Interview: Neneh Cherry on a New Brand of Feminism in Pop Culture
January 7, 2015 by admin
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Photo by Kim HiorthoyNeneh Cherry plays New York on January 9.Neneh Cherry has had four top-ten hits, collaborated with everyone from Peter Gabriel to Gorillaz, and performed on Top of the Pops while seven months pregnant. But on January 9 she’s finally going to do something she’s never done before: play a solo show in New York City.
The multicultural, Swedish-born singer-songwriter explains she actually did perform in this dirty town back in the late 1970s. As a teen, she sang backing vocals for a ska band called The Nails at a club called Tramps (she thinks).
“Probably the first gig I ever did,” she tells the Voice by phone from her home in London. “[And] the first band I was ever in. Kind of.”
Cherry says she never meant to let thirty-five years go by between engagements, but Friday’s headlining show at Highline Ballroom should prove an auspicious return to the city she’s lived in as both a child and a “so-called grown-up” and names as a major influence on her eclectic, genre-bending music. “At times I’ve struggled with the feeling of being a little bit on the outside,” she says, “and I think in New York I’ve had a very powerful sense, sometimes, of feeling like I belong…many of my components were made up of things I’ve seen and life I’ve led in New York.”
Raised in Sweden and New York City in an intensely creative environment — her mother, Monica “Moki” Cherry, was a Swedish textile designer; stepfather Don Cherry was a celebrated African American jazz musician — Neneh Cherry counts music among her native languages. Members of both the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads even lived in her Long Island City apartment complex. At sixteen she left her family’s loft for London, where she began finding her voice in the city’s emerging post-punk, reggae, and hip-hop scenes. She had formative stints in the Slits and Rip Rig Panic and DJ’d on pirate radio station the Dread Broadcasting Corporation.
Cherry was just twenty-four in 1988 when she scored an international and Billboard number three hit with her smash “Buffalo Stance,” a happy accident for an artist who had little commercial ambition. “With Raw Like Sushi [Cherry's 1989 debut album that contained "Buffalo Stance"] we were really just committed to doing what we felt was right and not watering it down,” she recalls, referring to herself and collaborators including her co-producer and now husband, Cameron McVey. “Not bending over to fit in to what someone in a record company thought it should look like.” That young people are still bumping the song nearly twenty-seven years later is “a surprise,” she says, albeit “a big, big, lovely bonus.”
Decades later, it’s not hard to see how prescient Cherry’s vision was; from her freeform genre-blending and fly Nineties style to her progressive gender politics, it seems she prefigured every non-depressing aspect of today’s zeitgeist. While some figures from the punk era fear change, she applauds the role the internet has played in making “segregated areas in music start to disappear” and name-checks FKA Twigs and St. Vincent as artists continuing to carry the banner of “quirky, interesting” sounds. Today, she refuses to stand still — in both her listening habits and her own musical development.
Cherry says she’s inspired by how artists today have ushered a new brand of feminism into pop culture. “It’s definitely on people’s tongues and it’s definitely been an active conversation and feeling and emotion,” she says. A recent demonstration for Sweden’s rising Feminist Initiative party, which she attended with her eighteen-year-old daughter, left her in tears. And yet she cringes to see us grappling with some of the same issues that she did back in the Eighties. She recalls recently watching a contemporary music video that featured a kidnapped girlfriend in white lingerie waiting to be rescued and another with numerous scantily clad women who were “literally in cages.” “How can we, us — women in the year 2014 — even be letting that happen?” she wonders. “We need to take charge of our shit!”
Cherry, an outspoken progressive, has also been tracking with dread the “right-wing storm blowing over Europe.” She laments the shrinking of material support for artists where right-wing movements are making gains, but attempts to find a silver lining in everything. “Being alive, in a way, is always political, I feel,” she says. “Even if you’re not choosing to make political choices, you are affected. And I think the things that happen around you — if you’re a creative person, the shit that goes on around will maybe stimulate you to voice certain things, or the anger or the hurt of something will be good fodder for the things you make.”
