As Voice of Pride gears up again, last year’s trans entrant Jazsmyne Kelli reflects on her experience
A SONG IN HER HEART | Jazsmyne Kelli was proud to be the first trans semi-finalist at VOP last year, but her singing career continues. (Arnold Wayne Jones/Dallas Voice)
RICH LOPEZ | Contributing Writer
getrichindallas@gmail.com
Even though the title of the game show Jazsmyne Kelli once hosted at The Brick is called Are You Smarter than a Drag Queen night, Kelli feels more like a combination of Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak and Vanna White as she would read questions to contestants and then got to do some fabulous presenting where needed. But there’s one thing she mentions whenever the show starts: “I am not a drag queen,” Kelli says — always.
She stopped hosting the show last year, but has replaced it with karaoke host duties. Whatever her adventure, she’s enjoying the ride.
The past year or so has been a significant one for Kelli, and hosting Smarter was indicative of her growing presence in the community. While she’s no stranger to the Dallas scene — she performed and competed in drag at the clubs for years — Kelli, as a trans woman, finds herself returning to her original calling.
“When I’m singing onstage, I’m quite nervous,” she says. “It doesn’t matter who either, because I’m a pretty shy person actually. I don’t need to absorb the spotlight, but I want to make the audience feel good. I want to entertain people.”
She stepped away from pageants to return to singing — in a big way. With confidence in her talent, not to mention already knowing how to work a stage, she entered the preliminaries of the 2012 Voice of Pride contest. As a karaoke host, she had some familiarity with the goings-on.
“You don’t really think how far you’re going to get, but I would get mixed emotions on how contests can be biased or political,” Kelli says. “When I made my first prelim, it motivated me to go further.”
While making the rounds, Kelli began meeting other contestants along with bar owners of venues she says she likely wouldn’t venture into. When, Michael Doughman, Dallas Tavern Guild’s executive director, announced at the Dallas Eagle that Kelli would advance to the semifinals, he said Kelli was the first trans person known to have advanced so far. She was shocked — not because he made the announcement, but because she realized she was the first.
“Seeing how so many of us do make the drag rounds, it was a little shocking but I was honored,” she says. “And interestingly, I got a lot of support after that.”
Riding high on the support, she entered the semis, but that would not be her night. She placed out of the 10 who advanced to the finals. She admits not making the cut bothered her.
“After that, I couldn’t let it rest in my head,” she says. “I kept asking myself, ‘Where did I go wrong? What could I have done better?’”
Two days later, though, came a phone call.
“When I saw [Doughman’s name on Caller ID], I kid you not, I knew why he was calling,” she says. “So I composed myself and called him back and he told me
I was in due to a disqualification of another singer. I just knew it for some reason. I felt like something bigger wasn’t done with me yet.”
She laughs because when she remembers that gave her less than two weeks to prepare, she almost didn’t need it.
“We call that in the industry being ‘drag ready,’” she chuckles. “I felt that gave me some advantage because I graduated Drag 101 a long time ago.”
VOP veteran Angie Landers took the top prize last year, but to say Kelli “lost” would be a misstatement … at least as far as she’s concerned. She’s discovering a few more people know who she is and also realize that she actually is a singer.
“Oh, it has given me a lot of exposure and has given me opportunities like hosting Smarter and being in front of more people, and I love doing that,” she says.
“Of course I wanted to win the contest and the prizes, but I feel like I put myself in a position where I could win either way.”
You could say there’s even more to her newfound exposure. Kelli isn’t going to call herself a representative of the trans community, but she does recognize the positives behind being the first at something. She disassociated herself from drag pageants so the lines wouldn’t be misleading and is now “just being a woman.” And that’s what she hopes people might get out of knowing just who Jazsmyne Kelli is.
“I only want to represent who I am as an individual but also dispel some stereotypes of trans women. We’re regular women, we go shopping, we have positive relationships,” she says. “I don’t want people to look at me as transgender. I want them to think, ‘She’s a talented lady.’”
That she is.
For more information on Voice of Pride, visit DallasTavernGuild.org/Voice_of_Pride.asp.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 28, 2013.