Nnenna Freelon - Biography

Biography

Chinyere Nnenna Pierce was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Charles and Frances Pierce, and as a young woman she sang extensively in her community and the Union Baptist Church and at St. Paul AME. She has a brother Melvin and a sister named Debbie. Nnenna graduated from Simmons College in Boston, with a degree in health care administration. For a while she worked for the Durham County Hospital Corporation, Durham, North Carolina. From the Kennedy Center interview with Nnenna:

"I started singing in the church, like so many others. . . ." She suggests that her influences included several "not famous people," as well as such familiar names as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, artists whose records her parents played at home. "Its important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says, grateful that her parents did just that. Nnenna followed her grandmother's sage advice regarding those singing aspirations. "I did something that my grandmother told me: 'bloom where you're planted’, "don't get on a bus and go to New York or L.A., sing where you are."