Rhonda Ross Kendrick Just So You Know

A slight, fashionably dressed woman with a familar grin under a cloud of natural hair stands earlier a group of 25 teenagers at Youthville in the New Eye.

The classroom is merely blocks from Woodward and Alexandrine, where struggling songwriter Berry Gordy Jr. pitched songs in a manager's office almost 60 years ago.

The adult female is Rhonda Ross Kendrick, she is the Motown founder's daughter, exuding his happy warrior bravado. She also has her father's addiction of saying "Ah... ah ... ah" when his thoughts are racing alee of his words.

"I definitely practise that, although not as often as he does," Ross Kendrick said afterward, laughing. "And I also chew my natural language, like him. When I practise that, my married man and my mother both say 'You look similar your father!' "

She's likewise inherited winsome features and mannerisms from her mother — that would be Diana Ross — and her silky, one-shouldered black top could have come straight from the '70s wing of Ross' closet.

But Ross Kendrick, now 44, married and the mother of vi-year-old Raif, is non strictly the sum of her parents' Dna. She's struggled to discover her ain identity as a singer, as the kid of two musical legends but insisted on forging her ain path.

Finding your unique gift despite the expectations of others — in her case, beingness in the shadow of ii such potent personalities — was a large part of her message to the 25 youths attention "Motown Edu," a weeklong summer camp run past the Motown Historical Museum. Coached by professionals, the students write and produce music and create electronic press kits for themselves.

On Thursday, singer KEM talked most his path to fame, going the independent road and developing his ain following before signing with Motown. Today it's Ross Kendrick's turn to impart some of her male parent'south Motown philosophy, filtered through her ain perspective.

"My mother is Diana Ross and my begetter is Berry Gordy, so I am literally, the child of Motown," Ross Kendrick told the kids. "I needed to discover a way to be truthful to myself, despite the fact that people already had an thought of who I was."

Promoters — and fans — assumed Ross Kendrick would exist a duplicate of her mother, either in her Supremes days, or "young '70s Diana," singing either commercial pop or Motown. "But I was actually drawn to jazz," she said. "I love Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln." Her married man, Rodney Kendrick, a jazz pianist, was the first to tell her she had her own art to explore. "He said, 'You don't have to flow in the river of expectations.'

Ross Kendrick was her mother's outset child, born in 1971, merely after her relationship with Motown founder Gordy unraveled. Ross went on to have two daughters with husband Bob Ellis: Tracee Ellis Ross, 42, Chudney Ross, 39, then ii sons, Ross Naess, 27 and Evan Ross, 26, with her second husband, Swiss man of affairs Arne Naess.

Despite her hectic solo career, which was at its peak in the '70s, when she was having her daughters, Diana Ross managed to be a easily-on mother with children who seemed to accept reached adulthood relatively unscathed, afterward growing up in a celebrity fishbowl.

Or as Ross Kendrick put it: "Somehow my female parent raised five children, and we're not in and out of marriages or rehab or jail, and we don't have a reality show."

Part of information technology was Diana Ross made it articulate to her children that while they were famous, it was merely a small part of who they were. "'You have to figure out who yous are, and what you want to do' she always told us."

Ross Kendrick isn't strictly a jazz singer anymore, that became a "box" she needed to break out of, she said. Rather than dressing a certain mode, singing sure songs, she wanted to limited herself in music that drew from R&B, rock and gospel, also.

"I don't accept anywhere most the career my mother has," Ross Kendrick said, "just I feel content."

You might expect xv and 16-year-olds to not know who Berry Gordy or Diana Ross is, but this is Detroit, and everybody has mothers who loved the Jackson 5; aunties or grandmas who attended the Fox Motown Revues or pirhouetted in front of the TV along with Diana, Mary and Flo on the "Ed Sullivan Show."

Zuri Snyder, xvi, a student at Royal Oak High School, smiles intently throughout Ross Kendrick's presentation and asks several excited questions afterward. She may exist a Beyoncé fan, but, "I grew upwardly on Motown," Snyder insisted. Her favorite Motown creative person is Diana Ross ( "I love her!"). "My auntie heard most this army camp, and she called me," she added.

Camper Gregory Cook Jr. of Southgate, a U of D Jesuit student, is 15, but he knew already that Ross Kendrick was Diana Ross' daughter. "My mother introduced me to Michael Jackson and Diana Ross," he said.

Withal, when Ross Kendrick tells the students that her brother Evan married Ashlee Simpson a year ago and just had a babe, and that her sis Tracee is on the hit show "Blackness-ish," there are instant nods and murmurs. These are boldface names the teenagers recognize instantly.

Although she lived with her mother while growing up, Ross Kendrick connected with her father as an adult and absorbed many of his favorite sayings and philosophy.

