Justine Taton is a young inspiring and truly a sophisticated singer, songwriter and musician of her generation and she is on a mission to share her passion and love for music with the world.
22 years of age and born in Montpellier, South of France. Her upbringing was always surrounded by the sound of music as her parents owned and ran a very busy nightclub for more than 15 years, growing up on seventies and eighties sounds gave her an authentic flavour and taste for music at a very early age. Justine’s father, also a musician played drums and the piano; and Justine learned her first song “Le sud” of Nino Ferrer, at the tender age of just 6 years old, while her father was playing.
Growing up on a diet of Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Marlene Shaw, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Minnie Riperton and Jackson 5 combined with big French classics artist like Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf, Alain Souchon, Serge Gainsbourg “all these artist contributed to my powerful yet playful and passionate array of musical styles and tastes”.
Justine’s real musical journey started at 11 years old when her uncle, also a drummer asked her to perform for the first time on stage with his orchestra. Justine recalls “I went on to perform in front of 500 people. I sang 3 or 4 songs, not wanting to stop and realising then that the only thing I wanted to do in my life was music. Singing, playing and performing”. It didn’t stop there as Justine aspired to her dreams of music when she entered local talent competitions and not before long started arriving home with prizes such as cd players and other lavish gifts.
“That same year I discovered “René Coll” a very popular orchestra of 20 musicians and singers in France. Getting the chance to perform with them established my true calling and embarked a new passion for singing with such an array of live musicians”. Justine describes this time as a magical experience.
She then went on to sing with another orchestra in a local area that featured 18 musicians “l’Orchestre du Soleil” and was asked to tour with them during her school holidays, throughout the South West and South East of France. They toured for four months with Justine singing 2 – 3 songs a night. Having already captivated her audience with her beautiful vocals and proved she was an extremely talented young singer at 12 years old, her reputation began to spread and ended up singing 12 songs per show. Not just content with the main songs, she was doing backing vocals inbetween performances, developing her skills in harmonising and learnt to adapt to different styles. She learnt so much more on this tour not just singing and learning songs but the power of resistance, dealing with different audiences, and discovering the “music family feeling”.
Growing up like many teen’s Justine continued her love for music and learned new vocal styles whilst playing and mastering the piano and along the way discovered a new generation of musical styles from international artist such as Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Angie Stone, Alicia Keys, Raphael Saadiq, Maxwell, D’Angelo, Mary J Bilge.
The real breakthrough came at the age of 15 when she was encouraged to enter into a famous French National TV show called “Graines de Star”, she sailed through the auditions where she sang “Fallin” from Alicia Keys and “Manattan Kaboul” of Renaud and Axelle Red and ended up winning it.
Taking influences from soul, Motown, hip hop she began creating her own unique sound and style of writing for her music.
Whilst promoting his album in France, recording artist Lemar met Justine where they musically connected. A few weeks later Lemar was looking for a French singer to make a remix of his song “Time to grow” so he thought about Justine and made contact. There, the collaboration was set. Lemar flew to Paris to record the remix and do a video to promote the single. The song had a lot of success and a great reception in the French region, showcasing Justine’s talent.
Justine was then linked with a management team that took the opportunity to connect her to London. Through this, Justine has showcased some of her musical influences at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.
Having previously worked on French material, Justine loves the experience of writing and singing in English and is excited about working on her new songs whilst keeping elements of her French musical influences.
Her journey continues…
ENLACES/FUENTES:
http://justinetaton.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidGuettaMVEVO/videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/davidguettavevo/videos
