GΞИT on 'Joe Sent Me'

The artist who started electronica while still a student and received excellent critics from the New York Times , who reached number one on the billboard charts with Danny Tenaglia’s remix of “ Surrender yourself”, who was subsequently sexually charged with her album “Zipless”, released in 2008 "Joe sent me", reflecting her desire to focus on the words of the album (http://www.myspace.com/vanessadaoumusic). Making the songs connect with the real world experience, and jazz history, Vanessa says. The album which was born as a project of music , poetry and related graphic content and which ultimately would undergo a name change and be called "Joe sent me" a nod to the popular US Prohibition era password to enter the red light district, is a real world of music and poetry to a new dimension of electronica: electroerotica. This album was so powerfully erotic that made me replace Sade’s "Love is stronger then pride" and discard all the mediocre lazy Sunday afternoon lovers."

Love, Words, Music

Joe Sent MDE: after the show with The Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.)

With the Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.) after their absolutely stunning, scintillating performance of Joe Sent MDE... video footage of the performance on these pages coming soon...

Joe Sent M.D.E.: New York Times Calendar Events in New Jersey

WEST WINDSOR Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College “Joe Sent MDE,” a dance performance featuring the music of Vanessa Daou. May 16 and 17. $10 to $14. Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road
kelseyatmccc.org (609) 570-3333


New York Times

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Moods: You, The Night, And The Music

The first in a series of sophisticated, mood-enhancing soundtracks for modern living. From the worlds of dance, electronic rock, nu-soul, future jazz and beyond.

Recommended if you like Vanessa Daou, Osunlade, Fat Freddy's Drop.

CD price: $12.97

CD Baby

Invisibility cloak edges closer

"Scientists have rendered objects invisible under near-infrared light.
Unlike previous such "cloaks", the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking. Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light." BBC

Just say that Joe sent you: The backroom aural sex of Vanessa Daou (Inside Entertainment, Canada)

Just say that Joe sent you The backroom aural sex of Vanessa Daou Electro-beat poetess Vanessa Daou made a name for herself back in 1995 with the release of her debut solo album Zipless. The jazztronic curio was a white hot fusion of sultry beats, cool jazz and the lovelorn eroticism of Erica Jong's poetry. On subsequent albums, Daou earns a reputation as a downtempo queen, whose seductive musical exotica could be affectionately dubbed "aural sex." Inspired in part by a backroom tour of New York's 21 Club (a one-time speakeasy during the Prohibition days), Daou's self-produced new album, Joe Sent Me, is a rediscovery of Prohibition-era jazz. The album draws upon the era's sound as well as the shady goings-on perpetuated by speakeasies and the underhanded dealings with the laws of both the land and the heart. "What strikes me the most about the Prohibition era," Daou told Inside E, "is how the music broke through racial, gender, legal and ethical barriers, and how it continued to cut its radical path through the '40's and '50's and into the '60's when Beat poets began to merge words with Jazz." On an album where grime and elegance rub shoulders, Daou fosters a musical space where her electro-grooves and acoustic set-ups coalesce. Daou's ghostly vocals billow and swirl like a thick, phosphorous dream; they don't so much inhabit the songs as haunt them, spilling over into sonic atmospherics. Proving she can still sway the masses on a dancefloor, Daou showcases her knack for serious beats. Replete with a horn section sounding from beyond the grave of some red-light district of yore, the track Black & White throbs like a palpitating heart, cellophane-wrapped in a punchy synth-glam sheen. It also sports one of the spikiest f*ck-off lines to ever grace a pop song. "Here's the pen you gave me to write my poetry; I said I'd give it back to you the day you stopped inspiring me." On Hurricanes (a track indebted to the avant-garde poetry of Anne Waldman), the cut-up phrasings of Daou's mosaic poem languidly plays catch-up with the percussive loop of a hand slapping the thigh. It's a album of jazz, for sure, but the aesthetic at work here is almost punk; sound and poetry are layered like graffiti. "What interested me," Daou explains, "was, in an inverse way, freeing poetry and language from music. This approach was inspired by my web meanderings where I would be listening online to spoken poetry in one window and music on YouTube in another. When I began to conceive the sound of Joe Sent Me, I was hearing a new kind of sonic landscape where the words merged with the music without being locked into it or too syncopated with the beat, the way an overheard conversation sounds when music is playing." Daou also tackles R&B, offering an alien twist to an often tired genre. Many of the songs depict love at a haunted crossroad where sex and death intersect, and Daou explores the anachronisms of desire, role-playing the aggressor in a relationship in which she has been victimized. The approach is always understated and a sense of mystery fills every space on the canvas. Joe Sent Me is an album shrouded in the blue haze of a back-alley nightclub where its lonely patrons rove the city nights in unrest. - Written by Imran Khan - Inside Entertainment, Canada, April 2009

