Jahnah Camille is on the rise

At just 21-years-old, with ten years of writing and performing under her belt, Camille has accrued the same experience as musicians in their 40s. Her second EP, My sunny oath!, showcases the kind of skill that most often comes with those wise autumn years, reflected and presented in the youthful, coming-of-age storytelling and innocence of a young woman entering her early 20s. Rarely is there a combination of the two, and to have it appear as effortless and natural as it does to Camille, is a rare and special thing.

Obviously, Camille’s musical bildungsroman started early on. She was eight years old when she took her first guitar lessons – “I took guitar lessons for a year, and [the instructor] showed me Paramore,” she tells me – and then, by ten? “I started writing my own songs,” she smiles. She wrote her first ever song after a Paramore show: “The first full song I wrote [was] because my dad left me in the hotel [after the show]. So, I was like, ‘I’m going to write a song right now.’ From then on it became more of a religious practice.”

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Camille’s father was the one who enrolled her in guitar lessons originally – just the same way he had taken lessons himself. And her sister had quite an impact on her Paramore fandom in the first place. She was Camille’s first exposure to the alternative world: “I feel like my sister was really into alternative music,” she says. “She was like three and a half years older than me, so she really liked everything that was popular on Tumblr, like Lana Del Rey, Marina – like Electra Heart era – and The Strokes, and Daft Punk, so that was the stuff that I feel like was kind of my introduction to alternative music.”

While most ten-year-olds are just exploring everything the world has to offer their bright minds, trying to find the one thing that resonates with them, Camille held the guitar in her young hands and knew her next step forward. By the next year, she had already signed up for the school band, planning to embed herself as far into music as it would humanly let her.

“I wanted to learn how to read music and stuff,” she tells me. “I really wanted to be in the percussion section, but they said that I was a three out of ten at percussion, so they put me on tuba and I only did it for a semester because I didn’t want to play tuba – even though I was pretty good at it.” And where most children would find themselves discouraged by that feedback and redirection, Camille regrouped. Rather than abandoning music altogether, she steered her ship in a new direction.

“And then the next semester, I did choir, then my choir teacher was – am I allowed to cuss? – she was a total c**t,” Camille says. “I would say my voice was way better when I was younger because it was a lot higher and everything like that and I just had a better range. She wouldn’t give me any of the solos. She said that my voice was too soulful, basically.”

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Yet when one listens to Camille’s voice, ‘soulful’ is not the word that comes to mind – humble, wispy, delicate, intricate, or intimate fit the bill much better. Backed with indie sleazegaze arrangements complimented by synthesisers and distortions – not dissimilar to artists she’s already supported on the road, like Soccer Mommy and Blondshell – Camille’s music finds itself far more whimsical and contemplative than the deeper bass tones and brass bands that are typically associated with ‘soulful’ genres such as gospel, blues, and soul itself.

Coaxing explorative techniques out of the guitar, messing with pedals and technical solos, Camille’s lighter vocal tones intersect with her vast range of instrumental melodies: it looks, and feels, as natural to her as playing the guitar: “I just always did both at the same time. I don’t think there was a time where I didn’t sing.”

Combined with her years spent in a summer “hippie” camp – so hippie it ended up on a cult watch list – she was encouraged to find her own path within music. By 14, Camille began writing and recording in a studio, eventually releasing her first songs at just 15. Despite her less-than-blossoming experiences with music in school, she had the camp, her family, and a mentor – the camp musical director – to guide her down the path that she was so clearly destined to follow. A path that didn’t quite call for higher education or anything more than what she could learn by immersing herself in any musical space possible. Whether it was playing small gigs in her home state of Alabama or penning her second official EP, Camille proved she sure as hell didn’t need school.

Because you can’t teach musical experience – yes, you can teach theory – but Jahnah Camille is nothing but proof that musicality can be innate and nurtured through exposure. Combined with a natural born talent? You end up with a 21-year-old with ten years’ experience. And that is something you can’t say every day.