ArtistInfo

Norma Ray

voc, *1970 FR, Saint-Étienne
Singer / Songwriter of Dance and Pop
A.k.a. Sylvie N'Doumbé Sylvie N'Doumbe

Norma Ray was born on 21st of March 1970 in St Etienne (France). She is 1,73 m tall. Norma is her real first name, she chose Ray because it was the name of someone in his family. Her father was Frederic N'Doumbe, a professionnal football player, who came from Cameroun. He also used to play the guitar. Her mother was from afro-american origin, she worked as an esthaetician. When his parents worked, a Sicilian family took care of her, she considers she had a happy childhood. She travelled a lot : Italy, United States, Great Britain, Spain, Cameroun where she met her father's family. If she hadn't became an artist, she would have liked to be a pilot. At the age of 18, she decided to stop her studies (she was stuying languages : English, Italian and Spanish) in order to realize her dream, becoming a dancer. Her talent and her perseverance allowed her to work with the greatest choreographists (Redha, Jaime Rogers who did the choreographs of Fame). She danced in Prince's clip U Got The Look, she also danced for David Hasselhof and Johnny Hallyday. She took theatre lessons and appeared in many ads : Reebok, Coca Cola, Barbie and Hollywood chewing gum. She worked as a model with Italian designers, she was Whoopi Goldberg's voice in Sister Act, and a muse in Disney's Hercules. She enters the American School of Modern Music where she studies during 4 years, and finds inspiration for writing and composition in groove and R&B. She writes her song by night. She likes reading, painting, going to the theatre and cinema, dancing, swimming, travelling, roller-skating, body-building, tennis and basket-ball. She describes herself as being instinctive and expressive, sometimes impatient and hard to change her mind. She hates violence, racism, intolerance and hypocrisy. She likes eating fish, japanese and african cooking, salads and fruits. She likes to mix different styles of clothes. She lives in an old building where she keeps her big collection of video-cassettes. She admires Pierre & Marie Curie, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and the French artist Charles Aznavour. Her favourite singers are Eros Ramazotti, Zucchero, Aretha Franklin, Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Serge Gainsbourg, Michel Berger, France Gall, Daniel Balavoine, Etienne Daho, and the All Saints. Her preferred actors are cary Grant, Jean Reno, Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts, Barbra Streisand. Her favourite film is Our Best Years. Her collaboration with Jean Fredenucci begins in 1994 and the first single to be released is Crazy About U, a quite good Eurodance song. But later, unfortunatly she changed her style to R&B and French pop, and the single that brought us the biggest success is Tous Les Maux d'Amour (which she co-wrote and co-composed). 1999 : she contributed, with Felixine, to the French musical soundtrack of the Disney movie Hercule. She also took part to French version of songs from the soundtrack of Sister Act 1, Sister Act 2 and King Lion 2. 2000 : her first album Poussières D'étoiles (stardust) was released. It contained 14 trakcs, some of them in English... and absolutely no eurodance unfortunately.

Genres

• Dance
• Pop
• R&B/Soul
• Children's Music
• Soundtrack