17 minute read
Love Jazz
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—Tracy Neely & Lady V.O.
Everybody keeps telling us that they need Love Jazz right now! I’ve had three different sets of people calling and saying, ‘Hey, you need to be streaming,’ or, ‘We need Love Jazz because the world is in tragedy!’ I was saying to myself, ‘What does Love Jazz have to do with it?’ Then someone else called and said, ‘We need Love Jazz! We need your music! We need your love! We need you now!’ I said to Tracy, “I don't know what's going on, but everybody's going off there wanting us to return!” “People have been bowing to us, giving us gifts, money and all kinds of things. We don’t understand it, but we keep doing what we do because we love what we do! To be honest, we love each other!”
Who is ‘Love Jazz’ and what is all the hype? Well, Ambi’ance Uncut knows exactly who they are. They are Tracy Neely and Lady V.O. (the Black Puerto Rican as she proudly tells everyone) They are a two-person band with Lady V.O. on the congas, bongos and percussion and Tracy on the guitar. Spreading their message 61
of love, they cover the music genres of jazz, hip hop, progressive jazz and R&B. This couple loves LOVE, whether it is between them or sharing it with others. They finish each other’s sentences, they share the same compassion for humanity, and are continuously complementing each other, either subtlety or openly and if you believe in true love, it is an amazing thing to witness! When asked if they were married, instantly and simultaneously they both happily screamed, “Yes!”
Lady V.O.: “I'm loving life. I’m in love with ME and I love Tracy to death. I love playing music with him. He is one of the most amazing and handsome guitar players that I’ve ever heard play, probably in my life. That’s what I love about this menagerie that we’re encapsulated in. We are vibing off of love and it’s the most powerful vibe on the planet, in the universe! When Tracy plays, you can feel it. That's what Tracy's about, as if he spiritually came from heaven down here for a big reason. I believe that, because I know how he treats me and I’ve never in my life been treated like this! When we are utilizing vibration to enhance vibration, this is what comes out of it!”
Tracy: “After meeting Lady V.O. and she played with me for the first time, I fired twenty-three people… for REAL, because I was looking for something permanent. Like, if you’re looking for a woman or looking for a man and you’re run62 ning from club to club and you’re having a good time, but eventually you get tired and you say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. If I want to grow, if I want to build a dynasty, then I need to build, not tear down’. I’ve been building with Lady V.O. for the last eleven years and the fruit from it has been amazing! Truly amazing! I really enjoy being around Lady V.O. I don't really have ‘buddies’ because I'm a martial art master and I don't want to be around anyone going for a pissing contest and all that. So, I don’t really hang out. Lady V.O. is a ‘tomgirl’, and she can do all the great things that most guys that I know, can’t. They can’t play pool like her, they can’t drive like her, she’s just a real badass but she looks real pretty doing it! I mean, she’s excellent. She's so amazing that I don't really like to go out with the guys. If I want to go somewhere, I like to go with her because we have a great time. In our music, she’s the real boss, an upper echelon female living in this meager life that we live, you know. When this lady decided to come out here to be with me, I had to let her know that I was never going to let her go and never let her down. I know they wrote a song that sounds like this, but I stand on those words. I'm not going to let her go. And I’m not going to let her down.”
As you observe them during their sets, it is as if they are playing to each other. Each drawing from the energy of the other into their performance as if there is no one else in the room besides them! With their love being too strong to stay encased between themselves, it purposely reaches into their community and beyond. Not looking for praise or recognition, these two love from their souls. Because we love THEM we are going to use our
platform at Ambi’ance Uncut to not only recognize them for their music, but for how they allow their music to touch others!
Avid lovers of music, Love Jazz advocates to preserve music awareness amongst our youths. As we know, intramural sports, and music are the first programs to be discontinued in our school systems nationwide. For most children, if this is lost, the only introduction to instruments will be through their parents, and that is if they are able to provide instruments and can financially sustain the cost of private lessons. Unfortunately, these ‘rights of passages’ are out of reach for most inner-city youths and are usually only reserved for the elite. For that reason, and to stop Black music from being another stolen legacy, Tracy and Lady V.O. give away instruments to children up to the age of eighteen giving them the opportunity to remain competitive within the arts.
Tracy: Think about it. Nowadays, they’re taking away the bands and other music programs in the school. I found that if children could actually learn music, that’s a whole other channel. It’s like the Food Channel for children because it takes a special kind of mind to write, and understand music, or to enjoy and be able to play it. But to remove music from the schools, means to take away the recipes from the cookbooks! Look at most of the Black millionaires out there and what it is that they do….music! We started a non-profit organization so we can put some seed into our collection of instruments. We now have a place, the trumpet player for Earth, Wind and Fire, Fernando Pullum, has a performing arts center and has gifted us some space. He saw us performing outside and he asked if we would like to bring it inside across the street, to the performing arts center. Well, it has become a donation hub for us and whenever we get instruments, we store them there and dispatch people to pick them up. So, God has just been working and giving to us. Plus, we do events to cover our articles for the non-profit.
