THE STORY

“Ok… so, who the heck are you?”

Great question! Hello, I am Jazzie. the person who will resist every single box you try to put me into. (I’ve tried them all. It doesn’t work. I promise.) Yes, that’s wild, and it’s the best thing about me.  The only one that comes close is the West African griotte framework that I am reclaiming from my ancestral lineage. The job of a griotte is to tell truths to a community and pass down their history. My community? The good ol’ United States of America!

I was that girl who sat in the corner writing novels instead of making friends or paying attention in class (I still got straight A’s, don’t worry). Somehow, I managed to complete nine of them before graduating high school and everyone around me pretended it was normal, so I also pretended it was normal. (It wasn’t normal.) My first novel was called The Solars (2011) that I wrote and finished when I was thirteen. Because I did everything myself, in perfectly normal thirteen-year-old fashion, I figured out how to self-publish the book and submit it to the US Copyright Office. And when I sold the book to all my family, friends, and teachers, did anyone bat an eye? No. (That would’ve made too much sense.) So, my writing just kept happening in the background while I went into my true public calling…

The Tuba. Yes, I am a tuba player. It’s that instrument that is the butt of a joke and everyone knows exists but no one knows what it actually does. It sits in the back of the ensemble playing whole notes while everyone else gets the melody. (Sound familiar?) Nine-year-old Jazzie. saw the kids’ show Veggie Tales, opening with Larry the Cucumber on a sousaphone and went “Yep. That’s the one.” And when I told my band director that I wanted it in the fourth grade, did he give it to me? No. (That would’ve made too much sense.) So, I got a trombone instead (and a violin that you should ask my brother about to make him hide in shame). 

I tolerated the trombone. And then, in fifth grade, to everyone’s surprise, I confirmed that I still wanted to play the actual tuba. (As if I didn’t ask them a year ago…) Ten-year-old Jazzie. happily got a tuba, that she couldn’t hold upright, and managed to excel. 

Going through life, doing all the things tuba, the most practical option for college was not neurology, not psychology, not creative writing, it was… TUBA! (Because why not?) The condition my parents gave me with their traditional careers was music education to have a real job, and I said, “sure.” After freshman year at Ithaca College, I added a performance major, knowing that’s what I wanted to do. I got my undergraduate degree there, got my master’s in tuba performance at Michigan State University, and got my doctorate in tuba performance (yes, it’s actually a thing) from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University.

The plan was simple: do all the tenure track stuff, get a full-time professorship, headline tuba conferences, and dream of having the best collegiate studio in the world. And…

The plan didn’t work. (Because higher ed and classical music are both slowly imploding right now, but we’ll get back to that soon.)

That was probably the best thing that happened to me because it made me realize how much of a world there was outside the tuba community. (Crazy, right?) 

At some point through all of this, I was married. And then, I was married and unhappy. And then, I was no longer married. December 2025 was the no-longer-married period, and in perfect Jazzie. fashion, I pulled out my childhood novels (lowkey to pretend I had friends again) and finally recognized what I had actually written. 

A (lonely) girl with extraordinary power lived her entire life believing she was ordinary. She was surrounded by people who recognized her extraordinariness but kept her contained, using the power for themselves. And the real scary part: every novel universe stopped where the protagonist would need to reclaim her power and defeat the villain. I wasn’t able to finish the story, until I left my marriage. 

That unblocked something in me, and suddenly, I was running on hyperdrive. I finished the poetry for my one woman show Visions in January 2026. Then, my novel I had been working on for a decade, Siren, in April 2026. Then, my other novel I had also been working on for a decade, a rewrite of The Solars book 1, in June 2026. And then I reorchestrated my narrative symphony, Roots Torn, Routes Chosen, for concert band in June 2026. And finally, I wrote a concept for a prequel play, Caged, based on my novel Siren, for a residency application and saw the thesis I had been encoding everywhere my entire life: The Unlocked Door Framework. 

…And now we’re here. But, I bet you wanted to know more about the mediums and whatnot, right? Unfortunately for you, you’ll have to go to my other pages to get that information. (Start with The Griotte. It’s worth it. I promise.)

For all of you who want the standard bio, here, I guess…  

Dr. Jasmine “Jazzie.” Pigott was that girl who hid in the corner writing as a “coping mechanism.”  Tired of explaining herself, she formed narrative worlds, dreaming of a moment when she could finally be seen. It took finishing eleven novels, starting an international solo career, earning a doctorate, writing a thirty-minute narrative symphony, and ultimately leaving an abusive marriage for her to realize that no amount of achievement would make that happen. So she took her pen, her tuba, and her character and stopped following the wrong paths to forge her own. Now, she signs her name Jazzie. (period included) and is an interdisciplinary storyteller based in Baltimore, MD. Using performance, novel writing, spoken word, and composition as her mediums, Jazzie. leans on the West African griotte tradition to tell uncomfortable truths. She is on a mission to encourage others to reclaim narratives and author their own stories, believing that collective internal liberation is the key to systemic liberation.