American jazz singer Meloday Gardot’s career began by accident – literally.
At 19 she was knocked off her bicycle by a car leaving her with horrific injuries.
But Ms Gardot used music therapy to aid her recovery.
Her voice is achingly beautiful, that does not sound like it belongs to a 24-year-old.
But Ms Gardot explains this by saying she has lived two lives – one before the accident when she was a carefree fashion student, and now this.
Knocked off her bike on her way to school in Philadelphia, Ms Gardot almost died, and endured years of painful therapy so she could walk again.
But that does not make the jazz singer bitter.
In fact, she credits the accident with her success.
“At times it’s kinda funny to think about,” she says.
“But when I have to look back, my heart is filled with gratitude in a way, because it came with great difficulty – but brought me further forward than I would have been, had it not happened at all.”
Lying in bed with a smashed pelvis, Ms Gardot taught herself how to play guitar.
A brain injury left her unable to speak for over a year and affected her memory. So she sang herself to sleep to try and remember how.
“I started humming what I was playing so if I was going ‘um-boh-gay-oh-go, um-boh-gay-oh-go’, I would just try and remember those two patterns for a week,” she says.
“That was a challenge, so I would record it, and then I’ll listen back. Eventually a song popped out, and that’s really how it happened – it was sort of by accident.
“Maybe that is where my fate lies, with accidents.”
But hers is no tale of miraculous recovery – to this day the only time she is not in pain is when she is performing, and even that has its challenges.
Neruological damage has left her sensitive to both light and sound – for a time she couldn’t stand to listen to the applause.
“For a while I had a policy where you had to snap at shows – no clapping – and that was very cool for a minute,” she says.
“We did that a lot in New York, and then I started getting a little more used to it, and I went through hearing therapy too.”
She also went through therapy to learn to walk again – three times she tried and three times she failed, until she discovered she was better off in high heels.
“None of the male doctors understand it, they’re like, ‘how can you walk in heels and still have to carry a stick?’, but the thing is my stick is down to balance, but I refuse to be kinda stuck in the mud about it.”
Ms Gardot’s second album ‘My One and Only Thrill’, sees the singer experiment with an orchestral backing.
She also gives a Brazilian bent to the Judy Garland classic Over the Rainbow – a homage to her Grandmother.
“As part idea in child raising, and also part torture, she used to make me watch the Wizard of Oz on repeat – just non-stop, and I know that the music came into my psyche,” she says.
“I was trying to write one day and the song just appeared and rather than fight it I just started to perform.”
Ms Gardot - who describes herself as a ‘touring gypsy’ as she has no house or apartment of her own – will be bringing her travelling road show to New Zealand at the end of the year.