This summer Atlanta vocalist and songwriter India Arie invited her Twitter followers to a private concert, previewing songs from her upcoming album, "Open Door." Only the first 50 who responded could attend.
The deluge of messages crashed her server. But the inconvenience was worth it for Arie. The soulful Grammy-winner had entered a new era of performing, a time when she plans to hold the reins of her career, to control where and what she plays.
“It made it special to be with people who really wanted to be there,” said Arie, 34, of the Aug. 7 performance, where she told listeners she would play no old favorites, only new music. “Some people drove from out of town, and put in a lot of energy to be there. I could share all the music with people who were open to it.”
With triple platinum sales of her first album, 2001’s “Acoustic Soul,” and platinum sales of the next two, she had plenty of hits to rely on. But now she says she’s decided to start trying to please herself.
She was growing frustrated by the time she completed the second volume of “Testimony” (2009’s “Love and Politics”).
“I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do, but I [also] didn’t do things that I really, really loved to do,” she said in a telephone conversation from Los Angeles, where she’s shooting a video for her duet with Carlos Santana on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Instead of trying to tailor her music for radio – “instead of trying to get in a box” – she’s going to be playing what she loves, whether it be in Hebrew or English, accompanied by full band or African gourd.
It's an odd time for Arie to be honored by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, into which she will be inducted on Saturday. She said she is beyond pleased with the award. “I want to use the word that means completely unexpected and delightful at the same time.”
Yet she insists that past is not prologue for her. “I’m at a turning point in my life as a musician and in my personal development as a human being,” she said. Whoever is receiving that award on Saturday, in other words, won’t be the same person who earned it.
India Arie Simpson was born in Denver, the daughter of Joyce Simpson, a singer who was signed to Motown, and Ralph Simpson, a former NBA basketball player.
After her parents divorced she moved to Atlanta with her mother, where she has lived ever since she was 13. She is adept at a variety of instruments, but began writing songs seriously when she took up guitar as a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
The old Arie pulled together soul, world and acoustic music, but the new Arie is even more eclectic. In addition to the Santana single, this year she’s teamed with jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock on the lead single from his “The Imagine Project,” she’s joined forces with Marc Cohn on an old Bread chestnut “Make It With You” and she’s working with Israeli pop singer Idan Raichel on her record “Open Door,” an album full of songs they’ve written together, some of which she sings in Hebrew. (That record will be released next spring.)
What attracted her to Raichel, who she met during a non-working trip to Israel in 2008 was his impeccable musicianship, and his soul. “His chord voicings just make me want to sing.”
The ethereal Arie prays for meetings such as this, and her prayers are seemingly answered quite regularly. In 2005 she collaborated with Stevie Wonder on his last album, “Time To Love” (he wrote the music, she wrote the lyrics) and she was part of an exclusive performance at the White House last year when she joined forces with Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Diana Krall and others to salute Wonder for winning the Gershwin Prize.
“Herbie and Stevie and Carlos, to me, is God showing me what I can do,” she said. “They want to touch people’s hearts. Maybe I play with them because it's my intention to do that, too.”
Prayer is an important part of her day, and she chanted a traditional Buddhist prayer with Hancock before the two performed last week at the Hollywood Bowl for his 70th birthday.
"I pray for everything, really, even for some things the average person thinks you maybe should not pray for. I pray for my song lyrics. I pray that I should be in alignment with musicians who are what I want to be."
Many musicians might want to be India Arie. She's been nominated for Grammies 20 times, and has won three, including one for her most recent album. A social activist, she served as a UNICEF ambassador to Africa, making many trips to that continent to help fight the AIDS crisis.
But though she's ready to try new things, she is late to the Twitter bandwagon.
"A year ago I wasn’t even on Twitter," she said. "I thought I don’t want to get addicted to something else. I need to focus on my projects." In retrospect, "it was really cool."
CONCERT PREVIEW
India Arie, The Black Crowes, Jennifer Larmore, Styx, Diana DeGarmo, Charles Wadsworth and others will perform Saturday, 8:30 p.m. (pre-show begins at 8 p.m.) at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, in the 32nd Annual Georgia Music Hall of Fame awards show. Tickets, $20-$100, are available through Ticketmaster, or the Friends of Georgia Music Festival Inc., an Atlanta nonprofit organization that stages the awards show. Tickets: 1-800-745-3000. The show will be broadcast live on Georgia Public Broadcasting beginning at 8:30 p.m. Information: www.georgiamusic.org/ or www.cobbenergycentre.com/.
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