Lady V.O.: We love to give instruments to the children. Whenever we have extra money as well as the money that people donate to us, we pick up instruments and give them to children. The more money we receive, the more instruments we provide. Our goal is to provide as many instruments as possible to cover everyone that wants one.
Taking their love around the country, during this pandemic, they have collectively and creatively started a pop-up entertainment company. They offer private hookah bar service, food delivery and destination and music tours encapsulated within their entertainment organization. They also have live streaming in the works so that people can access love music for inspiration during this time when people aren’t going places. Tracy: Before the pandemic, we loved to do beach tours. We would take groups of people who came into town to the beaches and we would do our pop-up entertainment. We also used to do a ‘Cotton Club’ concept around the country. The reason is, we were not just working with singers, we are working with dancers, magic acts, comedians, anyone who could or wanted to do entertainment. We provided a forum for different artists to come up and get involved with the band for a segment of the show called, ‘What Can You Do with The Band?’ This allowed the audience to interact by singing/performing with the band. They loved it and we loved it, too! We were also at the ‘Maverick Flat’ where we worked with lots of comics, spoken word artists and musicians. We worked the top comedy shows and they would have a radio and television show that we would appear on every week as a promotion for the show. This was great for these artists to be seen and heard!
Lady V.O.: It's just God, man! We’ve been performing in Beverly Hills at the Byblos Mediterranean Restaurant and Hookah Bar. It’s a very popular spot and a lot of African Americans are adamant about attending, mainly for the hookah! (laughing). I mean it is insane! Can you imagine, they have a $2 million patio with like fifty hookah tables and a raised stage! It’s beautiful as we get to spread Love Jazz all over it! It’s just been a blessing to be able to be on the stage, because 63
there were no other bands working in L.A. until recently as some are just starting to come back and WE were able to work when things were slow.
The love for Love Jazz has even spread across to their peers who love them as well. With eleven albums to date, they have never paid for a studio and they even genuinely show love to all within the entertainment community.
Lady V.O.: You know we love everyone. Most actresses, actors and musicians are out here competing against each other. Why? We should just complement each other and not worry about what level each is on. We are not going to make more money by dogging each other out. All it does is make us look like the court jesters and gladiators thrown into the pit as they watch us battling each other. Really, we just need to start loving and sharing with each other.
Tracy: Hey, believe that! Lady V.O. is adamant about what she just described. But yes, like she said, because they're self-sufficient, they do what they do, when they want to do it, and the way they want to. It's not that we are doing it like that or that we’re doing what we want to do. Whenever you do things that way, you can generate a lot of negativity when you could be deadening a lot of violence. I've seen Lady V.O. speak to a guy and afterwards he said, “Wow, I'm glad you talked to 64 me, because I was about to go home and kill myself.” There’s been others that have felt that love coming from her and thanked her as well. But we’re out here because God has us working our ministry through music. Besides, Lady V.O insisted that we perform out here amongst the people. There are people all around us and ‘safety’ was just upon us because of the love that comes from the music, like at Merck’s Park, it softens them. So, on my wife’s insistence, she wants to be outside! She doesn’t mind playing indoors, you know like the convention centers and so forth, but outside, performing amongst the people is for her! I see the big picture in her vision, too. Our music rings out to the people and it exudes love, and this is much needed. For that time, it stops the violence and the hate amongst us, and we do that by presenting instrumentation, having that forum for people to perform who may not be able to perform.
Not only does Lady V.O. enjoy playing outside to the people, but she is also known to purchase pizzas or sandwiches from Quiznos or McDonald’s or wherever she can pick up food from. She has even brought ice cream and remembers to bring ice buckets as she KNOWS the community and what they like. “I'm a contributor to earth. I can't help myself. I love giving. I believe that everybody should give, we should make somebody’s day or moment greater than what they think.”
Tracy: And you know, what’s funny about that is that even before Lady V.O. and I met, we would do things that would entail giving. I created a few food programs and I also developed a relationship with a restaurant owner that we called, ‘Dan the Man’ and told him that I was feeding the homeless. After that meeting, every Tuesday night he would give me six big boxes of rib tips so that I could feed the homeless every Wednesday at a local park in Riverside. So, with Lady V.O.’s same passion, we just give away things and for some reason, giving feels great to us, you know what I mean? It really does. They say that it's better to give than to receive!
Lady V.O.: I wanted to share this quickly. I was born in the Bronx; New York City and I love it out there. After I got older, I felt like I needed to go back as much as I could to see where I was born and raised. I would go back to the same apartment building and place the money in the current tenant’s mailbox. They never knew who was giving the money. When I met Tracy, we had gone back there a couple of times. I had gotten to know some of the ladies that lived over there. So, we knocked on my old apartment door and told them that I used to live there as a child and wanted to see the bedroom that I had as a kid. I told Tracy that I’ll never forget, just because I’m doing really great in life. But that apartment was the beginning of my life and made me who I am today as well as the mother that I became to my children. My parents made sure that we had what we needed, and my
father loved taking us on road trips! It was an amazing time, and I instilled that lifestyle in my children! So, going back to the apartment, to my bedroom, brings back so many memories! It was such a great life!
