If musician Ginetta Vendetta were a character, she’d be a cool-jazz superhero in leopard-skin stilettos. Her super-sized black locks, long enough to sit on, would fill in for a cape. And though the 40-plus silver bracelets she wears might not unleash Wonder Woman weaponry, her arms would still hold the source of her superpower — a trumpet small enough to throw in her purse.
We’re talking one-of-a-kind here. The leader of the band Ginetta’s Vendetta credits herself as the only female of the very few pocket trumpet-playing bandleaders around. That distinction, however, may only be the most quantifiable for the part-time Fort Lauderdale resident, who has performed internationally as a UNESCO Jazz Ambassador and who appears throughout Broward County — such as at Fort Lauderdale’s North Beach Art Gallery’s art and music series on Thursday, Oct. 17, where she’ll debut a new CD, and at Riverwalk’s Sunday Jazz Brunch on Sunday, Dec. 1. She also plays regular gigs with her trio at Blue Jean Blues in Fort Lauderdale.
Among Vendetta’s other distinctions are her vocal stylings, which like her horn-playing, riff mainly at registers unexpectedly low for her slender 5-foot frame (which she says explains the title of her latest album, “Fun Size”), not to mention a stage persona that’s at once splashy, sassy and sophisticated. Then, of course, there’s that last name. Doubling as a stage name and the name of her band, it was bestowed on her in a Native American naming ceremony by her musician friend, Eric Oxendine.
“He was a powerful Native American drummer, medicine man, and also a great bass player who played with Jimi Hendrix for years,” says Vendetta, adding that he gave her the name as much for its relevance as for its rhyme.
“I’m a real go-getter,” she says after revoking a less complimentary alliteration to explain the “Vendetta” appellation. “That’s a better way to say it. I brook no nonsense.”
To illustrate, she recounts confronting club owners who tried to jip her. “I would tell them, ‘Look, either you shake your waiters and hang them upside down by their ankles and get their tips, or I’m going to rob your liquor.’
“So my friend Eric obviously knew my personality. I mean, I’m no shrinking violet. I’m an Italian New Yorker. So come on.”
Vendetta, whose real surname of Minichiello is of Neapolitan descent, splits her time between Fort Lauderdale and Chelsea in Manhattan, where she’s lived since she was 17. Like many big-city dwellers, it took the COVID pandemic to make her move.
“My boyfriend lived on 44th; I lived on West 20th. And we didn’t see each other for six months because nobody was leaving their apartments. I was probably the only person who lost weight during COVID because I was having some serious PTSD with all the isolation. And he finally said, ‘I’m leaving.’ And I said, ‘I’m going with you, dude. I’m going to take a leap of faith.’ We got on a plane with like 12 masks on, you know. He had rented an apartment sight-unseen (on Galt Ocean Mile). And we lucked out. It turned into a beautiful place, right on the ocean.”
Vendetta regularly shuttles back for gigs in New York City, which she considers more of a “jazz town” than South Florida. “There are many more jazz enthusiasts and jazz spots there than here,” she says, noting a potential upside. “I find people here are just as engaged as anywhere else in the world. My job as a jazz ambassador is to introduce people to jazz, and here in Broward it seems there are more folks in need of an introduction.”
Vendetta’s plays what you could call highball jazz — the straight-ahead, whiskey-soda grooves synonymous with supper clubs, smoky lounges or mid-century modern living room hifis. She covers the standards, of course, but much of her repertoire comes from her own compositions — which is partly what brought about her band to begin with in 1993.
“I had been a sideman for so many years with crazier and crazier band leaders that I just thought, I got to go off on my own. I wanted to be the boss and I wanted to write. I had a lot of originals. My first record is all original tunes. And I wanted to sing more. As a sideman, you really don’t get to do that as much.”
It was, however, a more physical than idealistic impetus that prompted her switch from trumpet to the smaller, lighter pocket trumpet. By the early 2000s, hours of daily practice with the larger one that she’d been playing since age 9 brought on early-onset arthritis in her left hand. A trusted teacher suggested she try the pocket version, and she’s been playing it ever since.
“If you hand this horn to Wynton Marsalis, the greatest player, he still wouldn’t get a beautiful tone out of it, because it takes a different blow, and that takes practice,” she says. “It took six months of constant playing to learn how to play it correctly . . .. It’s got the same length of tubing as a trumpet, it’s just jammed up smaller, which means you have to blow harder. So therein lies the disadvantage of the pocket trumpet.
As for advantages, Vendetta says the only one is its size. “It’s smaller and you can just throw it in a bag. But as for musical advantages and/or disadvantages, that only is in the player. The pocket trumpet has just as much range, depending on your chops, on your power.
“A lot of people say they cannot believe the sound of my pocket trumpet. I also love the really low notes. I’ll end a tune often, instead of popping the really high ones — because that’s not my forte, the high chops — I’ll pop a really low note that even sometimes sounds kind of like a tuba.”
Of course, being one of the few pocket-trumpet-playing bandleaders is one thing. Being a female band leader is quite another. “You have to be one part MacGyver, because when you’re on tour, you got to be able to just make it work with what you have — and one part mother hen, because you got to take care of your boys . . . And then the third part is diplomat, because being a band leader, especially with men, means not micromanaging.”
She says in her younger days she was really rough on the guys.
“I’d be smiling at the audience and then spinning around on my high heels, cursing . . . You can’t do that. Now I have mellowed out. I call it a kinder, gentler Ginetta.”
Aligning with her distinctive tendencies, Vendetta’s career trajectory is probably not the typical jazz musician’s. Though she cites Ella Fitzgerald’s “Cole Porter Songbook” album as one of her biggest influences, she also name-checks artists like Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan. And though she praises Latin jazz giants like trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as inspirations, she didn’t start out as a mainstream jazz musician. Earlier in her career, she played with various Latin and blues bands.
“I don’t know if I was ever a blues player per se. It was just based on what gig you could get. And I never really studied jazz like most of my guys. I’m more of an emotive player. I play what I feel in more of a primitive way. I would liken my playing to Grandma Moses’s painting. She was what they called a primitive, and that’s almost the same with me.
“I just played with the best guys, listened to a lot of people and then just kept doing so many gigs and hammering stuff out. I just sort of evolved out of necessity.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Ginetta’s Vendetta Performance and CD Release Party”
WHERE: North Beach Art Gallery, 3334 NE 34th St., Fort Lauderdale
WHEN: 6 to 9 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 17
TICKETS: $25 suggested donation
INFORMATION: Call (954) 667-0660, nobegallery.com; for information on Ginetta’s Vendetta appearances, go tor
http://ginettasvendetta.com
