Jenna Sighed - In Retrospect
Interviewed By Sashquita Northey

Jenna Sighed is the solo project of Gauteng based, self-taught musician, Jeanette Meiring. This talented twenty-three year old composed her first melody at the age of seven and attended piano lessons for four years before picking up her first guitar in 2000. Eleven years on Jenna has mastered numerous instruments including violin and bass and has been through extensive vocal training. The result of years of hard work can be seen in the hauntingly beautiful pieces of Jenna Sighed: Needful Things, New Moon and Home Again.

We caught up with Jenna to discuss her music and career.

S: Talk us through the meaning behind the tracks Needful Things, New Moon and Home Again.

J: Needful Things is basically about heartbreak, and how you can want someone so much even though you know they're just going to cause you more pain. This is a very emotional song for me, because writing it and recording it helped me get through a very rough time. I actually cried a little recording the 'I wish I could look into your eyes' part when we were recording vocals, because it was a process of letting go even though it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done.
New Moon, incidentally, was written about the same person who inspired Needful Things. It's amazing how different you can feel about someone over a year and a half. I called it New Moon because at first I could relate to the novel by Stephanie Meyer. I'm not a huge fan of the Twilight series, but I understood the Bella-Jacob dynamic all too well (at the time). It's about loving someone, but not in the way they want you to - being too broken to be good for them. And even though you tell them that they don't give up, but in the end, even after you've given into them and tried to make things better, you're still pretty much as fucked up as you were before you met them.
Home Again is one of my favourite pieces. I wrote it (well, part one - there is a part two) in about two hours, and recorded it the next day, but it was so lovely and natural the way it came to me. It's very simple, but I think it needed to be. It’s about accepting someone that you're in love with being with someone else.
A lot of my songs have themes that involve love in one way or another, and unfortunately those are the ones that are mostly recorded. Waking Nightmares, the recording of which is an abbreviated version for Eistedfodd, is about my ongoing battle with depression. There is one about the AURYN from The Neverending Story, there's even one (although I'm not sure I should carry on with it) that has political undertones.
 
S: You have played in a variety of bands including progressive metal band Black Soul Café (2008) and filthy raw black metal act Necromanteion (2010) but the music of Jenna Sighed has a softer, more feminine touch. Do you find it easy to move between genres and why have you chosen a more gentle style for Jenna Sighed?

J: Jenna Sighed, although it wasn't always named that, has been a project that was running in the background in every band that I've played in. I wrote New Moon and Home Again while playing in Black Soul Café, plus lots of others. There are some heavier songs by Jenna Sighed that will be played live (hopefully very soon) because I'm not aiming for any specific sound except my own. I don't want to sound like Evanescence or whatever; how the song sounds depends on my mood and what I'm listening to at the time, so I don't find it difficult to move between styles at all. I love being unafraid of fitting into a specific genre; it's the main reason why I decided to make Jenna Sighed my focus project.

S: You have a lot of influences from a wide variety of genre’s, including Korn, Cradle of Filth, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Vivaldi and Danny Elfman. What genre has the biggest impact on the music you create?

J: This is a very difficult question to answer. When I was a kid, I listened to pop and wanted to be Sporty Spice; then I discovered Korn and my whole life changed. I've been listening to Metallica since I was about eight (thanks to my older brother, Dylan), but I only got into metal when I was twelve or thirteen, and it was all seven string stuff - Fear Factory, Korn, Adema, Limp Bizkit, etc, so when my mom offered to buy me a guitar, of course I bought a seven string, which has been pivotal in my music. I've used seven-string styles in all of my projects.

Although at the time I was listening to so much Numetal, I couldn't let go of the beautiful music I'd been exposed to over the years that was more mellow, so I carried on listening to my parents' music (Billy Joel, Boston, Kansas, Bob Marley) as well as more mainstream stuff like Pink.

I only got into the heavier stuff a few years later, when I got into Strapping Young Lad, Trivium, Deadlock, Raunchy and that kind of stuff, but I was also still listening to Evanescence and 30 Seconds to Mars as well as a LOT of classical music (Rachmaninov, Michael Nyman, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Schubert). That was when I upped all of my music skills the most, I challenged myself.
I honestly can't say which genre has been most influential. I have such a varied playlist, and when I'm writing I sometimes even draw influences from music I don't really like. There is always something to learn from music, even if it's what NOT to do.
 
S: We see that you have working with William Bishop (Fuzigish) what can we expect from this talented team up?

J: at the moment he is recording and producing my next song, 'Can't See You Now', which will hopefully be finished soon. We are hoping to collaborate on some projects in the future, but for the moment we're just getting the song done. I like Will's attitude towards music and look forward to working with him on a regular basis; I think a collaboration would be very interesting and enjoyable
 
S: What can we expect from Jenna Sighed in the near future?

J: Some new recording, courtesy of William Bishop, and an addition of a second guitarist which will allow us to start gigging. I also have a new website in the works and will keep writing music.
 
Links:
For more info and to listen to recordings check out the official Jenna Sighed website: www.jennasighed.com