We were lucky to catch up with Juri Jinnai-Cramer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Juri, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I am obsessed with learning.

I have always loved singing and performing since I was very little and I’ve known that’s what I wanted to do for living pretty much for my entire life so I am very lucky that way.

I was taking piano lessons as stereotypically many asian kids go through – either piano or violin since I was 3yrs old in addition to gymnastic classes and ballet lessons (thank you parents!) but I never took a voice lesson until I moved to the states when I was 22 when I attended Berklee College Of Music and to be honest, I am happy it happened that way – it probably helped me to learn to sing in English faster as I didn’t have to unlearn the ways to sing in Japanese so much.

That’s being said, my learning process has been pretty much a try and fail basis and I never really cared about the speed of my learning as much as the direction of my learning so I don’t really have a good tip for the speeding up the process.

I took every ear training class that Berklee had to offer + started to take dance lessons once I moved to NYC and to be able to hear and feel the groove I believe is one of the most essential skills that I am glad I worked on – and still working on!!!

And the obstacles, oh man, I got a long list. The language barrier to cultural difference to being a female artist in the mens world… the list goes on and on but I kept going and I will keep going:)

Juri, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always loved singing and performing so to be an artist just felt like an obvious choice of career. Started from singing in a choir where I learned how to harmonize and blend, writing my own songs in Japanese when I was in the high school, then formed a band called “Nanasi” (means no name in Japanese) with my dear friends where I learned co-writing and collaborating. Thanks to my parent’s guidance and cultural influences, I never had an issue with discipline and to have plans and tackle one plan at a time really satisfies me – like playing a fun game!!!

Using all the lessons I’ve learned and still learning, I have been mainly working as a singer, songwriter, performer, vocal arranger and performance coach. Especially the coaching aspect of my carrier came later in my life when I started to teach at this amazing 10 days program called VocalizeU which happens every July in Los Angeles, California.

As I am not the most technical vocal coach, my approach tends to be more holistic – what feels good for you, is what you are doing agreeing with your gut feeling etc while acknowledging the importance of the tangible skills as I believe that the skills are like the grease to smooth up the delivery rail of your artistry. So I think it’s always a good idea to have a few people you trust that you can go to for guidance so your point of views don’t end up being one sided.

I often get comments from people saying I seem really confident and it always makes me laugh cause for a long time I was far from it. I have always been pretty comfortable in my own skin though. I just had this thought that me being comfortable in my own skin made people around me uncomfortable so I was trying to shrink myself. One of the things that for sure helped me from stop shrinking myself was to find my community with like minded people. It is such a cliche thing but you truly cannot please everyone.

And I am proud to say that I have overcome a major life obstacle – stage 4 colon cancer. Not only I am happy to say that I am in remission but also, I never stop making music during the time. Rather, music helped me to stay optimistic and motivated when things get rocky. I am here to listen and encourage all type of creative people when they face life challenges – you can do it:)

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

People in my life occasionally tell me that I am strong or intimidating. Those perceptions from my immediate community took a while to sink in with me. However, the last couple years of going through the stage 4 cancer battle, I finally started to see those qualities in myself. I really fought the battle with my whole being while I kept writing, recording and performing when I could. Losing this battle just wasn’t an option for me. But of course, I am only as strong as the love and supports from my friends and family and just knowing that there are people who want me to stay alive was more than enough for me to stay resilient.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I love psychology, philosophy and spiritual realm that’s beyond our humanity.

As sociable as I generally am, I always felt like a misfit. I still do. And what helped me the most in the recent years is MBTI – Myers Briggs Type Indicator – I got obsessed with this personality indicator that was build based on Carl Jung’s psychological types by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers.

I read a few books about MBTI, listen to podcasts, and even got my type identified by a professional MBTI counselor. It turned out, my type is INTJ – introvert, intuitive, thinking and judging – the rarest type for women. Reading the description of what INTJ means and its traits, nothing else has ever made me feel more understood. And watching and listening to other INTJ women’s stories made me feel more comfortable to be a misfit.

And the amazing thing about MBTI is that it gives you tangible tools to expand and elevate your life and personality.

Another one is The Steal Like An Artist Trilogy. These three books are not only very informative but also it has a power to motivate me every time I listen to its audiobook!

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