Kavelle Anglin-Christie, Staff Reporter

Cabaret singer Joan Dixon performs during a fund-raising dinner at the Rose Hall Resort and Country Club last August. - File

Joan Dixon has a strong alto voice you can’t help but pay attention to, but it’s not only her voice that makes her stand out. It’s her vibrant stage presence that many an artiste lacks to pull off a successful performance.

These are all qualities she acquired while growing up in Westmoreland, singing on the church choir and later entering the National Festival Queen competition in 1985.

“I was actually the Festival Queen for Westmoreland and after the Festival Queen competition I used to hang around and jam with some musicians. After that I worked on the hotel scene and I started singing and from there I decided that was what I wanted to do. At the beginning, before I started, I would just watch how the artistes who came to the hotel related to the guests and from there I decided I wanted to do cabaret for now,” Dixon said.

Still, with as much talent as Dixon has, very little has been heard of her in the mainstream market. “I don’t know if it has to do with where I’m from. In the hotels, it’s mainly the visitors from the other countries. Kingston is a much bigger area and it’s easier for cabaret acts to be seen and heard. Sav is a little corner and there isn’t much happening here. But I think cabaret is the problem – it has overshadowed me quite a bit,” she said.

Dixon is trying to inch outside the shade of cabaret and splash a ray of mainstream into her work.

Demand for CDs

“I’ve done some stuff, but not recently. I have an original called Love You Baby that I did with the Pot of Gold label ... I really can’t remember the others. I plan to do some more and right now I’m in the process of writing, so sooner rather than later Jamaica can get some more. The other day I performed at a show and backstage people were clamouring for my CDs, and even when I went back to the hotel room people were calling and asking me if any CDs were left. So I definitely need to start working on my album,” she said.

Dixon says her future album will feature a number of musical genres, because she loves music. Still, she can’t help it – she has favourites. “I love Jazz and lover’s rock. Growing up, I used to listen to a lot of rhythm and blues and jazz. I used to love people like Ella Fitzgerald. I just liked the vibe. Plus, I grew up on gospel, so I loved gospel as well. I also grew up listening to Dennis Brown and Bob Marley,” Dixon said.

As for the immediate future, “There is the album that I want to work on for this year, of course, and I would love to get more shows. One of my dreams is to perform on the Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival and also to perform at the Apollo, but right now I really want to get the album out. I want people to have something tangible instead of only seeing me out there.”

Dixon says she can be found performing in a number of hotels including “Starfish, Sandals Whitehouse, Sandals Negril and those places. Those are the three main places, but I am not limited to hotels; I also do functions and stage shows.”

Dixon says though she has not been on many major shows, she has performed at Richie Stephens ‘Unity Splash’ two years in a row, “and I’ve done some stage shows but ‘Unity Splash’ is the main one. I like a proper stage show with clean vibes. The hotels are comfortable, but the bread is not really there. It’s not that I don’t like dancehall, but it’s not really my cup of tea. I like some of the cleaner stuff and I listen to those though. But I’d also love to get a good producer to work with: someone who is really interested in music and not just the money alone.”