 Could it be that the rest of the musical world is about to discover what R&B fans have known for years now?
Teena Marie is one of the great singing/songwriting talents in soul music and is certainly one of Britain's favourite contemporary performers, but ever since that fateful day when Rick James screeched his platform boots to a halt outside a Motown rehearsal studio and discovered therein five feet nothing of Santa Monican French/Italian vocal dynamite, it would seem Lady T has been destined to let her talent be known across all the popular music boundaries.
However, it would seem that the path she has beaten -- and when you write, arrange, produce and perform everything yourself then that's the machete in "your" hand -- follows a course not best indicated by the "I Need Your Loving's," "I'm Just a Sucker For Your Love's," or "Portuguese Love's" of this world. Whereas Teena once vented a need to perform "rock 'n roll" (seemingly an American euphemism for pop music) thorugh perhaps a couple of songs an album, that situation has now reversed on her new album Emerald City and Teena has left soul fans with perhaps two or three songs to remember her by.
It is, perhaps, a peculiar British trait to wonder where all the good grooves have gone but, in a climate where many black artists (including her Motown mentor Rick James) are rediscovering themselves in a musical sense, it seems odd that Teena should choose to come on like a Madonna with talent.
So we decided to talk to Teena about her new album and see if we could discover if there was any reason for making the music on Emerald City (now her third Eipc release) other than "because it was there."
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If you are a reader of interviews, you will realize that not much shrift is given to the telephone interview -- particularly transatlantic -- because responses are often so black and white with no physical presence available to color them. Nevertheless I got the impression that Teena was a little bemused by my line of questioning and the angles of my inferences. It seemed to me that just about everyone around her has been saying "do it this way -- it's what the kids are into" and so she did. Now she can't understand why I'm asking where her roots have gone.
In the States, Teena's new sound sells by the cartload and, no doubt, that will apply to Emerald City . . . but that has never been justification enough for genuine artists before and I couldn't see why it should be now.
However, one good clue manifested itself when she told me she'd "written a lot of the album whilst on tour across the States recently. I have a little four track portable studio thing and so I could come off stage and work."
This is possible, she told me, because "I rest well and don't party" and then went on to say "the sound on the album has a lot to do with the live show -- that aggression was proving popular."
So her audiences, perhaps nowadays noticably cosmopolitan, were going silly as the beats got quicker but I still don't see why power and monotony are logical bedfellows. Perhaps music that sounds like a strobe light does provoke fits, but if you want to move an audience in more ways than just up and down then it's soul power, soul passion that will do it for you everytime. Teena Marie herself has proved that.
So another motive I pondered with her may initially seem a little laboured but could easily prove relevant. After all, consummate artist she may be to us but I'm sure, to a few record company 'big wigs,' she's possibly still the 'little lady' who's dead cute for wanting to have it her own way . . . but can't.
Once again, Teena dismissed this with scant regard. "I've never had any problems -- although I know there are some women who do," she replied almost apologetically and I think that confirms that Teena is her own lady, that Emerald City is "her" new album.
This she consolidated by saying, "I always bounce ideas I have off of people I value -- it would be impossible to do it completely on my own." She still pointed out that although the idea of collaborating with other people does appeal to her, she still enjoys being the bottom line.
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So this leaves us with a reason -- and I must point out that it's certainly not Teena looking for the excuse, it's me -- that is so tried, so tested that it's virtually a cliche.
"The idea is to draw new faces into my audience" she says and suddenly the bitter truth begins to emerge. "I've mixed it up a lot on this album, I think. There's rock 'n roll, R&B, Latin, jazz -- but I've tried to make it all very contemporary."
"I've got rid of the big sound . . . the horns and stuff. It's simply a matter of stretching myself and, to an extent, the audience."
There it is then. This is a sound that sells and Teena is talented enough to go ahead and exploit it.
She mentioned to me that her two backing singers and close friends (she is Godparent, in fact, to Rick James' sister Sureal's children) will be going into the studio as an act called Gwenevere. "I'll be producing," Teena told me, "and I'm after a mixture of rock and that European sound" -- so Emerald City is no fluke.
Teena Marie is a superb talent who deserves to be recognized and if it's this sound that's going to get her there then that's fine for everyone concerned . . . until the next time!
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