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Singer, 12, heads for national radio show

By JENNIFER BRADFORD
Lake City Reporter

April 3, 2000

Leilani Clark, a Suwannee County singing sensation, has been chosen as one of six finalists in a national talent competition. Photo by JENNIFER BRADFORD/Lake City Reporter.

Music has been a way of life for 12-year-old singing sensation Leilani Clark for as long as she can remember.

"It inspires me. I like to connect to the audience," said the Epiphany Catholic School sixth-grader. "Singing is just music to my ears."

Clark has been performing for local organizations, churches and events since the age of 3. She has also been playing the piano since she was 6. And according to Leilani's father, Dan Clark, music has always been in the family. He arranges music and Leilani's brother Timothy plays bass and guitar.

"But it is evident that Leilani inherited the lion's share of the talent. She has got a wonderful gift," he said. "The minute she opens her mouth, you know."

Dan Clark said he consciously made an effort to include music in his daughter's life even before she was born by singing and playing music for her while she was still in the womb.

Apparently, it paid off because the family knew at a young age she had a gift, Dan Clark said.

"Most children go through a baby talk stage, but Leilani always spoke very clearly ... and was able to put words together and sing and carry a tune," he said. "She would sing her nursery rhymes."

Leilani said the singing and notes comes naturally to her, without having to practice. "I don't know how I know, but I just know about the notes," she said.

Leilani said she enjoys singing Christian as well as secular music, especially the oldies from the '30s, '40s and '50s, such as "Love Me Tender," and "It Had to be You."

Her favorite part of singing Christian music: "I like to tell people about the Lord," she said.

Now Leilani faces one of the biggest challenges of her young career. She has been selected as one of six finalists for a talent contest for a nationally-broadcast radio program, A Prairie Home Companion.

"I feel excited, special and happy, because out of hundreds of people, only six were chosen and I was one of them," Clark said. "And I was the only child. The rest were grown-ups."

The National Public Radio program conducted its sixth annual "Talent from Towns of Under 2000" contest, which features performers from rural areas and towns with fewer than 2000 people. Leilani recorded a song written by a friend of her father's called "Nitey Nite," and submitted it to the contest.

Leilani will perform the song, written by Jasper resident Charlie Piliero in 1949 after World War II, at the Town Hall Theater in New York City on April 15.

The song is about a mother putting her daughter to bed and both praying for the husband/father who has been sent off to war. "He wrote it and had never done anything with it," Dan Clark said, after playing a CD of Leilani's winning rendition of the song.

When Leilani is not singing, she is a typical 12-year-old who collects Beanie Babies, likes to draw, takes walks with her family and watches old movies, especially the ones with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly.

Leilani said she is excited about the contest, but "it still hasn't hit me yet. It is not like any other performance because I haven't sung in front of that many people before," she said. But, she will overcome that nervousness, Leilani said. "I will just get up there and sing."

Residents in Columbia and surrounding counties can hear Clark perform on NPR at 89.1 FM WUFT at 6 p.m. on April 15.