By Elizabeth Pandolfi
May 21, 2014
At 58, René Marie has lived two separate lifetimes. One is her life as a world-renowned jazz vocalist, a saucy, brilliant, no-holds-barred singer who composes and acts. It's a life she started in her 40s, going from a complete unknown to an international award-winning, festival-headlining star in a matter of years.
This life is completely at odds with the one that came before. At age 18, Marie married her high school sweetheart, and they both became Jehovah's Witnesses. She was a mother of two five years later. And singing? That, along with her natural-born brazenness, was something she left behind when she married. "That was the end of the boldness for me," she says. "That lasted almost 25 years. Then I started singing again in the last few years of my marriage. It was the singing that got me in touch with who I was again."
And who she was, it turned out, was emphatically not a Jehovah's Witness. When her husband told her that she either had to quit singing or move out, she chose the latter, and left both him and her religion for good. Then she started singing as much as she could. Within a year, she'd left her day job.
But it took longer than that for her to shake off 23 years of living as a Witness. "For the first 20 years of my adult life I was very submissive," she says. "It took me about five years to come out of that mindset of being submissive to men — to really be able to stand up and own who I was, to change that behavior. After that, I was good to go."
That is an understatement. It's hard to describe just how free, confident, and joyfully herself Marie is. First, there's her look. Tall and fiercely feminine, Marie carries herself like a queen and wears her hair like a rebel, with a shaved head save for one small lock of hair in front. Her voice is a smooth, sleek, perfectly controlled powerhouse that can handle great leaps in pitch and has a huge emotional range. When she speaks, it's with a perfect ease that comes from being truly comfortable in one's own skin. Honesty is paramount, she says, both to her life and to her art. "When I left the Witnesses, one of the things I asked myself and still ask myself is am I being true to myself? I would rather say on my deathbed, 'I'm glad I did' rather than 'I wish I had.' That's like a touchstone for me ... as human beings, we are capable of huge about-faces. The biggest impediment is worrying about disappointing others."
Read more: http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/ren-marie-pays-homage-to-eartha-kitt/Content?oid=4924646At 58, René Marie has lived two separate lifetimes. One is her life as a world-renowned jazz vocalist, a saucy, brilliant, no-holds-barred singer who composes and acts. It's a life she started in her 40s, going from a complete unknown to an international award-winning, festival-headlining star in a matter of years.
This life is completely at odds with the one that came before. At age 18, Marie married her high school sweetheart, and they both became Jehovah's Witnesses. She was a mother of two five years later. And singing? That, along with her natural-born brazenness, was something she left behind when she married. "That was the end of the boldness for me," she says. "That lasted almost 25 years. Then I started singing again in the last few years of my marriage. It was the singing that got me in touch with who I was again."
And who she was, it turned out, was emphatically not a Jehovah's Witness. When her husband told her that she either had to quit singing or move out, she chose the latter, and left both him and her religion for good. Then she started singing as much as she could. Within a year, she'd left her day job.
But it took longer than that for her to shake off 23 years of living as a Witness. "For the first 20 years of my adult life I was very submissive," she says. "It took me about five years to come out of that mindset of being submissive to men — to really be able to stand up and own who I was, to change that behavior. After that, I was good to go."
That is an understatement. It's hard to describe just how free, confident, and joyfully herself Marie is. First, there's her look. Tall and fiercely feminine, Marie carries herself like a queen and wears her hair like a rebel, with a shaved head save for one small lock of hair in front. Her voice is a smooth, sleek, perfectly controlled powerhouse that can handle great leaps in pitch and has a huge emotional range. When she speaks, it's with a perfect ease that comes from being truly comfortable in one's own skin. Honesty is paramount, she says, both to her life and to her art. "When I left the Witnesses, one of the things I asked myself and still ask myself is am I being true to myself? I would rather say on my deathbed, 'I'm glad I did' rather than 'I wish I had.' That's like a touchstone for me ... as human beings, we are capable of huge about-faces. The biggest impediment is worrying about disappointing others."
Read more: http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/ren-marie-pays-homage-to-eartha-kitt/Content?oid=4924646
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