Her début album, “Dawn,” named for both her mom and a symbol of a new beginning, probes the hurt of being left behind and the release of finding a path forward through music.ĭawn herself casts a shadow over the album-there are direct references to her death-but many of the songs seem more preoccupied with surviving in her wake. Yebba didn’t set out to reckon with her mother’s death, but that was where the writing took her. While collaborating on his album “Late Night Feelings,” from 2019, they started working on the songs that would become hers. Best known for his work with the late Amy Winehouse and the contemporary funk star Bruno Mars, Ronson has made a career trafficking in Yebba’s brand of blues. Cold, calculating label executives felt that her sorrow could become song-making fuel, to her horror.Īfter a couple exploratory years, Yebba found a creative match in the producer Mark Ronson, in 2018. She performed with Chance the Rapper on “Saturday Night Live” and scored guest appearances on songs for A Tribe Called Quest, Sam Smith, and PJ Morton, winning a Grammy for the latter. Yebba seemed unsure about how to move ahead, how to take advantage of the doors that were opening for her. A spellbinding performance of a song called “ My Mind,” at a show for Sofar Sounds, introduced her voice to the world. A preacher’s daughter who sang from a young age in the church, Yebba had dropped out of college, and moved to New York in pursuit of a music career. This is the very essence of Hymn of Dawn.In 2016, when Yebba was on the verge of a viral breakthrough on YouTube, the Arkansas singer-songwriter lost her mother, Dawn, to suicide. I hope that the music, which was written between October 2001 and April 2002, will speak for itself. The texts are from many different sources and languages, including Christian (in Greek – the Gospels), Islamic (Arabic – the Koran), American Indian (Sioux), Hindu (the Vedas (Sanskrit) and the Upanishads), Jewish (The Song of Solomon), Dante, Ibn Arabí, Shaikh Alawi and Rumi (Persian). The awesome and primordial rhythms of five different religious traditions are sounded from here. The huge pow-wow drum, with the four players ranged around it with their elk-skin beaters, should be placed in the centre of the orchestra. The soprano and baritone soloists are the singing ‘lovers’, and the solo flute and solo violin represent the male and female aspects of ‘Divine Love’. Hymn of Dawn was conceived as a mystical love song. Finally, I should also mention an unexpected visit to my house from an Apache Indian holy man with a huge and primordial pow-wow drum, another unusual circumstance in the composition of this work. Without these two wonderful gifts, I could never have written Hymn of Dawn. This is an unimaginably precious gift from heaven, and so is my guiding angel, who inspires me while I work. I should mention that I have been deeply assisted in this by the inspirational presence in my life of Frithjof Schuon, the great Swiss metaphysician and Sufi master. In the language of music though, which is the way in which I most clearly perceive divine realities, I can try to embrace all. However, I remain an Orthodox Christian, and by the nature of things, it would be impossible for me to be otherwise. Let your soul be capable of embracing all forms of belief.” As the great Sufi mystic, Ibn Arabí has said, “Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you disbelieve in all the rest. We have reached a point in history where no religion can be fully exclusive any more all things are a manifestation of the Divine Substance. The logos manifests itself in different ways, whether it be Christ, Khrishna, the Buddha, the Koran or, for the American Indians, Virgin Nature, which can be seen as God’s Art. Hymn of Dawn attempts to conceive a transcendent unity of all religions, in the form of a mystical love-song.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |