Interview with Madeleine Peyroux

From The Telegraph:

"Bare Bones finds Peyroux exploring ways of processing her grief over her father's death and embracing a life in the moment. 'It deals with loss, transition, discovery,' she says. And it opens with a jaunty gipsy jazz number on the bright theme of 'Instead of feeling low/Get high on everything you love'.

'I looked for ideas in literature,' she says, 'I checked out a few writers that I hadn't been able to grasp: Lorca, Neruda. I even tried Dante's Inferno because I wanted to look at the Christian idea of salvation in another poetic light outside the Bible.'"

I like Peyroux and her idiosyncratic, boho biography. I don't even mind the Billie Holliday comparisons, technically warranted, perhaps, but not at all accurate, as Billie was contingent on so much that was extra-vocal, and not merely biography. Such is the fate of icons from iconic times. There really will never be another Billie. To return to Peyroux: I haven't listened to this album too much, but her others—when I was going into contemporary jazz singers in a major way—I am more familiar with, and I recall being particularly impressed with her rendition of Piaf's signature song, "La Vie En Rose" (the recent biopic made an especially deft touch in speculating Piaf liked Holiday's music; they would have had much to talk about, I think) and that song belongs to her almost as much as "Strange Fruit" belongs to Billie, so the achievement is no mean one.

What made me bookmark this interview, at least in part, though, was the idea of looking for consolation in poetry, and those poets in particular. And, later in the article, the real graf:

The album ends with Somethin' Grand written in support of Barack Obama. "I recorded vocals on election day," she says, "without any planning ahead, and came back to the house to see that he had landed in a landslide. That night, I watched his speech in tears, as we all did."

Peyroux dedicated another song, I Must Be Saved to the singer Odetta, who died last year. The artist and civil rights activist "changed everything" for Peyroux.

"I was lucky enough to meet her while I was recording a Bessie Smith song in 2004. I looked up and she was conducting me from the vocal booth, not just with her hands but with every emotion running across her face.

"Without being less humble than I should be, I felt I had an understanding with her. I felt we recognised that the blues are a part of our heritage, too. That women are not only doing and experiencing the same things as men, but also that we can see what men are going through."

The Odetta anecdote is worth the entire interview, but in light of the Obama song, it acquires an added force, for Odetta was supposed to sing at the inauguration but died days before. Aretha did a creditable job, to be sure, but Odetta! I will never forget what Rosa Parks replied when asked about what music she liked best: "All the songs Odetta sings."