Jero [born Jerome White, Jr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 4, 1981] is an American-born Japanese enka singer[. His mother was half-Japanese, and his maternal grandmother was Japanese. He i...
Jero [born Jerome White, Jr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 4, 1981] is an American-born Japanese enka singer[. His mother was half-Japanese, and his maternal grandmother was Japanese. He is the first African American enka singer in Japanese music history.
His Japanese grandmother got him interested in enka music from a young age. He first went to Japan at age 15 to participate in a Japanese language speech contest. In high school he was captain on the dance team. Jero majored in information science at University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 2003, and moved to Japan in the same year. During school, he went on a three month exchange to a university in Kansai, and during his stay was when he decided he would become an enka singer. After graduating, he returned to Japan and worked as a teacher at an eikaiwa school in Wakayama-ken, as well as being a computer engineer in Osaka. In his spare time he appeared on NHK singing programs, and entered many karaoke competitions and winning an array of awards. In particular, he entered a karaoke competition sponsored by Sakamoto Fuyumi and won first place, which is what caught the eye of Victor and got him scouted. He practiced for two years before releasing his first single.
His first single, Umiyuki [海雪, Umiyuki? literally The Ocean Snow], was released in Japan on February 20, 2008.
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