Photo by Jazzella McKeel
It’s a daunting life change to relocate halfway across the country in pursuit of your dreams and ambitions. That’s where Damoyee Janai finds herself now, having relocated from Dallas to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music. The emerging singer and multi-instrumentalist is fresh off the release of her 2019 album The Whole Truth, an adept journey through the many genres that make up her sound.
In conjunction with the album, Janai is premiering her debut music video, a combination visual for her songs “Evolution (Interlude)” and “Change.” The choice to package these tracks together makes sense, as the ambient piano of “Evolution” leads directly into the melody of the following song. To describe the track, Janai says, “The composition of ‘Evolution’ represents the chaos in [my] brain prior to the concept for a full song becoming completely clear. [I] began writing Change in 2016 after a series of unexpected setbacks and disappointments in [my] life and music journey. The song remained incomplete for nearly three years.”
The video begins with a simple definition, stating that evolution is “the gradual development of something, especially of a simple to a more complex form,” before showing footage of the singer stepping out of a car, unloading empty boxes, and bringing them inside a house. Over the course of the video, we see Janai start to pack up her life amid shots of her singing against scenic footage of her home city of Dallas. On top of that, there’s home footage of her as a child at piano recitals and more, furthering the feeling that this track comes from such an incredibly personal, self-reliant point of view. One of the coolest subtle moments of the video comes when Janai picks up a childhood photo of her playing piano before the video cuts to a recording of that very same performance. It’s that eye for consistency that effectively captures the feeling of nostalgia and how these totemic objects and snapshots can send us on a flooding wave of memory.
Throughout the video, the singer smiles and displays an unrelenting, joyous confidence. Among the final shots of the video is footage of Janai packing the boxes in her car, adjusting her rear view mirror, and driving off to begin the next chapter of her life, hero-in-the-sunset style. “‘Change’ is about the transformation from a former version of self to an extraordinary, multi-dimensional being.” With the skill she displays in her songwriting and delivery, this transformation will be fruitful.
Watch the video for “Evolution (Interlude)/Change” below, and listen to The Whole Truth on your preferred streaming service.