Cool Cat Melody Gardot
“words are children. we help shape and form them, protect them and give them our best but in the end, like fathers, we only give them away.”
Melody Gardot (born February 2, 1985 in New Jersey) is an American jazz singer, writer and musician in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She was disabled at 19 after being struck by a car while riding her bicycle. After her accident Gardot began writing music and since then often speaks and advocates in favour of using music for therapy. The accident had damaged the neural pathways between 
the brain’s two cortexes which control perception and higher mental function and made Gardot (in her own words) “a bit of a vegetable.”
As well as making it very hard for her to speak or communicate properly, she found it difficult to recall the right words to express her feelings. Music involving listening and making a verbal attempt to sing or hum is thought to help the brain form new pathways. At first, Gardot learned to hum and was eventually able to sing into a tape recorder. She made good progress and was eventually able to write original songs that sometimes talked about her rehabilitation.
She has been influenced by such blues and jazz artists as Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin as well as Latin music artists such as Stan Getz and Caetano Veloso.
Check out some of her YouTube videos below…
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