There's the Rudyard Kipling poem "If," one of the Motown founder'southward touchstones.

"He lives by it!" Ross Kendrick said, laughing. "I don't know it by heart — my father made his children who lived with him do that — but I tin quote some lines."

She has a go at information technology: "If you lot can continue your caput when all most y'all are losing theirs and blaming information technology on you, if you tin can trust yourself when all men doubt y'all, only brand allowance for their doubting, as well..."

That's as far every bit she gets. "The signal of all of this is, if yous do all of this, you lot'll exist a grown adult ready to pull out all the joy from life," Ross Kendrick tells the assembled.

The Kipling poem prompts Motown Historical Museum board of trustees president and CEO Robin Terry, granddaughter of Gordy's sister Esther Gordy Edwards, to speak up.

"Rhonda, my grandmother found that verse form and gave it to each of her brothers when they were reaching adulthood," Terry said.

"I didn't know that!" Ross Kendrick exclaimed. "I'm going to memorize information technology, and teach it to my son."

Another Gordyism: "My father too believed you should ever larn from your mistakes, but you should also learn from the mistakes of others."

Terry reminds her of some other: "Logic is dominate."

"Follow what makes sense," Kendrick Ross agreed. "Notice when something doesn't make sense. Pay attention when information technology does."

It shouldn't be surprising that Ross Kendrick explains Motown history and philosophy so well — she's heard information technology from one of its key exponents all her life and had many intensive sessions with its author.

"And hither's a slice of my own philosophy," the singer/extra added. "If I tin can't understand you, y'all're lying. I'chiliad non a genius, but I'1000 pretty smart. If I can't follow this, something's amiss. You're leaving something out or making something up."

I thing that's changed her perspective tremendously is condign a mother, Kendrick Ross told the teenagers.

She concluding drove around Detroit to see where her mother grew up and went to school 20 years agone, but now that she has a child sometime plenty to understand, she planned to prove him the places of import in his grandmother'south life.

She'll accept Raif to come across the Motown museum, for the outset time. "He is at the historic period where he's starting to understand what Grandpa Berry did and what Grandmommy did," she said.

When "Motown: The Musical" played in New York, she took Raif, although he was slightly disappointed that "Grandmommy" Diana did not come out on stage, just someone played her.

Raif also believes that "Motown" always means the company his Grandfather founded and the sound he helped create. When a human being sabbatum next to him recently and said "I'grand from Motown," the youngster became excited.

Ross Kendrick laughs. "I said, 'Here'southward the bargain. Detroit was called the Motor City, and then Grandpa Berry called information technology Motown, because it was more like a boondocks than a city. Then everybody started calling Detroit 'Motown.' "

With Terry's goal to expand the Motown museum'south educational outreach and Ross Kendrick's knack for connecting with teenagers, they will collaborate on more things in future.

"Now that I've reconnected with Robin, I will be coming to the city more, and now that I take my son, he can come visit family unit," Ross Kendrick said. She is also in talks about performing in Detroit soon.

When she urged the students to forget wanting private planes or money, but "figure out what you love, what you lot wouud do for free," she's thinking about her mother'due south drive as a skinny teenager sitting on the forepart steps at Hitsville, determined to defy all her doubters and become not only a earth-class vocalizer, but a movie star.

She'southward too thinking of her father'due south persistence equally a songwriter, despite having doors slammed in his face and rarely being paid. Although Gordy famously co-wrote "Money (That'due south What I Want)," it was a long time before he saw any of that greenish.

"He was writing about what he loved," Ross Kendrick told the Motown campers. "Find yourself in your art. It's not about talent. It'southward about something that is uniquely you.

"Have the courage to exist yourself. The boxes that are out there, in terms of genres — neo soul, hip-hop, urban contemporary — they were created before you. You come in and nail the boxes, or kickoff your ain box. At that place were boxes before Motown was hither. R&B. Popular. Well, with Motown my father came in and smashed the boxes.

"Motown had an idea of what the world should be, all of united states dancing together, loving together, fighting for justice together."

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Rhonda Ross Kendrick on mom Diana Ross

"My mother was determined as a teenager. She was determined equally an adult — she went solo, when all she e'er knew was Motown. When I look back on what she was able to do and how much courage it took... she had proper name recognition but not a lot of fiscal success, and she had a family unit to heighten. She was making mistakes and just getting back up and trying once more."

"My mother is sounding improve than ever, I call back. On the song, 'Do You lot Know Where You're Going To,' I was thinking, she sounds not simply as proficient every bit the record, just better! I was thinking, she understands the song better now."

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Source: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/2015/08/17/child-motown-rhonda-ross-kendrick-leads-camp/31884909/

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