JUSTIN PEARCE discovered a generous, unaffected soul behind Joan Armatrading’s shaggy fringe
JOAN ARMATRADING on record is an emotion-enriched voice and elusively perfect melodies that can move cynics to tears. Joan Armatrading on stage is a face grinning from behind a shaggy fringe of hair, an unaffected, slightly awkward manner, and a demeanour that defies every stereotype of what artists are all about.
When she sings, her involvement in the song seems total — but even during a half-minute instrumental interlude between two verses, she resumes eye contact with her audience. Here we have a singer who’s been around for two decades projecting all the delight — but none of the pretensions — of an adolescent making a debut performance at a local talent contest.
Addressing a press conference, she knows exactly how to field the obvious questions with in-your-face humour. ”What would you like to say to your fans out there?” some one asks. ”Come to the concert,” Armatrading replies with a face-splitting grin.
But when she’s not being obviously glib, she’s just plain honest — she’s not the kind of person who’s going to ad lib for the sake of sounding good. When someone asked the hack post-cultural boycott question about whether she was coming to South Africa to teach young musicians (”workshops!” someone piped up from the back), Armatrading admitted humbly that ”I’m not very good at teaching — but I am good at encouraging,
Her lack of pretensions makes Armatrading a difficult interviewee — she insists on her own ordinariness, seems a little bemused at the realisation that someone might be interested in her insights, and politely sidesteps any questions that might be construed as
She is reluctant to offer any interpretation of her music, and she absolutely refuses to categorise her work or to place herself in any tradition: ”I write Joan Armatrading music. It’s sometimes jazzy, sometimes pop, sometimes rock — it’s always me.”
She admits that ”there’s nothing any artist can do about being categorised if someone wants to do that — but I don’t think it’s that easy to do that with me.”
And of songwriting she says, ”I don’t know how it works — it just works. My songs are written from very real things. That’s why I can make it seem so real and so
Although Armatrading has often said she is not a political artist, her image as a strong and sensitive woman has attracted a strong feminist and gay following — an observation which draws a neutral but typically generous response: ”The music is for everyone — I wouldn’t dream of stopping anyone from enjoying what I’m doing.”
A pause, and then a proviso: ”Of course, if mass murderers in a club decided to adopt my music, I wouldn’t be very happy about it — but I don’t write for any one group.”
Armatrading’s background defies another stereotype: she did not come from a musical family, and speaks of an eclectic range of musical interests. She names Van Morrison as the first artist who aroused her attention; nowadays she listens to U2, Bjsrk, Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam, and readily states that her favourite singer is Elton John.
Joan Armatrading seems to be the antithesis of Elton John — her refusal to strike poses, his refusal to stop striking poses — but she invokes a comparison with John when asked about the reason for her low-key but enduring popularity: ”Songs. That holds true for any of the artists who have endured — they write really good songs. Image doesn’t always carry you through. Look at someone like Elton John — he has a very strong image, but take that away and you’ve still got great songs.”
Armatrading performs at the Standard Bank Arena, Johannesburg, on July 28 and at the Good Hope Centre, Cape Town, on July 31