Interview with Alvyn Haywood, host of "Jazz School" WWFM

My visit to Mercer County Community College last month included an at length & many faceted conversation with Professor Alvyn Haywood, host of 'Jazz School' on WWFM [ Jazz On 2 89.1 FM, Trenton's Jazz HD Channel ] . We touched on topics ranging from the importance of Jazz in the context of contemporary culture, specific inspiration for me during the writing of JOE SENT ME, the background of my connection and collaboration with Academic Theatre Program Instructor Alex DeFazio which led to JOE SENT MDE, future plans, and more.

Professor Haywood & those at WWFM are shaping an immensely innovative and important program, one that reaches out to Trenton & beyond in a broad-minded and all-inclusive way, a model for radio stations everywhere that seek to educate, influence & inspire their audience as well as entertain.

Stream it here!

Anji Bee: Chillcast #161: Sexy New Tunes

Chillcast #161 with luscious voiced Anji Bee of Lovespirals...







Playlist:

1. "Black & White" Vanessa Daou Joe Sent Me (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
2. "Viens" Sr Mandril Terragroove (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
3. "Destiny Complete (Bittersweet Version - DJ Drez Remix) The Angel feat. Mystic Supa Crucial Downtempo Remixes & Rarities (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
4. "If I Could Tell You" Blu Mar Ten Close EP (2009) Buy on iTunes | Buy the Vinyl
5. "On the Bridge" Monodeluxe and Paola The Lounge Suite Vol. 1 (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
6. "Bred an Budda (The Particle Mix - ft Becks, Shaggy & Anji Bee)" Loveshadow ccMixter (2008) Free CC Download
7. "Heaven" WK-Collective Heaven (2009) Free Download | Buy on iTunes
8. "Wonder (Live)" Karmacoda Ultraviolet Live (2009) Buy on iTunes | Buy at CDBaby

'Heart of Wax': Conquering Venus Book Trailer

I'm deeply honored that Collin Kelley has chosen 'Heart of Wax', from my new album 'Joe Sent Me', to be the soundtrack to the trailer for his forthcoming novel Conquering Venus. About the novel, Gary Zebrun writes: "From Memphis to London and to Paris, Martin Paige seeks redemption after a terrible and violent loss. The wonder is that he still believes in love, even when it appears like an apparition in an elusive and conflicted young man. Collin Kelley takes you on a sometimes frolicsome, sometimes tragic tour of the heart in this engaging first novel."

Thank you, Collin, for the spark that you ignite with your words and the smoldering fire that continues its slow burn in our hearts.

Collin Kelley & the Charge of Poetry

"I want to drive away into the morning light,
headed for Spain, hurting like hell,
but with my head up
and the taste of him on my lips."
Collin Kelley, from 'Why I want to be Pam Grier'

We feel it as a jolt, a surge, as though we've received some invisible electrical charge: then, a window opens up, there's a flash of recognition, a recollection, a memory that had been dimmed, dulled or denied, then, a slow opening of the mind - a thought, emotion, sentiment, perception - our finger is on the pulse of something, an inkling, that we were, previously, unable to identify.

Whether spontaneous, structured, confessional, or historical, Poetry condenses meaning into tight, terse, tensile language: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"; one phrase engenders an endless stream of impressions, iterations, and interpretations. Poets might be whimsical, reclusive, oblique, or explicit, remembered as defiant or ignominious... Whatever the destiny or description, all Poets use words as they choose them: as tools, as weapons, seeking to exact revenge, some positing a particular vision of the world, others, a plea for redemption.

David Herrle writes: "Collin Kelley's social/political poems are never mixed to go down smoothly like, say, a Sea Breeze. They're Tanqueray served neat." Kelley achieves the sweepingness of love's paradoxical emotion in one phrase:

"I want to drive away into the morning light,
headed for Spain, hurting like hell"

and exquisite nuance in the next:

"but with my head up
and the taste of him on my lips."

The charge, the surge: Poetry.

Forbidden images: the charge of art, music & poetry...

the forbidden, desire, gestures as messages, Salome, dance as expression of rebellion, exaltation, freedom, redemption...

