Tuesday, October 12, 2010

We can't all be Lennika Johnson

My daughter has a friend, Lennika Johnson, who is engaged to be married, so I thought following up on my "We can't all be Jack Green" post, I'd post about Lennika.

I first noticed her when the Laurel group had a musical number.  The president assumed that the audience would want to hear it based on the social popularity of the girls.  She did not even include some of them in on the practices.  Think of what they were doing as a three person solo, with the others as back up singers.

Of course the "popular" girls had voices that would qualify as "nice."  You know what I mean. Anemic, untrained, ok for part of a choir.  Lennika, on the other hand, had (and has) a professional quality voice.  But, when they had the number, you couldn't tell.  Instead, the group sounded really, really, really good.  Someone, on the fly, was doing transparent support and fill, making everyone sound better without calling attention to themselves.

I've heard lots of people just outclass the people they are singing with.  Or support, but the support was better than the lead.  This was selfless and clean.  Probably the best I've ever heard or seen.  When faced with people who had excluded her and did not deserve it, she did her best to make them sound better without drawing any attention to herself.  If you did not know music and the singers, you would have missed what happened.

I was impressed, it is the thing that sticks out in my mind the most about her.  It is so rare to see people willing to let others shine, to support a group, to not take the easy revenge, who have more self control than ego.

Wish her well with her engagement, and hope that her young man supports her the way she has been willing to support others

3 comments:

Fuzzy Logic Flowers said...

She is pretty awesome. Her kind of genuine joy in making others look good and utter lack of petty jealousy seems to be rather rare among singers of her caliber.
I suppose that's why she and her fiance seem to be such a good fit. He is as focused on letting her shine as she is on helping him.

Matthew said...

I love seeing stuff like that happen. Thanks for sharing this.

Paul said...

What a sweet post. Thanks! Reminds me of once when Elder Packer spoke of an organist who did the same thing for a group of Primary children.

Chances are if this young woman is good like this, she is good in many ways.