There are a few things this reporter has learned since moving here from the lower mainland in 2017 and signing on with PentictonNow a year later.
For starters, the view from the top of Munson Mountain never, ever gets boring. Never.
Second, the Lake-to-Lake Bike route will always be controversial. Always.
And third, Yanti is everywhere. Ev-er-y-whee.
Our encounters with the vibrant vocalist from Naramata, who, like Rihanna goes only by her first name, began in September of 2018 at the rarified grounds of the Naramata Inn, where local wineries held a hoity-toity 1920's-flavored shindig to celebrate season's end.
Yanti was done right up in 20's garb and sang the place down as part of the jazzy Justin Glibbery Quartet, starring Penticton pianist Glibbery of course and a variety of top-level regional musicians.
We've witnessed her perform a dozen times or more since then. Sometimes with a band, often solo. She tends to be hired at a lot of the events we cover -- including last month's Ignite the Arts Festival and this past weekend's "Easter in Naramata."
This week, she performed Tuesday at the Cherry Park Retirement Home as part of another cool local band called "Sax Among Friends," and then she's at Leir House Thursday singing with Alzheimer clients.
Needless to say, Yanti is a master of mixing it up. There aren’t many musical styles she can't tackle -- though heavy metal might be a stretch -- or crowds with which she isn't comfortable.
And when that crowd is, shall we say, a little lackluster, Yanti takes the time to turn those frowns upside down. She'll often do that with "song-catching," where everyone gets a few seconds at the mic -- no experience necessary.
But live gigging is just part of the Yanti ecosphere. Another is community involvement. There she was, megaphone in hand and up front, at the Ignite parade a couple weeks ago. And again in the City of Penticton council chambers last Monday, when the Art Gallery's operation grant was threatened.
Yet as most musicians who've been fortunate enough to make it that far will tell you, nothing compares to the thrill of seeing that first original song get the full-pull production routine and emerge out the other side in a polished state, ready for release to the world.
And for Yanti, that time is finally here.
In "You Fighting You," available now at YouTube here and at her own site here, Yanti's poured her talents into a pop ballad that’s both "personal" and highly listenable. Not bad for a debut.
"I've always been writing songs," she explains, "but I often don’t have the time to finish them. Or the money for a producer.
"So this gentleman, Dana Barnes from (Penticton audio production house) Mainsail Sound, heard me playing. And he said, 'Throw me a song.' So I threw him that one, You Fighting You."
The version of You Fighting You she threw Barnes featured Yanti singing and playing instruments like her trusty ukulele, a shaker and a cello. She recorded it in Garage Band and calls it a "crappy recording."
"But he turned it into a beautiful piece of music," she smiled. "It's almost as if he could tell what was going on in my head. I wrote the song, but man, he did all the instruments for sure."
Yanti says it's her "break-up song." And not your everyday breakup either. It was a 23-year relationship.
"He had his own internal fight," she said. "He was my best friend at some point and I was in love with him, but he had a hard time with his own self.
"He needed to go and do his own thing. I realized it’s his fight and I ended up getting caught in it."
She wrote it while isolating with COVID. She claims it's one of "a whole album's worth of songs" that emerged from her during that time.
"I knew it was a good song," she said. "And I knew I needed to release it. It needed to go somewhere so it wasn’t jammed up in my own head.
"I think this is why we create. It's part of our therapy."
The production and then the YouTube release of You Fighting You is one of the high points of a musical career that got serious 15 years ago at a Naramata coffee shop.
"It started out at the Village Grounds' Valentine's Desert Party," she laughed. "And it was (artist) Renee Matheson and (Village Grounds' owner and Naramata historian) Craig Henderson who said, 'Oh, you're going to headline.'
"I'd never played before with anybody. I didn’t even know any musicians. So I called up local music teacher Kristi Lind and asked if she'd accompany me for a couple of songs. We ended up doing 13 songs twice, and that's how I got started."
A few years later, saxophone player Don Wade (who fronts the aforementioned Sax Among Friends) spotted Yanti while she was serving tables at the Naramata Inn. He'd heard she could sing and together they performed the soaring jazzy masterpiece "Summertime.'
"I got good tips that night," said Yanti. "And Don started handing me 12 different songs every month for a whole year. I learned 144 jazz standards in a year."
Today, Yanti, like many musicians, relies on a "side hustle" to pay the bills. In Yanti's case, that side hustle is house cleaning.
"In this town," she said, "people have been very accommodating as I've been learning and getting my musicianship together. But it's a really hard place to find venues that will pay for a professional musician."
Going forward though, Yanti, armed with experience and a vast library of songs, and feeling the support of an expanding fan base and now the confidence of a pro-produced track, increasingly looks to a future where she sets the rules.
For more on Yanti, turn here.
