The Japan Times - Saturday, September 14, 1996
I met Jones at Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, Mass., last winter where she was attending and assisting programs. She said she discovered Kripalu several years ago after a visit to Canyon Ranch, a resort spa in the same town. Since then she has been coming to this yoga and transformation center, a place she considers home.
It was "such a musical five weeks," she said, naming highlights that included a workshop with Emmy Award-winning African drummer Babatunde Olatunji, a heart-opening voice and workshop with gifted Kripalu teacher Lorraine Nelson, and piano lessons with Mark Kelso. She said that the expansion and personal development she experiences at Kripalu also brings growth to her career.
During this visit she was chauffeured in a limo to Radio City Music Hall in New York City to record her first two shows for a new show "Sawaki No Borders," which is heard in Tokyo on bayfm 76.1 MHz, Fridays, 7:30-8pm.
Jones regularly hosts J-Wave's (81.3 MHz) "The Essential Love Collection," spinning love music and sound bites for an hour every Sunday, 8:30-9:30pm. Monday through Friday from 5-6 am she hosts "Sunrise Cruise" on bayfm which she says features "adult contemporary music - Western music with a rootsy acoustic edge." Though fluent in Japanese, she does most of her recording in English.
As Jones tell it, serendipity has been a big theme in her life and career.
Though she always loved to sing and write songs in high school, Jones went the academic route because that was what her family expected. After mastering French and Spanish, Jones studied Japanese at Harvard as in intellectual exercise.
An advisor told her about the Monbusho Research Fellowship that brought her to Japan to polish her Japanese. Bored with her formal language classes in Tsukuba, she quit and gained fluency while taking calligraphy with Japanese students. She finished her B.A. magna cum laude at Harvard, then stayed on for a Masters in East Asian Studies on scholarship because she wanted to stay in Cambridge.
Jones said that she "fell into radio" and worked for three years at Harvard station WHRB, doing the Folkways show on Friday afternoons. She managed a band and worked as a concert producer before deciding to try radio in Japan, where she has lived for the past five and a half years.
A radio personality, she has done voice-overs and narrations for radio and television commercials, and in-flight announcements. She said she made a name with her lyrical way of speaking. "People say I talk in poems."
She writes lyrics for Japanese artists, and has also written lyrics for and sung on commercials. In 1994 she made her debut album "Different Skies" which sold out its 15000 copies.
When Jones stopped having enough time to do radio shows live, she began prerecording them on her own schedule. She figures she spends half of her time doing her own music, the other half radio and commercial work.
Though she has appeared on both television and radio, she prefers the latter. "TV is more superficial," she said. "I want people to hear what I'm saying. Voice can communicate so much more than a face - voice is a direct link to the heart."
Never technically trained, Jones values the Japanese quality of sunao (honesty). "The important thing about singing is being honest and heartful... Hopefully people can connect with honesty and find beauty in it," she explains.
In Japan, she explained, singers often do DJ spots to help promote their albums. She feels unique in that she began as a DJ and has become a professional vocalist.
Recording "Pandora's Box" in Ireland was the fulfilment of a dream. Working with top Irish engineer Philip Begley, producer Jimmy Smith, and the Mary Black band, she said she feels great about her new album.
Jones is thinking about creating a base in the United States, for work and to be closer to her family. She says she will always have a home and base in Japan, since it is an essential part of her as well.