Julie London: 'Cry Me A River' from 1955

Julie London, one of my all-time favorites & earliest influences...

'Joe Sent Me' Digital info: iTunes, Rhapsody...

IODA Distribution featured release
Vanessa Daou Bio
Joe Sent Me info

Vanessa Daou

"Black & White" (mp3)
from "Joe Sent Me" (Daou Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Rhapsody
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album

Coolness: Christine Swint on 'Joe Sent Me'

"Vanessa Daou's new album, Joe Sent Me, is exactly what I want to listen to now. I’ve been keeping the CD in my car while I drive around town, and I even played it for my yoga class the other day. They melted.

Daou's vocals are pure silk, and the jazz riffs underneath are the wind that rustles the lyrics. It's heaven. Her work shows the heights that can be reached when the artist takes risks – it's contemporary, fresh, original. Go listen. And go read too. Collin Kelley's interview with Vanessa Daou is on page 28 of the current issue of ouroboros review. A huge thank you to both artists for being a part of our fledgling magazine."

Words by poet & writer Christine Swint @ Balanced on the Edge

radio's new paradigm_jonny mugwump & the exotic pylon

"I think that it's time for a new adult art."
Donal Kuspit

Neoteric realms of philosophy & sound, sonic streams-of-subsciousness, future-past sound wave vestiges, music's sublime resonances... Jonny Mugwump and The Exotic Pylon is equal parts accident and alchemy, a weekly "palette cleanser", War-on-Terror's sonic aftershock: a reflection, a recitation, a sonic projection on the scrim of our collective imagination.

"All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born." With these words, Yeats, in 'Easter, 1916', brings to life and reifies our awful suspicion that sometimes what is terrible lives alongside what is beautiful. Violence, terror, tragedy, catastrophe, have left past poets intrepid but disconsolate. Post-modernists have taken refuge in frivolity as a way of escaping hopelessness, but we are seeing the burgeoning of a new era of artists, museum goers and radio listeners have begun to reject Mass Media's rapacious maw for feel-good art and music.

"Categorization is not to be taken lightly."
George Lakoff, 'Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things'

A byproduct of the commodification of music has been its categorization. The silent edict is: if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit in. This has led to a whittling down of choices for the consumer, a kind of creative censorship. What's left is the lowest common denominator, a homogeneity of sound which for the artist, hungry for newness and nuance, is at once fettering and freeing.

Since the forbidden cannot be suppressed - lessons learned from Storyville, Prohibition, the Recording Ban of the 1940s, and History's banned books - these constraints have historically been not a bane, but a boon for artists who are armed with the knowledge that what is hidden is, like all mysterious things, the most seductive, and inso being, the most desired.

"A number of artists to-day set out to create no more artworks. Instead they want to get out of the museum, and provoke modifications of the space of everyday life, giving rise to new forms of relations."
Jacques Ranciere, ' Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art'

"It's a question of the authority of things," says Anne Veronica Janssens. 'The Exotic Pylon' questions this authority, and takes refuge in the hybridity of contemporary experience, foraging Art, Philosophy & Radio history for context while forging a new sonic language. Beyond playing music, Jonny Mugwump is proposing a new perspective on the world, one that denies the doctrine of categorization. One listen to his show and you'll be jarred into the recollection that music is an Art that has the capacity to be sublime as well as subversive, and enlighten as well as entertain.

Like love and desire, the term 'sublime' refers to a feeling which by its nature cannot be defined; it is felt in the half-light, in the moonlight, both fearful and beautiful, it moves imperceptibly toward some intuited infinity, away from the known, part of a hidden continuum that with each generation keeps tuning in to a new auricular frequency.

Luke White writes about "the strange 'after echoes' ... of the idea of 'the sublime'..." Today's handful of Artists, Musicians, Poets and Sound Alchemists are shaping a new paradigm, a 'sublime' that can be digitized, widgtized, Googled, YouTubed, streamed and forever archived, a new sublime that is felt in the resonance of their 'after echoes'.

---

Join 'Jonny Mugwump and The Exotic Pylon' Facebook Radio Show page here

Forthcoming interview with Jonny Mugwump + links tba

SRO @ MCCC!

From start to finish, Friday was a perfect day at Mercer County Community College!

Academic Theatre Program Instructor Alex DeFazio & I began the day with a great interview by Rachel Katz who hosts the dynamic 'Views & Voices' at WWFM, a classical music public radio station that operates out of Mercer County Community College.

