The rebellious girl from Brakpan, SA who unlocked Grace Jones's voice

Daily Maverick

19-05-2025

In the fever-dream swirl of 1970s Paris – where the air reeked of Gauloises, champagne and possibility – a South African model named Esti Mellet-Mass was about to change music history. Herman Lategan uncovers the unlikely story of how a rebellious girl from Brakpan helped launch one of pop culture's most enigmatic and fearless figures: Grace Jones.
Rebel glamour
The 1970s were a time of glorious excess. Studio 54 ruled New York. The Factory pulsed in London. Paris shimmered with champagne-soaked soirées. Amid this glitzy chaos rose a woman who defied categorisation: Grace Jones. With her angular face, defiant stare and vocals that sounded like velvet on fire, she carved her name into the cultural firmament.
Jones was more than a singer. She was a symbol – of sexual rebellion, racial power and androgynous style. In a world that boxed women into softness, she was all sharp edges and attitude. Her music, a volatile cocktail of disco, dub and danger, became anthems of the underground.
And yet, once upon a time, she wasn't sure she could sing at all.
Enter Esti
Esti Mellet-Mass was born in Brakpan, a South African industrial mining town steeped in grit and conservative tradition. Her parents – an unusually liberal doctor and nurse – nurtured her curiosity. After a stint studying art at Stellenbosch and a crown as her university's RAG Queen, Esti fled the stifling parochialism of apartheid-era South Africa with a few friends and R500 in her pocket.
London was the first stop. Catalogue modelling paid the bills. Then came Paris, the true catwalk of dreams. Brunettes were in demand. Esti signed with an agency and walked into a whirlwind of high fashion, late nights and global jet-setters.
She crossed paths with a cadre of future icons: Jerry Hall, fresh from a beach discovery, a young Jessica Lange and Grace Jones – at the time, a fiercely stunning model with a secret weapon no one had truly unlocked.
Grace, interrupted
Esti and Grace hit the clubs hard. 'She loved singing 'Dirty Ol' Man' by The Three Degrees,' Esti recalls. 'She'd act like she was in the group. And she could really sing.'
Grace was magnetic, wild and untouchable – but hesitant about her own voice. Esti wasn't having it.
By then Esti was dating a dashing Bulgarian producer named Stephan Tabakov. When she told him Grace had the pipes, he wanted to hear them. Grace, eavesdropping, was livid. 'Oh, she was stubborn,' Esti says. 'She didn't take orders. Especially from men. Or from me, for that matter.'
Still, Esti coaxed her into singing that same club favourite. Stephan was intrigued. He invited her to the studio – but insisted she take lessons first. Grace stormed off. Esti offered to pay. Grace relented. A star, begrudgingly, was born.
Grace would later write in her memoir, I'll Never Write My Memoirs: 'Esti told her boyfriend, 'Oh, Grace knows how to sing'. I was beating her up in a state of alarm.' But it worked. Her early sessions with Stephan led to the smoky seduction of La Vie en Rose, and the slow-burning fire of a global career.
The afterlives of women
Jones ascended – hula-hooping in latex before the Queen, slapping Russell Harty on live British TV and lighting joints on stage in Johannesburg. She was a hurricane in heels, and she made sure the world took notice.
Esti, meanwhile, continued modelling in Europe before returning to South Africa, where she became one of the country's most sought-after interior designers. She lives in Cape Town, working on her memoirs.
From Brakpan to the boulevards of Paris, Esti Mellet-Mass's story could have ended in the footnotes. But without her, the world might never have heard that voice. And Grace Jones might never have become, well, Grace Jones.
On Monday, 16 May, it is her birthday: Happy 77th birthday, Grace. From South Africa, with a wink. DM