Tracy: That's exactly what Lady V.O. and I have been missing, during this pandemic, even though we travel about locally. We love Palm Springs and San Diego. We love going there a lot and we love to go to the beaches out here, like Malibu, Santa Monica and Redondo. We had so many things lined up in so many places for concerts and it shut down. Not so much shut down, we just don’t want to run into a roadblock in what they're telling us that we have to do. So, we're definitely being careful at the same time. But, we absolutely love road trips. We’d love to go on tour just to get on the road. Lady V.O. is a magical human being. I could just drop her off and in about twenty to thirty minutes we’re playing at a place that just hired us and liked what we did. We don’t always go on preconceived tours because that wouldn’t be fun. It’s just so amazing when you let God plan!
Lady V.O.: Music just causes a vibration within you that is more than perfect. It's rolling with your heartbeat, your timing. It's just the way music presents itself! I loved playing with the drum circles. Leimert Park has one of the biggest drum circles on the planet. There’s nothing that goes on here that goes on at other circles. When you We need to stop warring with each other. You’re down here fighting. I don’t care what reasons you put on it. We down here in this pool fighting and they up there looking down at us
go to New York and you go other places, it’s like they are gentrifying the actual ancestors, the ancestry of it. But over here, the Nigerians are playing the talking drum, the Puerto Ricans bring in the beat. The Haitians come in and see this is an international circle, and they join. Because of the spiritual power, gentrification, can’t break through. You almost have to sit on the edge of it and study something that can’t be understood. It’s coming from the motherland! You’ve got Puerto Ricans, actual Nigerians playing the Nigerian talking drum, Haitians. It's so hard for gentrification to infiltrate such raw steel, because it's still raw. All the other festivals around us, the Wattstax, you go up there, the White people are playing the drums, then it's so Black over here that people just can't wait to revisit it. They can say they've been here, because once they come in here, they can feel this Blackness. Tracy: It goes back to the conversation we had earlier about the removal of music programs in schools, it’s probably not going to mean much to White people. It means a lot to them now because they're making a business out of it. They've institutionalized the music, they're able to take it seriously because they have a coalition and the systemic support that is amazing. But we were the actual gladiators with it, we went to music class and just because an instrument was provided to us, we still used our mental vibe to make it happen. Eventually we became so good at it that we started to receive support. This support wasn’t there as a forethought. They put the monetary value behind when they were putting their kids into whatever area of music they wanted. I just want to mention that jazz is America's only original music. That's why they make the kids go in and take it over because then in the future they'll be able to say they’re playing the original American music, but it'll be White people and I said it.
As we closed, we allowed Tracy and Lady V.O. final thoughts for our readers.
Tracy: Despite what these folks up here is trying to make us do down here. We need to get it together and stop. We need to stop warring with each other. You're down here fighting. I don't care what reasons you put on it. We down here in this pool fighting and they up there looking down at us when we knew we should be like, “Hey, Brother, come 65
follow me.” I could be going up that mountain. I should be climbing up that ladder and you should be behind me. And then a whole group of men and women, brothers, sisters and children all should be climbing up that ladder to get on that plateau, you know, like Pacific Palisades, like Beverly Hills. We should be climbing that mountain to get up there. It doesn't matter if they’re trying to stop us. If we get together and get our businesses, my Lady V.O. posted years ago, get your own business. Just start working on your own stuff. I'm finally trying to 66 get it myself. You already know her, she got me out at the park becoming famous! But, do you see what this really comes down to, what it really is? Me and Lady V.O. can start all kinds of businesses. We work on our own stuff, which is why we can now come and speak to you about us and the things we have going on.
Lady V.O.: The most important thing about living is waking up. When you wake up, you’re supposed to make it a beautiful day with anything that surrounds you making your world beautiful. Instead, you wake up and turn on the television and you’re watching the news, hearing everything negative, I just stay away from the news. If you listen or watch all of this ‘people talk’, you’ll never be able to go anywhere, or do anything! A lot of Black people are stuck in their own mind, body and souls, trapped. I can understand it. That's the way it is, unfortunately, but until you actually see something outside of where you are, you don't know you're trapped!
As we prepared to end this conversation, we continued to talk about the things that we’ve seen all over the country before and during this pandemic. The way humanity treats each other. The way we treat each other. The lack of respect between youths and adults, adults and the elderly and men and women. We can blame the pandemic; however, these were the problems before 2020 in each of the above mentioned. We hoped that there would be lessons learned once this is over, that we come out of this pandemic better people than we were before, humbled, forgiving and full of LOVE!
With that said, “Love is in the air!”—Tracy Neely and Lady V.O.
Much love to you, ALL!—Ambi’ance Uncut
Facebook: Tracy Neely