Afterward, we had an at length & many faceted conversation with Mercer Communications professor Alvyn Haywood for WWFM's 'Jazz on 2', Trenton's Jazz Station. We touched on topics ranging from the importance of Jazz in the context of contemporary culture, specific inspiration for me during the writing of JOE SENT ME, the background of my connection and collaboration with Alex DeFazio which led to JOE SENT MDE, future plans, and more.

Professor Haywood & those at WWFM are shaping an immensely innovative and important program, one that reaches out to Trenton & beyond in a broad-minded and all-inclusive way, a model for radio stations everwhere that seek to educate, influence & inspire their audience as well as entertain. Read more about 'Jazz on 2' here.

The students who attended the Q&A were some of the most interesting, inquisitive & insightful that I've come across anywhere. Questions ran the gamut, from the technical, relating to the signing recording contracts, to the personal, concerns about the future possibility of facing the 'casting couch', something every female artist will most likely have to face at one time or another. We discussed the importance of smartly navigating the sometimes treacherous music business waters, the current state of flux & chaos in the industry, the various ways of keeping one's inspiration alive & vital, and the importance of discipline as an artist.

It was a packed room and an amazing conversation! Thanks to all the MCCC students & faculty members who made their presence felt by attending & participating in what was an experience for all to remember! As we approach the JOE SENT MDE performance dates (May 16th & 17th) I'll be creating a virtual document of the experience here, as well as featuring artwork by immensely talented Mercer Art, Design, Dance & Theatre students. Come May 17 & 18th, I'll be adding video & photos of JOE SENT MDE.



See you there!

Vanessa Daou Visits Mercer County Community College 3/27

"The Academic Theatre and Dance Programs at Mercer County Community College are hosting a campus visit by #1 Billboard Dance Artist Vanessa Daou on Friday, March 27 at 12:30 p.m. The community is invited to join Ms. Daou for a Q&A session in the Studio Theatre (CM 122), located next to Kelsey Theatre on the college's West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. The event is presented free of charge.

According to MCCC Theatre Program Coordinator Jody Person, Ms. Daou's visit to campus represents an extraordinary opportunity for Mercer students and members of the community who are musicians, graphic designers, dancers, programmers, visual artists, performers and writers. Says Person, "Vanessa has performed everywhere from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to the Olympia Theatre in France. She's also an interdisciplinary artist who works with music, poetry, visual art, graphic design, and interactive digital art. Most importantly, she's a thinking artist, and this is precisely the quality we are working to nurture in students of the Theatre and Dance Programs at MCCC."

Link to full article on Broadway World

@bendrix on blip.fm

@bendrix on blip.fm: "Vanessa Daou: erotica artist/poet. "Plutonium Glow" (1997) dreamy female vocals caught in an electro space age vortex." codesignal.com

The Daou of Poetry: A conversation with musician and poet Vanessa Daou By Collin Kelley

A portion of my interview by incredible poet, novelist & journalist Collin Kelley from issue #2 of the Ouroboros Review, a stunning new poetry & art journal:

Collin: Let’s start back at the beginning of your life as a poet – who inspired you?

Vanessa: When I was attending Columbia University, I studied poetry with Kenneth Koch. His class was amazing and he was such a communicator for his vision and idea of poetry. He shattered the notion that poetry is something unapproachable and obtuse. I became interested in spoken word because of him and I often read at PostScrypt, the poetry spot at Columbia.

......

Collin: Joe Sent Me is amazing. The music reminds me of Miles Davis’ score for Elevator to the Gallows, and the spoken word element is really strong here; much more so than on the other records.

Vanessa: Originally, I conceived of Joe Sent Me as a soundtrack of sorts to my own life, perhaps a projection of it, as a kind of sonic document of my experience through time. I have a background and interest in research and one of those interests is in code, with respect to words and the kind written for a computer. Joe Sent Me is an old speakeasy password from the Prohibition-era. You said those words at a door and suddenly you were in this hidden, mysterious place. That idea intrigued me. On the digipack for the album there is a quote from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art that reads, “Words on a page of poetry are a code for human emotions.” That idea is the heart of the album.

Issue #2 also contains poetry by Michelle McGrane, Iain Britton, Rebecca Gethin, Julie Buffaloe-Yoder, and Robin Reagler, and more.

