India.Arie makes long-awaited Pittsburgh debut
Where have you been, India.Arie? The four-time Grammy-winning neosoul singer was booked in Pittsburgh on two different occasions: to headline Heinz Hall in 2002 and then to open for John Legend at Riverplex in 2009.
Sadly for her fans, the Heinz Hall show was canceled, for undisclosed reasons, and then the Riverplex show was moved to the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, with just Legend performing. That makes her show on Friday opening the Three Rivers Arts Festival her long-awaited Pittsburgh debut.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I can’t be sure, because a lot of my early years, I was tired all the time, so I don’t know where I was,” she says in a phone interview. “But I think this might be my first time.”
Eighteen years ago, the singer-songwriter-guitarist, whose mom was once signed to Motown, broke out of Atlanta with “Acoustic Soul,” a debut album that established her as a soul singer in the vein of Sade with a message of empowerment in the singles “Video” (“I’m not the average girl from your video,” she sang) and “Brown Skin.”
That same year, she reached rock fans in a beautiful duet with John Mellencamp on “Peaceful World.” She grabbed the first two of four Grammys for her follow-up album, “Voyage to India,” including best R&B album. Four years later, she topped the charts with “Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship,” and then after Vol. 2, she decided to retire from the music industry in 2009.
Eventually, she rethought that, returning in 2013 with “Songversation,” and now, at 43, she’s touring behind a musically rich fifth album, “Worthy,” mixing romance, protest, empowerment and spirituality. Here’s what she had to say about it. “Worthy” has a different feel than “Songversation.” Was wondering if you could just talk about how you approached it, what you set out to do.
This one was a lot different than all my other albums from a creative standpoint, because I didn’t know if I was going to make another album, at all. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how I felt, but I just started making music and let it take its own shape. In my mind, I wanted to make an acoustic album, but of course, it ended up not being that. “Songversation” was world-music influenced, for a whole other reason. With “Worthy,” it was me making things that I love, and I wanted to call it “Worthy” because I love that word. Musically speaking, I just wanted to make songs that are clean and to the point. It’s harder to write a short song than it is to write a long song, and as I’m growing as a songwriter, I’m learning how to say things more concisely. And I wanted to sing about the things I was living through. This is the first time I’ve made an album that I was in a deep relationship, so the love songs are, to me, a bit more realistic than in the past and the political songs are more pointed.
I guess there’s more urgency now in terms of the political songs.
I feel like for me there always was. A lot of that came from youth, though, because when I was a lot younger I thought, “We need to figure out how we’re going to save everybody now.” [laughs] Especially when you’re a person like me, because I’ve been on the spiritual path for a long time, so being on the spiritual path, one of the unspoken goals of that is to make sure that everybody is evolving and look at ways that people are in need and to help children and to help old people and to help women and to help men. I always had that urgency. I guess I have the same urgency. The world is crazy. For me, it’s always felt crazy. For me, my urgency hasn’t changed but my confidence has.
Early on, one of the reviews said you possessed a quiet inner strength for being so young, and I think everyone got that impression, but maybe you weren’t feeling it so much yourself.
I was just being me back then, trying to be heard. I remember that article, and they would say “speaking to women,” and I would go, “Really?” Or “empowering” and I would go, “Really?” Everything was new back then. I don’t know what I felt. I know who I am now, though.
I suppose those older songs like “I Am Not My Hair’ still resonate with your fans. Do they still come up to you and talk them?
Yeah, but my most talked about song is “I Am Light,” which was on “Songversation.” People talk to me more about that than anything. It was not a single, it wasn’t on the radio, but it got around. I have more conversations about that song than any other song, including “Video.”
Why do you think that is?
I don’t have a better word than that it just struck a nerve. I can really only speak to our country. I can’t talk about the rest of the world. But in our country people are looking for more meaning wherever they can find it. When they see something that truly is meaningful, people gravitate toward it because they’re searching.
In recent years, you’ve opened yourself up to people, with your podcast and even offering an email address. Has that been a positive experience?
I love it. What I have had a problem with over the years is just the random celebrity thing on the street, because I don’t do well with surface interactions, like when people scream or talk real fast or stand real close, all that. It just makes me nervous, but deeper communications, I can do that all day. I love getting people’s emails. I love it. And I have thousands. The surface part has been hard for me, because I’m also [pauses] a loner, so a lot of times, I just want to be outside and be chill. I don’t want to be talked to.
Your mom was a Motown singer, and you were mentored by people like Stevie Wonder. What were the biggest takeaways from them on dealing with fame and with a career?
I feel like with Stevie, he’s always telling
me — not like he walks around saying it all the time, but he says it with his presence — he’s always telling me to have more fun, because he’s very playful and also very playful with his approach to music. His whole message to me is about having more fun. There are times when he’s said to me, like, “Oh, stop being a downer!” or something like that. My mom’s message is kind of similar, and when my mom and him are together, they’re so annoying because they’re so playful. They just make these dumb jokes. Together, they’re horrible, in a great way. My mom always tells me, “You have one life, do not waste your time being sad.” I don’t feel like I’m a sad person, but I’m a person who processes things. My mom just moves on, she just moves on.
Speaking of playful, I wanted to ask you about one song in particular, “Rollercoaster,” which is this crazy mashup with a Beatles thing in there.
[Laughs] I have to give all the credit, for the musical part, to my producer, Shannon Sanders. He’s been producing with me since my second album and writing with me since my first album. He has a super active mind. I don’t think either one of us was thinking about the Beatles, but we were thinking about a carnival. Some of the drums are sticks on buckets, the sound you hear in the streets of Chicago or something. You know how sometimes you look at the world and it’s just absurd, and you’re like, “Is this a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit or the real Donald Trump?” You can’t tell. That’s where the playfulness in the production and the vocal delivery come from, because it’s just like, “You gotta laugh at it or you’re gonna cry.”
What can people expect from the performance in terms of reproducing the sound live? It also looks like you structure the show thematically.
Yeah, I’ve been structuring the show thematically for about the last 10 years, since I’ve been doing this thing in performance called Songversation. As far as how the songs are presented live, I don’t know how to speak to that because I don’t listen to the record, but my intention is to capture the feeling of the record. I think we do that, but I’ve never seen the show so I can’t tell you. But, the show needs to be dynamic for me to even remain interested, so there’s like bigger songs, quieter song, whole sections of the show that are like BIG with big drums and background singers in the middle of the stage. Everything. For me, I don’t know what other people hear, but when I think of the album, for me this is the album with the most multi-facets of me in it. It’s a pop record, acoustic record, intimate songs, the many facets of who I am, and I feel like the show is like that. People have to come see for themselves.