She has a fresh-faced voice — young and delicate. But it will take on a force of importance when Katie Melua performs at the 46664 concert on Saturday night. She appears on the bill of the Aids awareness show at the request of Queen, one of her all-time favourite bands.
“I met Queen a few times before. About four months ago, they asked me if I’d be interested in singing a song with them, specifically at this event. It was amazing because they are one of my favourite groups. Plus, of course, it’s a great cause that I just couldn’t pass up,” says Melua.
This year’s instalment takes to the green at Fancourt. It is the sequel to the 2003 event at Cape Town’s Green Point Stadium, which raised consciousness and capital for Aids relief. The concert features some familiar faces along with a host of new ones.
“I’ll be doing a set of my own songs and then [Queen and I] will do something together. To be honest I think it will be the happiest moment of my life!”
South Africa is a stopover Melua is happy to make on her world tour to showcase her debut album Call Off the Search.
Having grown up as the daughter of a heart surgeon she is well accustomed to a lifestyle of travel. Born in the former Soviet Union city of Georgia, she moved to Belfast in Ireland at the age of eight. The Melua family later transferred to south-east London.
“I loved meeting new people and seeing different societies. Of course it was hard leaving friends and schools behind, but there was definitely something nice about it. I quite enjoyed it,” Melua says. “That’s not to say it was entirely brilliant, but I didn’t get psychologically damaged by it or anything,” she chuckles.
And, she says, her cosmopolitan lifestyle has had an important influence on her musical career.
“I’ve grown up in so many different places, and it’s influenced me in so many ways. It has exposed me to so many different types of music — from Irish folk music to English pop songs. It’s opened my ears and showed me that good music doesn’t have to be that which is ‘young’ and ‘cool’, but that classics can be great also. I’ve learnt to go searching for good music.”
Singing the classics, as well as jazz and blues compositions has made the world take notice of this young star.
She has sold more than 1,5-million copies of Call Off the Search in the United Kingdom alone, while her platinum sales of 60 000 in South Africa keep rising. “We’ve heard the album is doing pretty well over there [South Africa] and so we are hoping that people will like the show,” she says. “I love meeting audiences and playing them songs that are new and that they haven’t heard before.”
It was by playing a song to producer and former Wombles member Mike Batt that Melua earned her record deal with Batt’s label Dramatico. Batt had gone to the British School for Performing Arts, where Katie was studying at the time, to look for talented young performers to join a jazz band. When he heard Melua performing one of her own songs he immediately declared her a “true original”.
That song was inspired by her role model, Eva Cassidy.
“I heard her singing Over the Rainbow on a compilation of current musicians coming out of the UK about three or four years ago.” It was to be a watershed moment in Melua’s life.
Cassidy, one of the original white sisters to sing soul, started her career by performing alongside artists such as Chuck Brown. “She sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. I was touched on a personal level. I said to my friend, ‘We’ve got to go see her play, she’s going to be the next big thing.’ I thought of her as someone I could play to my kids in 30 years’ time.”
Little did Melua know that cancer had cut short the 33-year-old singer’s life in 1996. “When I found out she was dead, I was so sad and disappointed. My generation got so close to having someone like her define it.” Melua wrote Faraway Voice in tribute.
“It’s bizarre,” is how Melua describes the success of her debut. “When [Batt and I] started making the album I never expected it to be so big. It wasn’t mainstream music and Mike took a chance on me. It’s bizarre and lucky and good timing, I think. I am glad that the public is embracing music that has substance.”
Like Cassidy’s music Melua’s has become an immensely popular part of the global mainstream.
Melua, along with her contemporaries Norah Jones, Jamie Cullum and Michael Bublé, will most likely go down in contemporary music history as an artist who defined the musical landscape of the early 21st century.
“I hope it doesn’t stop at the blues and jazz, but that it goes on to include other types of world music too. I hope the charts will become more representative of a wider range of music.”
Basically what Melua would like is for the charts to look a little more like her iPod.
She’s currently listening to Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and Snoop Dogg. “I quite like [Snoop Dogg’s] latest album. Every genre has great pieces of music and I believe his latest is a good example.” Much like Call Of the Search.