This is an interesting thought to keep in mind while listening to Cherry’s most recent solo record, Blank Project, released in February 2014 as a follow-up to 2012′s free-jazz collaboration The Cherry Thing. By all accounts, Blank Project is an intensely personal album. It’s her second solo effort after an eighteen-year “gap” during which she worked on a plethora of projects — obscure jazz records, Pulp’s This Is Hardcore, even a cooking show on BBC Two. Blank Project was created in collaboration with McVey and London electronic duo RocketNumberNine and was produced by Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden. Its ten tracks of stark, minimalist arrangements foreground Cherry’s soulful voice and ruminative lyrics. The death of her mother in 2009 looms large, even when not specifically referenced, as on album opener “Across the Water.” At the same time, that and certain free-floating anxieties (like the lyric “my fear is for my daughters”) feel quite social in nature.
“I suppose the songs are a way for me to kind of figure out where I’m at, what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling in regard to myself and the bigger picture,” Cherry says. “I was trying to get into this mindset of not being too analytical, but just letting the words fall out and trying to write them as poetry…but to not get too indulgent in my story, because I think my story is important, but we all have stories.”
Cherry’s open-ended metaphors serve this purpose well; the sense of dread described alternately as “an old friend or an enemy” and “the black dog in the corner” on the brooding “Spit Three Times” could be many things to many people. Cherry says this kind of “dialogue” — with herself, her collaborators, and her listeners — is essential to the record’s journey. “I think that as much as I’m figuring stuff out through my lyrics as I go along, I’m also working out life,” she explains. “And I think that’s a thing you want to share with people. That’s kind of the message of the songs. It’s like, ‘I don’t really have the answers, I don’t know who does. Sometimes I do for a minute, but maybe we can find them for a while together.’ ”
Which brings us back to her current tour, which will feature the same musicians from the album (minus fellow Swede Robyn, who guests on languid club-thumper “Out of the Black”). “I think that’s why playing live is really important and can be really powerful,” Cherry says. “Because we can have these very definite kinds of meetings with audiences and the music where everything makes sense all of a sudden, for a while, in a room. It’s like, ‘Oh, now I know why I’m doing this.’ ”
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Neneh Cherry plays Highline Ballroom Friday, January 9, at 7 p.m. (doors 5 p.m.) with openers Sinkane and Kaki King.
Location Info
Highline Ballroom
431 W. 16th St., New York, NY
Category: Music
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Real Housewives Of Atlanta Recap: Shock Therapy
January 6, 2015 by admin
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Last night on Real Housewives Of Atlanta things were shocking, in the invisible fence way. Invisible fences are harder to climb over, as the ladies found out.
Cynthia Bailey had a dream and that dream is rapidly becoming a nightmare. Because Cynthia is going into business with Peter to open the new Bar One!
Misguidedly, Cynthia is honored that Payday Loan Peter, chose her checking account and she will no longer be a silent fibroid, but a living, breathing bank account. The delusion: it runs deep – certainly deeper than the zeros in ol’ CB’s savings account. Who does Peter think he is married to - NeNe Leakes?!
Cynthia has a dream and that dream is that people do not believe rumors about how she finances all his foolish shenanigans and he married her for a TV show, free vodka, and VIP strip club access.
CLICK THE CONTINUE READING BUTTON FOR THE REST!
Cynthia and Peter check out a location that looks like a toxic waste dump, but behind it is a funeral home, where according to Peter’s business partner side eye, Martin Luther King Jr.’s body resided there while awaiting burial. Something tells me this business partner attended the same Black History class as Porsha Williams. Peter turns to Cynthia and asks her to get her checkbook out. He doesn’t have it already? Now everyone hop on the Underground Railroad, get off at the stop labeled “Bar None”, and proceed to the exit labeled Reality Check. Stay there – a long while. Talk to Kenya Moore in the waiting room.