Make sure to view Hunter Ewen's illustrations & listen to his score to Amy Pence's poetry, follow the link in the NEWS section of Ouroboros here

Editors Jo Hemmant of flourescence & Christine Swint of balanced on the edge have created an internet savvy & highly forward-looking Poetry & Art experience.

JOE SENT M(D)E

"The Mercer Dance Ensemble features a group of MCCC's [Mercer Community College's] most talented students and alumni, plus some special guests. This years concert will be a landmark collaboration between the Mercer Dance Ensemble and critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Vanessa Daou.

Choreographed by dance faculty Janell Byrne, with guest choreography by Jody P. Person and others, Joe Sent M.D.E. features music from Daou’s new album, Joe Sent Me, which she named after a code-phrase that was used to gain entry into Prohibition-era speakeasies. Daou says the album is about "the transmission of ideas through time, the secret ranges of the voice, fleeting nights of love and desire, the archiving of dreams, memory, and the imagination." Joe Sent M.D.E. transforms Daou's ideas into a suite of dances constructed around the central metaphor of the album – to discover "secret codes," in a language of the body, that will open doors into illicit paces of rebellion and abandon"

[ Kelsey Theatre ]

Joe Sent Me-poetry & Intangible Culture

"...the sense of here/not here, this want of places to
be, enter & make
sagacious."
Barry McKinnon, from Two from In the Millennium


I've always loved the sounds of words, but words mean nothing until and unless meaning is provided or attached. The beauty of Poetry is that meaning can be sensed, gleaned, inferred, intuited, without the necessity of being fully understood. Poets love to tease out meaning from fleeting things - the evanescence of a street lamp on a dusky day, the sense of absence from the low hum of someone's murmurs heard through walls.

A unique element of poetry is its ability to compress and condense feeling, as well as its portability & flexibility: it can be transferred, translated & transmitted, it fulfills our need for immutability as well as intangibility. Perhaps the reason Poetry continues to thrive throughout the ages is that it fits into Primary as well as Secondary Oral Traditions. And while, at its core, a poem consists of words in one form or another, a great poem speaks to everyone and is appreciated equally by the theoriser and blogger. In the final analysis, a poem is apprehended not by applied knowledge but by the totality of its essence.

While I'm drawn to the intimacy of a poem on the page, I've always loved to hear a poem as it is intoned by its author. One of the aspects of technology that I love is its ability to re-contextualize a song or a poem, and while the debate rages about Poetry's place within the truly unruly realm of the Web, on needs only to look back at the invention of the typewriter to see its effect on the generation of Dada Poets who contemporaneously harnessed and applied its potentialities to an infinite and ever-expanding degree.

I've conceived of JOE SENT ME-poetry as part of a living document, where each poem takes on a life of its own outside of the writer and the written hand. As a featured guest of Barcelona Poesia 2008, I created JOE SENT ME @ BarcelonaPoesia2008 to reflect the way my mind reconstructs my experience of Barcelona, the vibrant clash of its cultures and co-mingling of languages live and breath in my memory in a a vivid and tangible way.

I wanted to flesh out the tonal & vocal nuances of some of the spoken poems on JOE SENT ME, which led to my collaboration with sound & visual artist Raul Vincent Enriquez who shed his sonic insight into THE HOOK and LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; Bruno Galindo, who shaped flawless & beautiful Spanish translations of THE HOOK & LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; and Daniel Sisla, fellow guest poet at the Barcelona Poesia 2008, who has so perceptively and impeccably created Catalan translations of LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK, DREAM, and INTO THE NIGHT (both not included on the album). The poems on JOE SENT ME were recorded by Greta Byrum who shared her ear & expertise with their recording at Recorded Books, New York City.

The aim for these pages is to break down each poem into its component parts:

word/sound

structure/form

rhythm/repetition

writer/reader

speaker/listener

creator/viewer

imagination/interpretation

The internet provides the perfect vehicle for the nuances of poetry, for the transportation of its substance & essence, for the transmission of its message through time. For me, raw computer coding languages hold within them pure poetic potential: the hope is to shape new ways of perceiving technology and its relation to language, music, things remembered, things heard, reflection, recollection and the spoken word.

---

For further excursions into intangible realms, visit:

Drunken Boat

exoticpylon

UbuWeb

Weird Deer

Year Zero One

Facebook Fanpage

Jonny Mugwump & The Exotic Pylon on Resonance FM 104.4, UK

exoticpylon.com is a radio show based in the UK - Jonny Mugwump brings the listener into his strange and darkly beautiful resonance every week, saturdays 9:30 PM -

you can hear songs from my new album Joe Sent Me here and here

the radio archive list is here

more on exoticpylon on these pages soon -

phone interview with Jonny is forthcoming...

