and catalysts for growth and healing.

Ultimately, the songs I write and the art I create is for people who identify as survivors, people like myself who have had to persist despite challenges, disappointments, rejections and setbacks.

I love the overlap between music, dance and the visual arts and look to create work that can pull from as many of these areas as possible.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Confidence, persistence and self-awareness are probably the three qualities that have been most impactful in my journey as an artist.

I am lucky in that I am naturally a pretty confident person, at least when it comes to my skill as a singer, writer and dancer. This has been extremely important, for, as the vast majority of artists know, no one will believe in you unless you believe in yourself. No one will invest in you unless you can invest in yourself and take what you create seriously.

Most artists will not encounter significant commercial success during their artistic careers; that is simply the statistical reality. It takes an ability to be okay without external validation to spend hours creating something that may not get applause or may not get many listeners or eyeballs. If you are okay with that, and if you are creating art for the right reasons, you should be, I believe that you can get through anything and continue to get better at your craft.

That brings me to the next quality, persistence. I am perhaps a stupidly persistent person. Again, I think this is something innate. I don’t like giving up, ever, especially if I know that I can achieve something, even if it takes a while. In romantic relationships, this has sometimes been a devastatingly bad quality. When it comes to the arts, however, it has been a strength.

I think my background in ballet as a child and teen shaped this quality, as the life of a dancer is one that involves repetition, practice and sacrifice. I am someone who is okay with the journey, okay with the long game, and okay with things taking time.

My work as a therapist has taught me that patience is invaluable and change is often slow, but sometimes, what takes years to achieve is well worth the wait.

Lastly, self-awareness has been key for me. I think when it comes to creating art, that means being aware of your strengths and weaknesses. I am not the best instrumentalist by a long shot; I write on piano but don’t love playing live.

For me, that means partnering up with a producer and instrumentalists when recording and creating a song and choosing to focus on vocals and movement during live performances. No man is an island and I think you gain more by teaming up with individuals who have strengths that are your weaknesses instead of killing yourself trying to do it all on your own.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

I am grateful to have had parents who encouraged me to develop my talents and my mind. Education and reading were very much prioritized in my family of origin but I was never pushed to pursue a particular path. They sacrificed a lot to make sure that I could get the best education possible.

I get my artistic ability from my mother’s side; my grandfather is a self-taught classical Spanish guitarist who played in bands in his youth. We also had relatives who made their own instruments, something that is still quite common for artisans in some parts of Puerto Rico.

My mother was a teacher and my father worked as a systems administrator but is one of the most naturally curious people I have ever met; he encouraged me to think outside the box and to think critically.

I was never pushed to study anything by my parents; I asked for ballet and piano classes as a young child and am grateful that they had the means to provide them.

I was encouraged to work hard and to never think that I was better than anyone else or that anyone else was better than me. I was taught from a young age that every human being has dignity and deserves for that dignity to be recognized and that is a guiding principle in my life to this day.

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Image Credits

Sarah Jean
Michael Geffner
Loredana Gasparotto

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