TVM: Honey Jam is this great showcase of female talent and I was just wondering, what the rationale or reason behind as to why you focus primarily on females.
Ebonnie: It was born to combat the negative portrayals of women in music industry. At the beginning, it was really an R&B thing and very heavy on hip-hop. We wanted to give women who would be scared because they didn’t know they had skill or didn’t feel comfortable a safe place to experiment. So we created that welcoming space. We feature women DJing, women rapping, women break-dancing, women doing things that were not expected at the time.
TVM: In terms of Honey Jam, for our readers who may not be as familiar with the showcase, could you just do a brief run-down of the criteria in terms of auditioning?
Ebonnie: You basically just have to be female and be good. We have 12 judges and they will rate the artist, 10 being the highest. Then, we shortlist based on who got an average of 8, and then we separate them from the live auditions because this is a nationwide search. If you can’t make the live auditions, you can submit online. We separately go through the YouTube videos that are submitted online and then make a choice from that of 10 to 15 or so artists. We usually have an established artist come at the launch and give them an idea of their own personal journey to the industry, people like Divine Brown, Jully Black, Keshia Chanté, Suzie McNeil, etc. We have an all-day workshop at the Harris Institute and all this is free. So they learn about publishing, management, funding, media training, song writing… We give them one-on-one vocalist training with Elaine Overholt and then, there’s the show. So there are four events – the auditions, the launch, the workshop and the show.
TVM: Where do you predict you will be, or where would you like to be, with Honey Jam in the next 5 to 10 years?
Ebonnie: I would like for us to have secured, sustained funding. I don’t want us to be begging every year. I want sustained funding and I want it to be a bigger event, maybe a two-day festival. [I want to] have it grow, provide more opportunities for the artist, be able to fly in people from the industry to come and hear the artist. I mean, the whole point of Honey Jam is providing this platform and opportunities to these artists. It’s a multi-cultural, multi-genre developmental initiative that’s providing this platform and education for artists. So whatever we can do to enhance what were already doing, make it bigger and better, that’s what I want to see.
TVM: That’s so awesome! What inspires you most in your line of work?
Ebonnie: Doing Honey Jam has been a struggle and very difficult to get going because we are not a big festival with 20 thousand people and in this economy, it’s hard to get cash. They tend to support bigger events that have television commercials and stuff, which we don’t have. I enjoy having some integrity, but it’s been very difficult. I’m a perfectionist; things have to be done a certain way. I can’t switch it off. I’m not a slacker. I had a full time job running a mentor program and running Honey Jam, and back then we were also doing a CD and a magazine and dance agency. It was so much stuff and it was killing me. In 1999, I said I was retiring. MuchMusic came and did the whole ‘farewell to Honey Jam thing’. So I’m sitting down watching it and this artist came on camera and said “Ebonnie, if you’re watching this, please don’t leave Honey Jam! There’s nothing like it! For unknown artists, what are we going do?” It just really pulled on my heartstrings. I hadn’t really thought about that. Where is someone who’s completely unknown going to get a concert where there are hundreds of people? Where are they going to get this platform? So all these other people came up to me and said “Ebonnie, if you need help, I’m here to help you.” So I [stayed]. I had lots of people to help me. By the way, Nelly Furtado is now a financial sponsor of the show through her company Nel-Star
