China Moses album out now

China Moses is a busy woman these days – apart from launching her new album, the American jazz singer is also getting ready to perform in a London musical.

Most jazz lovers might be more familiar with her mother: Moses is the daughter of jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Though she was born in Los Angeles, Moses grew up in Paris.

“I’m a French girl with an American passport. I have the American accent and everything but I’m very, very Parisian and actually very proud of it,” she says.

For someone who was steeped in the world of music and theatre since she was a child, China Moses’ career path was obvious.

But she still admits to getting nervous when performing:

“Your job is to make people laugh, cry and entertain them, so there’s no reason to be scared. What you should be scared about is that energy, if you’re able to convey it or not and if the public feels it or not. That I do get scared about. But I only get scared after the first song, that moment when you get to the last couple of seconds of the first song and you don’t know how the audience is going to react, (…) whether there will be an applause, that’s the moment actually that scares me the most,” she says.

For some, being the daughter of a world-famous jazz singer could have been a burden – but not for China Moses, who says it was an inspiration.

“My mother put me in a situation where I had to go and meet people, I had to go and be curious. She kind of forced me into that and I quite enjoy it. She calls me her “mini-me” and I gladly accept my mother calling me her “mini-me”. I look like her physically, my voice sounds a lot like hers. It is my mum who pushed me into music. She saw something in me that I didn’t even know I had and I will forever be thankful of her,” she says.

Moses will be starring in “Cafe Society Swing” later this month, a musical about a legendary New York club, which, in the late 1930’s and Forties hosted some of the biggest names in jazz including Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. It was also the first racially desegregated club in New York.

China Moses’ album, “Crazy Blues”, is out now.