Singer-songwriter and ethnomusicologist Juliane Jones finds harmony in what seems like self-identity dissonance. “I occupy a middle space – my world is about intersections,” the New York-based songstress explains. Juliane’s father is Welsh, and her mother is from LA. She has lived internationally in five different places and speaks fluent Chinese and French. She is an ethnomusicologist by profession and an actively gigging musician. Evocatively, Juliane titles her kaleidoscopic, singer-songwriter, English-Chinese hybrid album The Space Between The Telephone Lines.
Juliane’s expansive artistry melds genres and inward/outward travelogues. It’s an exquisitely curated showing of diverse identities, spanning the genres of indie, alternative, folk, pop, electronic music, and rock, as it incorporates her experiences from studying music in China and France. Her writing evokes the astute and playful lyrics of Serge Gainsbourg, and the vivid narratives in the French Chanson genre with elements of Canto-pop music, inspired particularly by the Chinese artist Faye Wong.
Juliane has been building her artist profile through gigging in NYC’s vibrant singer-songwriter scene and expanding her outreach through gigs nationally and internationally, most notably with intimate gigs in Shanghai. In addition, she’s received exposure through having tracks played on Fairchild Radio and TV broadcast in Canada.
A foundational moment in her life’s work timeline occurred while in graduate school in the East Asian Studies Department at the University of Chicago. She was studying the great Italian composer Giacomo Puccini and became inspired by the fact that he integrated Eastern music within one of his operas. It was a revelatory moment: Previously she was a prodigiously talented singer-songwriter with a separate intuitive gift for linguistics and understanding different cultures. This light bulb moment helped her discover the harmony in the space between these worlds.
“Ethnomusicology and songwriting are similar in a lot of ways. Ethnography is really about description, observation, and interpretation. Songwriting is similar, but in writing songs the author can blend fact with fiction—it's more flexible,” she says.
The Space Between The Telephone Lines uses pop conventions to explore intriguing, contrasting dialogues in music styles, cultures, and love. “The progress and innovations in pop have made it the perfect medium to explore different cultures and genres to create a fresh artistic vocabulary,” Juliane reveals.
The album standout, “When You Sleep,” blends elegantly essential classical motifs with sweet folk pop. The accompanying video presents a charmingly quaint snapshot of new love. “That’s about when you get to that point in a relationship when you are so crazy-mad-in-love that you start second-guessing what you have,” Juliane says. The sublime, pastoral pop of “Rhythm & Blues” dissects long distance relationships in a playfully conceptual video and lyric scheme, referencing the Chinese myth of the red string of fate that connects destined lovers.
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