I believe that my musical heritage comes not specifically from my own
culture. I believe I am heir to a universal form of inspiration.
Singing for my own enjoyment as a teenager, music became a form of catharsis
for me. I was insular and inarticulate. Singing became my primary means
of expression. Early on in my career I realised there was no-one in my
genre to teach me the rules. I had to discover my own musical principles
by myself. These factors have made me pragmatic, fiercely independent,
and voice-led. When I write I go into a mental space where Im not
female, Im not Asian. I am nothing but a curious mind, and for me
the impulse to create often comes out of things I dont hear. I make
albums I know I cant go out and buy.
I started my life as a singer, signed to a major record company and
at sixteen had an international mainstream chart hit with the groundbreaking
single Ever So Lonely. For people who remember me from Monsoon,
the journey from my work with them to the trilogy of albums I made for
Real World must seem like quite a leap. The beginning of the period which
marked the emergence of the trilogy was indeed a time of change. I decided
after recording my fifth solo album Roots and Wings (Indipop)
in 1990, to conquer the two remaining fields that I had previously been
too busy as a writer and singer to tackle live work and my business
arrangements.
I decided for my first ever live concerts that I would appear alone
on stage, supported only by the occasional drone. I wanted a vehicle to
show off the very subtle nuances of the voice which you dont normally
hear. Fusion doesnt just happen when you put different instruments
from different cultures together, or even if you layer voices it
can happen in one voice, one mind. I also felt that solo concerts would
be the fastest way to learn about the dynamics of the performer/audience
relationship. I had started to get curious about that twinkle in an audiences
eyes after a great performance, and had decided to set myself the challenge
of testing out my own theories about how this was achieved.
Consequently, a new catalogue of material using only solo voice and
drone had to be written. Having committed to a season of festival performances
around the world with WOMAD, I formed my own production company and offered
an album of the new style material to WOMADs sister company Real
World.
|