By John Summers | May 2, 2026
PORT ALLEN — Syreeta Neal grew up in a family where music wasn’t something you studied first. You sang first, and figured out the theory later.
That philosophy is at the center of Sunday Chanté, a free monthly singing circle for women that Neal launched at the West Baton Rouge Museum in March. The program meets on the first Sunday of each month from 3 to 5 p.m., with the next session set for tomorrow.
Neal is a third-generation musician from the Neal family, one of the most recognized musical families in West Baton Rouge Parish. Her father is Grammy-nominated blues musician Kenny Neal. Her grandfather was harmonica legend Raful Neal.
She holds a specialist certification in vocal jazz, R&B, and pop/rock from Berklee College of Music, spent more than a decade as a vocal coach in Los Angeles, and has performed alongside artists including Roberta Flack, Dionne Warwick, Aaron Neville, and James Ingram.
But Sunday Chanté isn’t a performance. It’s a come-as-you-are gathering — no audition, no experience, no pressure.
“Anybody who identifies as a woman and wants to sing with other women are welcome to sing here,” Neal said in an interview with the WBR Independent. “It’s very low stakes, easy breezy singing as a group together.”
The name is a nod to her family’s French and Creole roots. Neal acknowledged it’s not quite grammatically correct — “it should be chanté, but it rhymes with Sunday,” she said. “So we’re making little tweaks.”
‘We sing first, then we read’
Neal said her teaching style comes directly from how she learned music growing up in the Neal family — by ear, not by textbook.
“As human beings, we didn’t learn how to read and then learn how to speak. We learned how to speak first and then read,” Neal said. “So that’s how I’ve always approached teaching music as well. We sing first, and then we can kind of dig into the theory and all of the mathematics of the music afterwards.”
The move back to Louisiana wasn’t planned. Neal said she and her family were visiting from Los Angeles over a Christmas holiday when they learned their building had sold and their rent was about to triple.
“Literally within two months, we were back down here and living here,” Neal said. “It was a big change, but it’s been an incredibly soft landing for us.”
Since returning, Neal said her focus has shifted from the kind of individual coaching she did in LA toward something rooted in where she comes from.
“One of the things that I’ve been really interested in doing is cultural preservation when it comes to blues music and communal music making, participatory music making,” Neal said. “Doing things here in West Baton Rouge is really special to me because it’s my family’s ancestral land that we’re making music in. And that’s a first for me in my lifetime.”
A space for women who were told they couldn’t sing
Neal said the idea for Sunday Chanté grew out of a pattern she noticed over years of private vocal coaching. Women would come to her later in life wanting to learn to sing, and many carried the same story.
“So many of them have the same story, which is that ‘I always wanted to sing, but either at some point in my life, somebody told me that I wasn’t very good at it, or I just never felt comfortable taking up space in that way,'” Neal said.
She wanted to build a space where those women could meet each other and realize they weren’t alone.
“Not everybody has to be a Whitney Houston or a Celine Dion to be an incredible singer,” Neal said. “I love just people showing up as they are with the voices they have. And we can create something beautiful, no matter what level of experience or skill somebody might have.”
Neal likened the program to a book club — but for singing. It joins a growing slate of cultural programming at the museum that now includes the Old Time Jam, the Historical Happy Hour concert series, Kafé Kréyol-la — a Louisiana Creole language and culture gathering — and Café Français, a French-language social hosted with French-speaking representatives.
‘Even the silent singers are welcome’
The piano in the room where Neal leads the circle has its own connection to the family. She said she recently learned it belonged to her uncle, who donated it to the museum.
Asked what she would say to someone on the fence about showing up, Neal said a friend recently asked if she could just come and observe.
“I said, every singer, even the silent singers, are welcome here,” Neal said. “There’s nothing that’s going to happen here that is outside of your comfort zone, because everybody is allowed and welcome to go at their own pace, even if that means just kind of watching and listening for a little bit.”
Service runs in the family. Neal’s son, Wyatt Jackson-Neal, organized the Feel Good Food Drive with Kenny Neal last November at the family’s Nealville property on Evangeline Street. Neal said that instinct comes from her grandfather.
“That’s always been a big part of our family with the Neals — just service, being grateful for the gifts that we have and finding ways to share those gifts with the community,” Neal said.
Sunday Chanté meets on the first Sunday of every month from 3 to 5 p.m. at the West Baton Rouge Museum, 845 N. Jefferson Avenue in Port Allen. Tomorrow’s session runs alongside the museum’s Old Time Jam, also starting at 3 p.m. Both programs are free and open to the public. For more information, visit westbatonrougemuseum.com.
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