Silken-voiced Janita, an iconic music figure in her native Finland, has enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success alike throughout her varied career as a musician and recording artist. Long rooted in New York City, the singer and songwriter has seen the world…and borne it on her shoulders.
During her last performance at Mercury Lounge in 2019, Janita’s rich, emotional voice and fiercely commanding stage presence stunned the audience as she played an array of her past work, and introduced some of the new songs from her album, Here Be Dragons, including a powerful cover of Peter Gabriel’s classic track, Digging In The Dirt.
Janita’s mesmerising, androgynous presence and piercing, curious eyes recall Annie Lennox and Bowie’s Thin White Duke, while her soothing croon is a balm to bruised hearts. Digging In The Dirt originally appeared on Peter Gabriel’s 1992 album Us, following with a more intense alternative performance on his eleventh album, Secret World Live. Janita does the song electrifying justice, taking it from Gabriel’s ‘dark night of the soul’ and rejection of toxic masculinity, to a woman picking up pieces of a fractured mirror and examining the fallout.
Here Be Dragons is now available everywhere via ECR Music Group. The album was produced and recorded by indie-music luminary Blake Morgan, who leads the #IRespectMusic campaign, a grassroots movement galvanizing musicians on their right to get paid for airplay.
Janita (pronounced “YU-nee-tuh”), it cannot be understated, is a badass offstage. Representing the #IRespect Music campaign since 2014, she has helped to push for crucial legislation changes to the music industry in favour of the artists who create it. Janita herself took the cause to Representatives Marsha Blackburn, Jerrold Nadler, Doug Collins and Ted Deutch, as well as representatives of the National Music Publishers’ Association and RIAA. In 2015 the movement’s hard work was rewarded with a bill introduced, proposing federal legislation that broadcast companies must be forced to begin paying artists and record labels for songs played on terrestrial radio.
Watch the stunning black and white performance video for Digging In The Dirt, directed by Anthony Friend, below.
In an interview with Janita, she describes the connection to the song and putting her personal spin on it.
Follow Janita:
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