Q&A with Elixer Productions Co-Founder Alex DeFazio

Q&Daou

This May, the Dance Program at Mercer County Community College will collaborate with the Mercer Dance Ensemble to present the world-premier of Joe Sent M.D.E., a program of original dances set to music from the new album by acclaimed singer-songwriter Vanessa Daou.

To help promote the event and show her support, Daou will be appearing at Mercer County Community College on Friday, March 27 at 12:30pm for a Q&A with Theatre Program instructor and Elixir Productions co-founder Alex DeFazio. What follows are Vanessa's e-mailed responses to drafts of Alex's questions for the Q&A as well as two additional questions and answers - exclusive to Elixir - where Vanessa shares her thoughts about gender and sexuality and how they inform her music.

Joe Sent M.D.E. performs Saturday, May 16 at 8:00 and Sunday, May 17 at 2:00pm at Kelsey Theatre on the MCCC campus (1200 Old Trenton Road / West Windsor, NJ). Tickets are available by phone at 609-570-333 or online at the Kelsey Theatre website. Vanessa will be appearing on campus Friday, March 27 at 12:30pm in CM122 (Communications Building Room 122); the Q&A is free and open to the public!

In the mean time, look for Joe Sent Me, Vanessa's new album, at Daou Records.

[ Link to original post on Elixer Productions Blog ]

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Alex: Many of our students at Mercer County Community College aspire to professional careers in the arts - as musicians, actors, visual artists, graphic designers, dancers. You were a student at Vassar and then Barnard College and Columbia University, and it was around this time that you began reading your poems at coffee houses and experimenting with singing and songwriting. How did you make the transition from student to major-label artist? Was it a transition that "found" you, or one that you consciously worked for, and what were some major stepping stones in your path?

Vanessa: It was a transition that definitely found me. I came from an art, poetry, and performance background, so the concept of being a "major label artist" was very unfamiliar to me. In the early 90s I was friends with a group of experimental underground electronic DJs and musicians, and I was in the studio one day at NuGroove Records, a seminal and groundbreaking label, when a DJ producer asked if I could write a song to one of his tracks. I came from a musical background so it wasn't that much of a stretch for me. When I sang the song to him once I finished, he asked me to be the vocalist on the song. It was very successful in the UK as well as the US, and ended up being the best selling record on the label.

Columbia Records found out about the release and my poetry background, and signed me and my then-husband Peter, who I had been collaborating with on a number of experimental tracks as "The Daou." I would say that one of my major stepping stones was my dance background, as I had been incorporating improvisational modern dance into all of my performances, including my showcase for Columbia Records, and my first public performance at the first massive rave in LA at the Shrine Auditorium.

Alex: Many of our students majoring in theatre and dance take a course called "Artistic Collaboration" that asks them to combine their talents and independently create a series of performances. How important was artistic collaboration to you in your early years, from Barnard and Columbia through the creation of you first album, Head Music?

Vanessa: Collaboration is a necessary component of being a singer and performer, which always involves working with others - whether it's in the studio or on stage. When you're a student, the impression is sometimes that in the "real world" it is either a black or white situation: either you're an actor or a fundraiser, either you're a painter or curator. But I think that's an old model that doesn't work anymore, and that in the new cross-cultural world it's also an equally cross-disciplinary world where it would benefit students immensely if these interlaced professional boundaries were broken, and more than that, erased, so that artists could become more in charge and more fully aware of all aspects and potentialities of their art, creatively as well as technically and financially.

Alex: As instructors in the Theatre and Dance Programs at Mercer County Community College, one of our missions is to help students embark on the process of discovering their own unique and authentic voices as artists. Virginia Woolf was thirty-three years old when she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, and she wrote, even then, that she was only just beginning to discover her voice and identity as a novelist and writer. How do you understand this idea of "artistic voice," and when would you say you really began to discover and claim your own unique identity as an artist?

Vanessa: The idea of "artistic voice" has always intrigued me: it's descriptive of both the intangible essence as well as the audible aspect, where, as a singer, the "voice" is the literal vehicle that carries the message forward. I discovered my own voice early on, from my first recording. I felt immediately that my literal voice matched the poetic one I was developing, that my voice has a sonic quality which combined something ethereal as well as a direct kind of clarity. In my poetry I was exploring these dualities, confessional and intimate tones - through poets like Anne Sexton, Anne Waldman, and Wallace Stevens - and more universal and broad-reaching tones - through poets such as John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg.

