When I had the opportunity to delve into Lisa B’s The Poetry of Groove, I had no idea what I was in for. I receive a slew of jazz vocal records, sometimes several a week, and, despite the talent involved, the overall vibe can often feel repetitive. With Lisa’s record, however, there was a whole other wild and funky thing going on and I just had to find out more.
Lucky for me I was able to corner Lisa B (Bernstein) on MSN Messenger for a chat that ventured all over the place, veering through a few fun diversions through to the gritty, serious stuff of poetry and songwriting.
After attempting to explain my bizarre MSN login name, we got down to the business at hand. “When it comes to writing, how easy or difficult is it to transition from writing poetry to writing song lyrics?” I asked.
"They're completely different animals, but the skills cross over. I was a poet first before becoming a lyricist. Poetry has to be the whole band, the whole symphony, all the voices in their complex cadences, and of course most contemporary poetry is not written in meter and rhyme. Lyrics generally are in regular (not 'free') meter and rhyme, and they have to leave room for what the music is doing,” Lisa replied.
Raised in New York and northern California, Bernstein’s exposure to the intersection of literature and music was early. Inspired by pop, jazz, soul and show tunes, she took the arts early and started classical piano in elementary school. From there, Lisa branched out to literature and eventually earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in literature and creative writing.
With such a technically-sound background, her more immediate influences remain couched in the soul and passion of some of music’s most remarkable performers.
“Well, in the background there's the Great American Songbook and songs I particularly love,” Bernstein said when asked about lyrical influences. “I like what the jazzy Brazilians do, working with imagery more than you find in pop music. And the whole soulful assertive woman's songs, like Aretha, Chaka Kahn... But I have to say that a lot of folks have said my songs remind them of Broadway musicals. I guess there's more content and narrative than one often finds in pop-soul-jazz? Also, I'm very inspired by hip-hop because the rhythms and wordplay are often so fun and happening, even while the content can zoom in and out from very cool to dumb and banal.”
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