QUEEN OF SOUL DANA MASTERS: HOW FALLING IN LOVE BROUGHT ME TO NORTHERN IRELAND
American soul and jazz singer Dana Masters, who lives in Lisburn with her Dromore-born husband Andrew, says coming to Northern Ireland helped her fall in love with music again and launch her singing career. By Linda Stewart
Singer Dana Masters says moving to Northern Ireland was like a breath of fresh air after the frantic pace of life in Los Angeles. Brought up in South Carolina, she met her husband-to-be Andrew Masters at her church in LA — so her move to Northern Ireland seems a whole world away.
Yet she says it was surprisingly easy to settle in — and the Deep South is not as different from here as you might think.
“I’ve always loved it here. We joke and say I am still waiting to have some kind of culture shock or breakdown because it never happened. The culture is very similar here,” the mum-of-three says.
“There was a part of me that felt very at peace here in Northern Ireland. Living in LA, you forget how frantic the city is — you are kind of frantic inside. Moving to Northern Ireland, everything calmed down — there was never a time when I wanted to go somewhere else.”
Dana now lives in Lisburn with her husband, pastor Andrew Masters, who was born in Dromore, five-yearold daughter Norr and three-year-old twins Moses and August — and is rapidly making a name for herself as a soul, blues and jazz singer.
Following years of live performances in collaboration with jazz musician Linley Hamilton, the 34-year-old has produced an EP which is available on her website and is working on an album of new material. Meanwhile, she will be
One of my passions in life is human emotion — and that is why I’m drawn to music and the arts
playing the Island Arts Centre in Lisburn on March 25.
Dana grew up in a family that was heavily involved in the American civil rights movement.
“I was born and raised in South Carolina in the heart of what they call the Deep South and that was one of the pivotal states around the civil rights era,” she says.
“My grandmother, Johnnie Ruth Jenkins, was one of the leaders in the civil rights movement. She had five children and they were all involved when they were very young. So for my mum Sandra Simmons and aunt Brendolyn Jenkins, that was their life growing up. They didn’t really do childhood things so much. Their childhood wasn’t like what I would have had — summer camps and things like that. It was more serious for them.
“My grandmother was a social worker and at that time in America if you did that sort of work, you had a front row seat to what was going on with the marginalisation in society. The natural thing was for her to become a civil rights activist.”
Dana’s mum and aunt were among the very first children in the state to integrate into white schools — and it was far from easy for them.
“Black schools were years behind the white schools,” Dana explains.
“They got second-hand books from the white schools when they were done with them and that meant there would be pages missing and so on.
“My aunt switched [to a white school] when she was in junior high school and my mother switched when she was in primary school.”
Dana says the move was tough and her mum and aunt felt almost like no one liked them any more. There was a certain amount of ambivalence within the black community about moving away from black schools, while many white people were very clear that they didn’t want them in their school, including some of the teachers.
“My mum remembers for years being beaten up every day or stuffed into a locker. What stuck out for me was that I know as a mum how hard that would be, but those people knew there was something bigger that needed to be done for generations to come and people you will never know. The idea that you sacrifice something as big as your family is so foreign to us now,” Dana says.
In contrast, Dana says her childhood was a happy one, growing up in a middle-class suburb in South Carolina.
“I went to one of the best schools of our state and made great grades. My family were very intentional about the children knowing my mother and my aunt’s story and that we were not sheltered from the realities of what happened during that time.”
Dana says that even before Martin Luther King day became a national holiday, the children of her family were taken out of the school to mark the occasion. And when it did become a national holiday they always took part in the celebrations and listened to the speeches — although she admits she wasn’t always that keen.
“I was always aware that I wasn’t allowed to not know that part of my story. When it became a national holiday, my friends got to sleep in and do what they wanted but I was always without fail at the state house listening to Dr King’s speeches.
“I feel like I knew him. He was one of the most important figures in modern history.
“It’s funny because now when I feel a little bit disheartened at anything that’s going on in the world and feel like we are going to hell in a handcart — outside of the scriptures, I will go and listen to Dr King’s speeches just to remind myself that there was a time when things were worse and there were people who had