Although I discovered my own artistic voice early in my career, it has been a slow and gradual process of honing, shaping and fine-tuning my voice and poetic vision, which is constantly being redefined as the years pass and the world continues in a constant state of movement, this way or that.

Alex: Despite the boom of independent art-making over the past decade or two - in film, theatre, music, and other disciplines - I'm sure many students still dream of "making it big" by signing to major agents, being cast in Broadway productions or studio films, or scoring a contract with a major record label. Your first album, Head Music, was released by Columbia Records, and your next two albums, Zipless and Slow to Burn, were released by MCA. What was your experience as a major-label artist, and how would you encourage young artists today to think about "success" in relationship to major labels and institutions?

Vanessa: I think "making it big" is a dream that is highly overrated. Especially too early in an artist's career, before they've had the chance to develop fully, it frequently puts many pressures on one's art which are impossible to overcome.

I've had the unique and rare opportunity to experience being on a small independent label, major labels, as well as running my own label. While there are undoubtedly advantages to being on a "major label," there are as many drawbacks, and for me having artistic control has always been negotiated in my recording contracts. It's something that I've fought for, but for the most part it's something that is usually relinquished once you sign your contract.

After I negotiated out of my contract with Columbia records, I put out Zipless on my own record label. It was after many months of success with it that Bob Krasnow discovered the album and signed me to MCA, and re-released it. For all the successes with large institutions, I can point to as many failures, and this leaves artists at a disadvantage when they become so dependent on these institutions that they are unable to navigate on their own, whether out of fear or lack of
know-how. Many artists will give up the fight or lose their artistic spirit once faced with too many rejections from institutions. Some artists will become emboldened and push into further realms where they self-release their record or self-publish their book, finding more success there than ever. It is from these artists that I've learned the most.

Alex: In the late 80s and early 90s - right around the time you began your major-label recording career - there were no iPods, no technologies to create audio files of manageable size, and therefore no means to electronically share or sell music in non-physical formats over the internet. Back in 1996 when you left MCA, the mp3 was still relatively new, and you became one of the first artists to distribute an album over the internet, Plutonium Glow. How did the mp3 enter your world, and what effect did it have on your understanding of the relationship between art and technology?

Vanessa: One of the advantages an artist has that big institutions do not is their ability to be flexible and malleable and keep their finger constantly on the pulse of society, continuously on top of their craft. When you're in a corporate environment, your world becomes skewed and distorted, where itís about listening to the consensus rather than some private muse.

From the earliest days of the internet, I saw it as a tool as well as a vehicle for the sale and dissemination of music, as it was becoming for news and entertainment. I was able to retain digital rights on Zipless and Slow to Burn because, at the time, the major labels did not have the foresight to see that one day, this would be critically important. I've also seen the landscape shift to the point where many music industry professionals are predicting a total phase out of the CD format, where only digital downloads will be available. The problem with this is not only the
diminishing importance of the album as a form of expression, but a trivialization of the idea of what a recording artist is.

Alex: Something thatís really remarkable about your albums is how much thought goes into them. For Zipless, you chose nine poems by Erica Jong and arranged them for music. For Slow to Burn, you researched and incorporated elements from the lives of important female artists for each of the albumís eleven songs. I read that Plutonium Glow was inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, and you constructed an entire album around a biographical study of John Coltrane. This strikes me as a kind of "continuous learning" - the very kind that we encourage our students to embrace. Is there a part of you that always approaches a new project as a researcher, a student of new ideas, and is this different from the part of you that works off emotion and instinct?

Vanessa: Yes, absolutely. Even as a student, I was an avid researcher, always digging in library stacks and microfiche in order to answers my inquiries as well as feed my fascination. I've always been very "right" and "left" brain, and never really separated the two or felt that I had to choose between them.

As well as reading, absorbing, and learning, I've always used my art, taking pen or pencil to paper, in order to discover or uncover or shed insight into a subject that interests me. This is where the intersection of my interests in research, art, and science come into play. In 2001 I joined a team of scientists and researchers, and traveled with them to Brazil and the Biosphere in Arizona. I was recommended by a biologist from Columbia University who knew about my interest in research from my Barnard days as well as my visualization skills. I spent several months helping interpret visual data for their research which was used in the final presentation at Columbia University. This was an extraordinary experience for me, one which deeply inspired and informed me artistically.

