On her critically-acclaimed latest record "Black Rainbows," English singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae draws inspiration from all over the map. It's a stylistically diverse collection of songs that were all inspired by a visit to the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. On this visit, Bailey Rae was drawn into the stories of both beauty and darkness that the Bank's collection had on display. She took that inspiration and turned it into her most transformative record yet as she tells the tales of some of the collection's subjects in her own unique way.
Corinne Bailey Rae will be performing at The Carolina Theatre in Durham on May 24. She caught up with 蜜桃传媒 music reporter Brian Burns ahead of the show.
I know that this record was inspired by a visit to the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. Tell us a little bit about that space.
It's a really incredible building. It's an old bank that was going to be pulled down by the city, and it was saved from demolition by this visual artist, Theaster Gates, and he filled it full of his archives. So it has 26,000 books that the Johnson publishing company collected.
The Johnsons made Ebony Magazine, and Jet magazine, and another magazine called Negro Digest. So you can imagine all the history and art and politics and sociology and recipes and celebrities, all these different magazines that they have. It's a really amazing library just to go and explore, and then it has this collection of difficult and problematic objects from America's past that were collected by a black and Chinese banker called Ed Williams, who bought these items in auctions and antique houses and flea markets because he wanted to take them out of circulation. They were derogatory, stereotypic images of Black people. Once he had collected thousands of these items, he didn't know what to do with them, so he worked with Theaster Gates to put them in this bank under very special care.
It also has all of the legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles' records. So it additionally serves as a history of House music. It's this amazing collection of stuff that's kind of difficult and beautiful and complex and weird and as a maker, when I saw it, my creativity was just so sparked by listening to these records, and by touching these objects, and holding these statues. I felt like these objects were telling me their story. I'd see a picture of a beauty queen in Ebony Magazine from 1954 and just think, "Who is this woman? Who is this?" So a lot of these items took me on a journey, and inspired how I went about writing "Black Rainbows."
Well, the record blew me away the first time I heard it. Stylistically, it moves around from song to song, but it remains cohesive and singular. What inspired you to create something as broad reaching as this record?
I really wanted to kind of flex on this record, and it sort of was pulled out of me by the objects at the Arts Bank. A lot of the pictures and the stories from there invoked strong reactions, so I wanted the music on this record to do the same.
I have lots of different musical backgrounds. I played classical violin when I was a child, and then I was in this indie band called Helen that was a great place for all my sort of teenage angst and questioning of the world. And I also grew up in a church that was really socially active. I just felt like there were all these different places that I wanted to touch on the record and seeing so much variety from the Arts Bank inspired me to broaden the sounds.
How did it feel when you started playing these songs live for the first time?
It felt like a really good chance to connect with the audience. I'm able to tell some of the stories in between the songs which makes it easier to transition between different moods, and expressions. When it's a seated gig, a lot of the time the audience is just listening and responding between songs, but by the end it's not unusual that we're all up on our feet and dancing. I really love that music has this power to bring people together and also kind of draw out a person's feelings and make us feel connected as neighbors.
Do you remember the first song you wrote for the record?
I think it was "Erasure," or "He Will Follow You With His Eyes." "Erasure" came from seeing a photograph of this young Black girl who was about seven and had this gleeful expression while she was watching Bad Brains in a basement in Washington, DC. I thought, "she's having this amazing experience with this wild punk band, this Black band, who were playing in a housing project in DC." Just to see the interplay between the audience we were probably new to this music was amazing.
I think "New York Transit Queen" really surprised a lot of people the first time they heard it. Can you tell us a little bit about your history with punk rock?
Around when I was about 13 or 14, I encountered two singers which completely changed my life. One was Billie Holiday, but the other was Kurt Cobain. My friend had taped Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance, and just hearing that in a voice you could have texture, that you could have a conversational style, that you could have music, which told a story, you could bend up to notes, you could bend out of notes. You didn't have to have a lot of decorations. That was mind blowing to me.
Around the time Kurt died I started a band called Helen with my three best friends and my boyfriend at the time. We just wrote about how we could fit into the world and other things that teenagers think about a lot, but the music was so capable of holding these raw and emotional feelings.That's what I value about punk, is that there's no barrier. There's no one at the door saying, "Well, what qualifications have you got?" People might not know that that's my origin, that DIY, make your own posters and book the gigs yourself type of thing.
"" is out now on Thirty Tigers.
