Unveiling Jazz Singing Sensation Sharon van Rooi

Namibia has two categories of female singers: those who are less gifted but working very hard and those who are gifted but also working very hard to refine their craft. Star jazz singer Sharon van Rooi, or simply Sharon by her stage name, belongs to the latter category.

Blessed with a velvet voice that refuses to crack while hitting the high notes, the superlative songbird certainly has a flawless and smooth voice that is definitely designed to create an atmosphere of pure romance.

Anyone who has experienced the beautiful songstress performing on stage will agree that she was undeniably born to be in showbiz. One can safely say the Omaruru-born star is one of Namibia’s splendiferous female singers.
She also remains one of the country’s most popular female jazz singers.

Right from that first moment in 1986 when she stepped onto the stage to sing in front of a huge audience as a 10-year-old during the NBC Music Makers Competition, to the matured singer she has become, she has blown audiences away.

“I started singing at a very early age, I was very passionate. I was only 10 in 1986 when I won the first Music Makers event. My family was always very supportive. I come from a musical family both from my mother’s side as well as from my father’s side.

“In fact, my father’s side is classically oriented. I love singing and I started singing at the age of four because I loved that very much. So, our platform was established at a much earlier stage at church with my mother’s brothers who had various performances in Swakopmund,” she says.

Gospel star Patricia Ochurus, who is widely considered as one of the country’s finest female singers, could not hide her excitement while talking about Sharon.

“I have known Sharon for a very long while and I must say that she is always fun to work with. We used to rehearse a lot together and what I have noticed about her is that she is a perfectionist who doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone,” she says.

“We always had fun when we used to rehearse together with the late Patricia Daniels, who was also another singer that I admired. We rehearsed with Willy Mbuende’s band at his house in Hochland Park and have come to know Sharon as a very strict person as well.”

Sharon praised her father for inspiring her a lot when it comes to music, saying it was a norm within the family to sing together because music is one language that people speak.

Explains the mother of three: “From my mother’s side the singing was much more spiritual, but also much more freely. There weren’t really any challenges during the teething stages of my career because I loved it so much, it was never a challenge.

“When you get to be passionate about something and you are doing it for the love of it then it really becomes much easier and natural. As a matter of fact, I guess the only thing that was new and foreign to me was to perform in front of so many people at such a young age, especially at the National Theatre of Namibia.”

Otherwise, she notes that everything came so naturally for her in terms of sound, stage presence and stage presentation and integrating with musicians, seeing that she came from a big family that is musically oriented.

She points out that the way she entered showbiz was interesting because her father was actually the first person who saw the potential in her.

She would, however, admit that in the beginning she was a little nervous and scared, but because of her passion for singing she was quick to overcome any doubts. Gifted bassist and College of the Arts (Cota) bass lecturer Erwin Amakhoe Gaweseb, who also played with Sharon for long, was only full of praise for the songstress.

“We are coming a very long way with Sharon and I must say she is one gifted singer. I had a jazz band named Just Jazz and she used to be our lead singer. Sharon is a very hard-working person who takes her art very seriously and she has a brilliant ear for music.

“I can say that we had a very wonderful working relationship. She is very strict when it comes to punctuality and would even go and fetch you when you are late. We played strictly jazz but she took me by surprise when she started singing R&B and pop music as well,” Gaweseb says.

True to Gaweseb’s words, Van Rooi famously withdrew from the Windhoek Jazz Festival after the City of Windhoek refused to apologise to her on behalf of the festival committee of 2010.

She still reminisces about an unpleasant incident during the jazz festival in 2010, when she and her band were scheduled to perform in a slot between Vusi Mahlasela and Freshlyground, but the group’s performance was later completely cancelled, because of time constraints. That didn’t go off well with her.

She says people really got to know about Sharon van Rooi through the platform that was established for her through the Music Makers Competition, which she won at such a young age.

“Becoming an accomplished musician within Namibia really opened doors for me both locally as well as internationally. I got to work a lot with the American embassy in Windhoek,” she says.

“It also really bridges me into the ‘American Dream’ in terms of pursuing a career within the United States. That gave me a lot of scope to that extent. It was quite an interesting journey going to America, performing there and integrating with various musicians.”

Van Rooi is quick to point out that she did not only interact with American musicians, but with jazz musicians from Germany and Norway as well.

She was also given an opportunity by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation to run cultural exchange programmes with Europe, based on promoting musical culture.

“The whole integration for me was phenomenal,” she enthuses, adding that “it was exciting and absolutely a dream. When I landed in New York I really had the opportunity of working with various musicians and I had the opportunity to figure out if that is what I really wanted.

“At the end of the day I ended up coming back and I wanted to plough much more within the community but it was also very important at that point in time to be able to be grounded within your country and then go international.”

It is thus very hard to believe that Van Rooi has recorded and released only a few songs, considering her vast talent and experience. However, her fans can console themselves with the assurance that the ‘Mina Kupenda’ hitmaker gave us that she is very confident of releasing an album in the not-so-distant future.

A very big fan of Whitney Houston, she has worked on a few songs that have not been recorded yet, but she has released some tracks, although she didn’t go to the extent of dropping an album yet.

Sharon, who got married to Ole Derra 18 years ago, is currently a music lecturer at the College of the Arts, and she is also studying towards completing a music course equivalent to an honours degree.

In the meantime, she is also doing charity work with the youth, having created a platform for artists to stage arts and culture shows at her family business, Craft Café Bellissima, at the Hilltop Village, behind Grove Mall in Windhoek.