Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2009
Photo by Masanori Naruse
During only her second visit to Japan, R&B singer Chrisette Michele is working for a livin’, pumping out two sets a night at the intimate Billboard Live. That’s a far cry from her usual gigs, in which the Grammy-winning artist performs in front of 10,000-strong crowds.
“It takes a toll on your voice, but this is fun too,” Michele says, catching her breath backstage at the end of the night. “They are both beautiful experiences, but this is more of an adrenaline rush because I’m speaking to each person individually, so there’s more pressure. If I make a mistake, I have to look them in the eye.”
Michele manages not only to get through a set of songs, including the emotionally bruising “I’m Okay” (off her latest album Epiphany), without any observable mistakes, but also grasps the crowd in the palm of her hands. With her jazz-inflected melodic flights and smoky, supple voice, the onetime backing vocalist for Jay-Z is a natural fit for the supper club circuit.
“I went to school for vocal jazz performance because of my love for jazz,” she says. “They say you can take the kid out of the hood but not the hood out of the kid. Well, you can take me out of jazz school, but you won’t take jazz out of me.”
Making good on her words, Michele is set to record a new album of jazz standards live at the Blue Note in New York, not too far from her hometown of Central Islip, Long Island. But in addition to standards and the end-of-a-relationship meditations that fill Epiphany, she’s also got some surprisingly topical material up
her sleeve.
“One song I’m working on at the moment is about train hoppers,” she explains. “I was recording a video about homelessness, and came across these kids who told me they are ‘freight train hoppers.’ They beg in the daytime and go on trains at night. They are angry at America, they don’t want to pay taxes, and they want to be free. So this song is about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad versus the freight-train hoppers. It makes me think about America and how some people have things handed to them and throw it all away while others have to fight for what they treasure.”
How then does it feel to look back at America from the distant remove of Japan?
“With Barack Obama being our new president, it’s exciting, but in other ways it’s embarrassing,” she replies. “There are so many different ways to look at it: I am living the American dream; I’m an entrepreneur who has been able to employ my family and people who may not have had a chance otherwise. Some people in my camp have been taken off the streets—so the opportunity to be an entrepreneur is very special to me.”
