Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaclyn Lizzi.
Hi Jaclyn, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in a singing kind of house here in Houston. My favorite childhood memories involve sitting on the floor in the living room with my sister, singing in loud childish voices, accompanied by my mom on the guitar.
I didn’t discover my love of languages until middle school. Originally, I was just going to take the mandatory two years of Spanish, but I fell in love with the process of language-learning. Soon after, I started learning French, even volunteering for summer school so I could study Spanish and French simultaneously.
These two passions melded naturally when I started experimenting with translating songs as a teenager. I even made an English version of the first song I learned in French (“Je Veux” by Zaz) when I was a teenager and published it on Youtube.
My adolescent video-making projects a teenager morphed into pursuing a career in filmmaking. While I have primarily worked in the Grip and Electric departments, which handle lighting and camera movement, I’ve also written and directed three short films in the past three years that are in various stages of completion.
Although I had moved away for college, I moved back to Houston in 2022 and am so proud to be among the city’s creatives.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There’s been struggles both on the film side and the music side. I was only freelancing in production for three years before COVID hit and decimated the film industry. It hadn’t fully recovered before the second longest writer’s strike put another pause on filmmaking.
Many people left the industry, and I don’t blame them. I stuck around, found some side jobs, and poured my creative energy into my own projects between paid shoots. The challenge of indie filmmaking is always money, but the advantage of working in film professionally (especially in a technical field) is having talented friends who are willing, on occasion, to donate a weekend of their time.
On the music side, especially with my song translation project, I didn’t have any challenges until I started gaining a larger audience the last two years. What I do is very niche, but it is also one of my greatest passions and greatest comforts.
While I am thrilled to be building a community of like-minded people who are interested making these songs accessible to a larger audience, the natural consequences of more views is more criticism. On top of that, I hadn’t worked professionally as a musician, so doing my first live show last year at 28 years old (in another country, no less!) was nerve-racking but rewarding experience. Singing from the safety of my own home is very different than singing on a stage, but I’m learning to rise to the challenge.
On all accounts, I am proud of how far I’ve come and acknowledge that I have a long way to go. I can only hope that I’ll be kind to my past self at each step of the way.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am most known for my song translation project on Youtube. What started as a few one-off adaptations as a teenager (primarily adapting French songs I liked into English) has grown into my longest-running creative project. I’ve adapted nearly a hundred songs between English, French, Spanish, and Italian, and I have no plans to stop.
This project has also presented me with new opportunities. My quarantine project back in 2020 was adapting a French rock opera called “Mozart, l’Opéra Rock” into English. When I shared a medley of my English versions on social media, Mikelangelo Loconte (who played the titular Mozart) reached out to me. Over the following months, I collaborated with him on the English lyrics for his new album Art Decade, which just released this April.
Covid was a strange time that sparked a lot of change. It’s also in 2020 that I discovered a song called (L’Amérique pleure” (America cries) by a very famous (though I didn’t know it at the time) French Canadian band called Les Cowboys Fringants. It’s a touching song, both powerful and understated, and it affected me enough that I took a break from adapting the rock opera to try my hand with an English version of it. Three years later, the lead singer Karl Tremblay passed away from cancer, and suddenly it was shared to over a hundred thousand people within weeks, and I became party to an outpouring of grief and love bigger than anything I had experienced before.
I find myself now with a sizable audience from Quebec. Through their suggestions, I’ve discovered a plethora of artists that I never would have known otherwise, though I still don’t think I’ve made sense of the mixed beauty and tragedy of how I got here. I just returned from my second trip to Quebec, where I was able to do two small shows between radio and television interviews, and was blown away by the kindness and generosity of spirit they have towards me.
I like to think that what I do connects people. Although I’ve lived my whole life in Texas, I’ve always been interested in art and music from the rest of the world. It started as a creative exercise and a way to share songs I enjoyed with friends and family, and it has grown into something truly special.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was a shy, awkward kid. Early experiences taught me that sharing my real interests would not be rewarded. I remember writing songs and poems as early as elementary school, but they were met with disinterest or distaste, and I stopping sharing.
But I didn’t stop writing.
There’s a flavor of creative person that cannot help but create. It’s a compulsion. It starts with those little nothings written in the margins of composition books, and then it morphs into playing the guitar and the clarinet and writing angsty poetry on deviantart and learning Spanish and French (and then learning Spanish and French songs and poetry) and making Youtube videos to share my silly songs and ideas.
Youtube in 2010 was not the corporate behemoth it is today. It was a refuge for awkward kids with few friends and no transportation. When I started making videos, I found a way to express myself, safer with total strangers than anyone in my real life.
That said, I’m not truly introverted. I can’t stand to be by myself for too long, and I thrive in high-energy environments with other people. I just didn’t find my community until I was an adult, and it took many years for me to believe that what I have to say is important. Once I realized my voice mattered, I couldn’t stop. And I don’t want to.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaclyn_lizzi/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576870588900#
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Jaclyn_Lizzi
Image Credits
Raphaël Couture
Rikesh Pun
Landon Taylor
Shay Fleming
Taylor Smith