Later Cynthia and Peter confront more rumors that their business is as much a failure as their marriage - they are moving Bar One because the owners of the building are impossible. Cynthia rambles about the strength of their marriage and how no one believed in them (they still don’t!), but look at them now making it against the odds of so many failed businesses. Cynthia – I know you went to some self-help seminar about standing by your man, or maybe you want Couples Therapy to call you, but lady, you doth protest too much. And you’ve been married like 4 years, wouldn’t exactly call that making it against all odds, but betting on Peter probably has worse odds than craps in Vegas or the Powerball, so what do I know.
Kandi Burruss invites Claudia Jordan to be a guest on Kandi Koated Nights – now redesigned with leftover RHOA reunion furniture, props not included. Claudia walks into Kandi’s office and upon spotting the red sofa that looks like it’s made from the same shiny plastic material as a red Solo Cup, gushes that she loves Kandi’s taste. Of course she does, Solo Cups are Claudia’s only home decor item, Kandi tells her about the guy that repurposes them into furniture.
Claudia loves talking about sex so naturally she’s perfect for KKN. The topic is mixing business with pleasure in relationships. Since Todd joined Kandi Koated Industries he has bigger goals, wants things to get classier and more professional, and now all they talk about is business. Case in point, there is Todd behind the camera acting all producer-y like he has a job or something, Mama Joyce. Speaking of which, wasn’t it so nice to have an MJ reprieve this week?!
Kandi asks Claudia if she’s ever hooked up with Jamie Foxx (No). Then asks if Claudia would make out with her for $500 (Yes). Uh-oh – is this another RHOA marriage scandal?! Is Claudia hitting on Todd’s lady; will she be propositioning her and sexting her and calling her babe. So inappropriate! Claudia you harlot, hussy, jezebel, hoe – apparently that all may be true but not where Kandi is concerned.
Speaking of which, Claudia reveals she knows Porsha’s mysterious Nigerian, because “their African friends are mutual.” Claudia dishes that Porsha’s Nigerian has several Porshas – and she doesn’t just mean cars – which means Claudia was once one of those “Porshas” and has now been replaced with a newer model? Is Claudia the Mysteri0 Nigerian Fantasy Prince Connect. Is she running some sort of sugar daddy dating service? Cause that actually WOULD be an interesting storyline! I need more information. Lots more.
All of this inspires Kandi to throw a Sexology Party. Not to be confused with last season’s pajama party where Apollo beat-up Kenya’s assistant and everyone wore lingerie like the menu described the main course as orgy.
Kenya gets a smoothie with Aunt Lori to discuss her friendship-ish with NeNe. Kenya crows that Aunt Lori is her own personal guru and she doesn’t need Iyanla to fix her life. I love Aunt Lori, but Krayonce probably needs both Iyanla AND Aunt Lori to fix her life – then add in some psych meds and Jesus for safe measure. It takes a village, it takes a village…
Phaedra Parks has a nightmare that Apollo might show-up at their home instead of roaming the streets like a zombie, so she is having a security fence installed. As the contractors are discussing plans for a fortress, with moat (containing crocodiles) and a shock fence (now available by Phaedra Sparks – get your husband the collar that will keep him in or out, because everybody knows a man sometimes needs a little zap before he gets too out of line with the mischievous deeds!), Apollo shows up. He follows Phaedra into the house, practically velcroed to her butt – probably because she changed the locks and he wants to get in before it’s too late. He’s pissed that Phaedra is counting him out. Phaedra is pissed because she hasn’t seen Apollo since he had a beard and last she heard he moved into Bar One.
Phaedra and Peter can go into business – he has the mind-control Real Cynthia Doll, and Phaedra is now marketing the FraudPollo Prevention Shock Collar.
Then Phaedra receives some legal excellence award. She was named one of the best African American Attorneys in the country or something. The banquet was held at the Marriott and specifically staged for this show, but congratulations. Phaedra is not about to let Apollo’s misdeeds overshadow her legal career; she knows people think she’s involved, but she wasn’t – she can still be a successful attorney and run Phunerals By Phaedra even if he is making her look bad. Phaedra and Apollo are just two individual people, recognized in the eye of the law as legally bound to each other as one – in scandals and all. Congratulations!
