A story of a lifelong love of music
About Jan Lovett
How Jan journeyed from childhood performer to singer-songwriter in later life.
Who is Jan Lovett?
“I have never known a time when music wasn’t part of my life.”
Born in South-East London, I have never known a time when music wasn’t part of my life. At the age of 5, a family friend gave me a ukulele as a gift and I progressed to the guitar later on.
A love of South American folk music came into my heart when I was quite young and, together with my sister and father, we formed the Paraguayan folk trio “Los Pycasú” (Guaraní for “The Singing Doves”).
A chance meeting with the legendary Luís Alberto del Paraná and Los Paraguayos led to Luís arranging for a Paraguayan harp to be shipped over to us; our Trio was complete with the harp and two guitars. Luís was a close friend until his death.
We visited Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and appeared on Asunción’s popular TV programme “Noches Folklóricas” on Channel 9. I also became the European correspondent for a Paraguayan folk music magazine “Eireté ñu” (“Country Honey”).
Becoming a songwriter
How it all started...
It was in 2020 that I heard of an online course being run by James Hawkins Music entitled “Unlock Your Christmas Song”. I knew James Hawkins well and knew it would be a good course, so I signed up.
Shortly afterwards, I realised that writing a “traditional” Christmas song would not be possible for me and I felt that I should pull out. However, the stubbornness of my nature would not let me do that and so I ploughed on.
The result was “Christmas is in the Heart” – a song that I am extremely proud of. I guess it’s my way of saying that we can find the Christmas feeling in everything that’s around us. I find this song a great comfort to listen to, whatever time of the year.
After the song was released, I realised that song writing wasn’t over for me; in fact, I couldn’t stop. The note pad, pen and voice recorder were always close by, because I never knew when a lyric or a melody would pop into my head. Unfortunately, I missed out on a lot of beautiful stuff that came into my head whilst driving…
Acknowledgments
I give my grateful thanks to the following people:
James Hawkins for producing, arranging, recording, mixing and mastering my music
Cheryl at Gillyfleur.com for my artwork and website design
Robyn Harper Photography for my brilliant photos
Robyn Shooter (makeup artist)
Musicians: James Hawkins, Will Cragg, Peter Hawkins, Jonjan Kavlakoglu and Rob McCann
Miranda Mills (video production and backing vocals)
And to my family – past and present – for their love and support