This Thursday, November 10, Jenifer left On the weekend with Hélène Mannarino on TMC. The singer revealed with humor how she tried to tamper with her voice.
Long before the general public discovered it thanks to its participation – and victory – in the first edition of the star Academy, Jenifer already dreamed of being a singer. “The first notes of your dream, your mom heard them when you were eight years old. Locked in your room to sing Whitney Houston, she listened at the door and immediately understood“, reported Hélène Mannarino this Thursday, November 10 in Weekend with… on TMC. Jenifer then spent her time singing. “I loved to sing but in a very personal way“, confirms the main interested party. And there is not only Whitney Houston’s discography that she listened to over and over again and on which she trained to push the ditty. Jenifer was also a fan of Stevie Wonder but also and especially of Janis Joplin. “I learned to sing on them“, explains Jenifer, an entire generation of whom learned to sing by copying her voice.
But it’s especially the stamp of Janis Joplin that the young girl wanted to imitate. So, for that, she tried (in vain) a whole bunch of schemes crazier than each other. “I was purposely screaming into a cushion to make my voice completely scratchy“, laughs this mother with hindsight. And to add: “And I forced myself to smoke cigarettes and do my grandfather’s anisette gargles to get Janis Joplin’s voice but it never worked out.“A grandfather who would no doubt have been very proud of his granddaughter. If she certainly hid from her grandpa Roger what she was doing with her anisette, Jenifer still had a very strong bond with her grandfather, with whom she listened to music when he was taking his nap. “He was a hero, my grandfather. He was a relatively quiet person, who didn’t need to talk too much to make himself understood. He was a war hero. He was too strong“, she launches with wonderment and a knotted throat by emotion.
Jenifer, encouraged by her grandmothers
Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to witness Jenifer’s success. “He left too soon, he didn’t see“, she regrets. He bowed out before she even had time to tell him that she wanted to live her dreams, that she left high school at 16 and that she participated in the star Academy. “It was my grandmothers who witnessed my beginnings, Star Ac’, my first tour. My grandmothers came to see me on stage“, she rejoices. Especially since they have it”completely” encouraged to follow this path. Very surrounded, Jenifer has always been able to benefit from the support of his family. Apart from her grandparents, her parents also agreed to let her achieve this crazy dream. Two years after participating in star seeds, Jenifer was then only 16 years old when she took off, leaving her native Nice for the capital. A leap into the void that has paid off in view of the career she has had for more than twenty years now. Gone are the days when she only sang in her bedroom.