At NeNe’s house Gregg has been promoted to package opener, which is a step-up from Basement Troll. He is the prototype for Phaedra’s Huzzzzband Shock Collar. NeNe’s agent calls to offer her 3 different Broadway roles. NeNe wants to play Mary J. Blige (Bwahahahahahahahahahahah!) in Rock of Ages. So, now on RHOA we have Krayonce and NeNe J. Bliusion (N. Bliusion for short). Housewives… I applaud your hubris. Next, Cynthia will be comparing herself to Tina Turner.
Instead NeNe’s agent thinks she’d be prefect for the role as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella (If the shoe fits!). NeNe is shocked – wicked is not her brand. She doesn’t do evil. She’s really gonna have to practice for this. She gets in character at Kandi’s party.
Porsha is wearing a ballgown (why?) Claudia and Cynthia are wearing varieties of acid-wash jeans, both unflattering (why?), and Kandi has some living doll from the Cynthia Bailey Real Doll collection sprawled out on a table with cupcakes (why?).
When NeNe shows up, she completely ignores Kenya who tries to hug her hello, barely gives Claudia a passing glance, and then asks Phaedra to hold her hand. For all that icitude, I would think NeNe was wearing a NeNe Leakes Collection Cold-Shoulder Tee (because cross-marketing, hello!), but no instead she’s practicing bitchiness for BROADWAY. It’s a tax writeoff. NeNe compares her Kenya-treatment to a one-night stand, just because she gets with you once doesn’t mean it’s a relationship.
Claudia emotionally eats chicken wings to deal with the rejection and asks to speak to NeNe privately to confront her about the brush-off. It was… desperate. NeNe is like, you play for the WRONG TEAM, now shoo. Cynthia is baffled – she thought everyone was getting along now? I Choose Cynthia needs to stop landing on denial and start choosing to THINK.
Kandi has a sexologist named Dr. Rachel who wants to tie people together. NeNe gets Claudia and complains she has cooties. Eventually she agrees to do it because the other option was Cynthia. NeNe does not choose Cynthia.
Then they all go around and open up about their relationship status – channeling Facebook realness! NeNe rambled about Gregg. Demetria McKinney stood-up, grinned real big, and shouted: “I AM THE FUTURE MRS. ROGER BOBB! WE ARE SOULMATES! HE NAMED A CHEERIO AFTER ME! HE IS AMAZING ROGERBOBB! ROBERBOBB! ROBERBOBB!” Is there a reason Demetria needs to announce that ROGER BOBB is her man? No one else gave names. Saying it aloud enough times doesn’t makes it true. This girl is… off.
Dequenchia – sit. down. Literally. Luckily she was actually knocked-down when Kandi’s friend said, “You’ve been dating Roger Bobb for 8 years? That’s funny, because I was dating him exclusively last year and he said he was your manager. The only thing you’ve been for 8 years is a booty call.”
Dequenchia is shocked. Mouth-open, shocked. It’s Kenya’s turn next, but she just bursts out laughing. This is there real Krayonce. What would she say anyway: My men don’t exist. Except in my head. Alongside my career.
Demetria runs outside and Cynthia chases her to calm her down. Dequenchia cries that the girl is lying – Roger Bobb loves her. Cynthia is like, of course he does – Peter loves me too! United in delusion; Cynthia and Dequenchia.
Because of Dequenchia’s mess with Roger Bobbing All Over Town, we didn’t get to hear Phaedra describe her relationship. Which disappoints me – what would she say about her huzzzzzzband? She’s probably secretly dating Roger Bobb too. Or Apollo is running around town with him, chilling at the strip club.
Next week – Clawdia’s claws come out at Wicked StepNeNe and Dequenchia takes-on Phaedra!
TELL US – WAS CLAUDIA TOO FORWARD WITH NENE OR IS NENE RUDE? IS ROGER BOBB CHEATING ON DEQUENCHIA (DO WE CARE)?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]