User:Lamacha9617/Jennah Bell

Jennah Bell is an American musician, known for blending styles such as folk, country, R&B, and soul. Her first album Anchors & Elephants was released in February 2019.

Biography and style
Bell's father is musician Ronald Bell of the R&B/funk band Kool & the Gang, and her uncle is Robert "Kool" Bell. Bell began writing poetry and lyrics at the age of 7 and started playing the guitar at the age of 13. As a young musician, she was one of 11 singer/songwriters selected to attend a summer program through the Grammy Foundation which she credits for encouraging her unique musical style.

Bell graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2009.

Bell has been celebrated as a genre-bending musician who is a rare Black artist in predominantly white genres, such as country and bluegrass. In an interview in 2022, Bell stated: "If you’ve only ever seen white people play country music, then it’s going to be a very stark contrast when a Black woman does it. You’re going to instinctually not call it country music. Americana is as much a right and an origin story for Black people as it is for [anyone else]."

Her style has been compared to Amy Winehouse, Alanis Morissette, Erykah Badu, and Joni Mitchell.

Career
Bell first began to attract attention with a series of Youtube videos directed by Rafael Casal in which she sings and plays guitar inside various BART stations. In 2011, Bell self-released her first EP, Early Bird. She released her subsequent EP, Live from Mother NY with Okayplayer Records in 2012 and later that year performed a song from the EP, "Chapter 3: The Hatchet", at the 2012 BET Awards as the only unsigned performer of the night. For her lyrical writing, she was listed as one of the top 30 poets under 30 by Muzzle Magazine in 2013. Bell's third EP, Anatomy was released by Dox Records in 2015.

Bell's song "The End" was featured in the television series Black Lightning in 2018.

In February 2019, Bell self-released her album, Anchors & Elephants, produced by James Poyser with mixing by Russell Elevado.

Bell toured with Emily King in spring 2019. She was listed as one of "10 Folk Artists You Need to Know" by Paste Magazine in 2019. In 2020, in response to widespread racial unrest, Bell signed onto a public letter with hundreds of artists, public figures, and organizations in support of police reform legislation in California. After the original 2020 tour was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bell went on an North American tour with the soul group The Dip in 2022.

In June 2022, Bell performed at the Tennessee Theatre as part of the Black Opry Revue alongside Chapel Hart and Kam Franklin, in the theater's "Pass the Mic" series highlighting Black Americana artists.