Alex: One of the reasons weíre so excited to have you at Mercer is that your work encompasses so many mediums. You're a singer-songwriter, but you're also a painter, a poet, and an html coder and digital artist. What inspired you to bring these disciplines together for the multimedia and internet components of your new album, Joe Sent Me, and what do you think our students could gain by learning about and incorporating new mediums into their art?

Vanessa: Since releasing Plutonium Glow on my own label, I've been fascinated by the computer and the sense of limitless space and possibilities that it provides. For me, it's an ever expanding, continuously additive canvas that provides multiple layers of sight, sound, and time simultaneously. Online, one has the powerful sense of being fully connected - to society, to the world, connected to the past as well as to the future.

It is also a medium that has its own language and mysteries, which, as is the nature of technology, are constantly and continuously evolving. I gleaned early on that it would be necessary for me to learn and decipher its codes if I wanted to be free artistically. So, in 2004, I took some classes and embarked on a learning path which I have never turned off of. I saw so many creative possibilities in html, javascript, and java codes in terms of how they connected with my own ideas of poetry, words, music, art, and language. I love the idea of an artform that is appreciable on all these levels, and accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Alex: Looking back, what are two or three of the most important choices you made that allowed you to become the artist you are today?

Vanessa: The first important choice was to always retain creative control.
The third most important choice was to always trust my own vision.
The second most important choice was to always maintain my love of poetry.

Alex: What advise would you offer students as they plot their futures in the arts?

Vanessa: My advice would be:

• Hone your work ethic and revel in your discipline
• Always feel the pulse of society
• Never lose your sense of wonder and awe of Nature
• Read books, blogs, and e-zines from all fields, everything from science journals to scrapbooking
• Learn the roots of words, their histories, get the condensed Oxford English Dictionary
• Read dictionaries in other languages, write poems in languages that you don't know
• Draw anything in order to understand it better
• Mark up your books, take notes, record your first impressions in the margins
• Keep a notebook of thoughts, observations, sketches, meanderings
• Read poetry and philosophy that instigates and intimidates you: John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Kant, and Kierkegaard
• Learn from other artists who don't share your vision, voice, or aesthetic
• Learn to love modern art
• Use Babel Fish and YouTube as research and creative tools, dig deeply into language and history
• Always try to reach those who cannot see or hear
• Aim to move those whose hearts have been hardened
• Stop yourself when you are jaded or too confident
• Be as prepared for failure as you are for greatness
• Sometimes lower your aims, goals, and expectations
• Chose solitude over solidarity
• Leave some things unfinished
• Love the art you are in

Alex: On your album Make You Love, your lyrics and choice of poems by Erica Jong evoke a rapturously feminine world. Venus is at the forefront of the music, as is the figure of "Juliet," who circulates like a sort of Shakespearian "dark lady" through the universe of the songs - an object of the (female) speaker's love and erotic fascination. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote about a "lesbian continuum" that can represent lesbianism as well as a range of woman-identified experience, including "the sharing of a rich inner life between women." What influences were you exploring in Make You Love, and how did they lead you into a lyrical and sonic universe that Rich might describe as part of the "lesbian continuum"?

Vanessa: Venus figures prominently in my lyrics and art. On Make You Love I focus on the Female subject, Juliette, as a way of re-examining the idea of the Muse on new terms, and exploring the Venus archetype that my friend Juliette embodies. In my lyrics and vocal tones and ranges as well, I wanted to convey the manifold ideas of Venus, the interstices between her myth and reality: the "dark," furtive aspects on "A Little Bit of Pain," for example; hints of the femme fatale and seductress, on "Lovechild;" the callous temptress in "Mess Around;" the fleeting and ungraspable aspects of Desire that often lead to thwarted Love, in "Make You Love." The name "Juliette" is also the title and subject of one of Marquis de Sade's books, and at the time I saw Make You Love as a kind of offering to her "spirit," or redemption.

The idea of a "lesbian continuum" is a powerful one as it suggests the irrelevance of history, as a "continuum" occurs outside of a historical construct, one that every woman is in some way aware and a part of. Juliette, the subject/object of desire in Make You Love, represents to me the classic mythological archetype, as well as the quintessential post-modern woman who has cut a unique path in history by being all things, in deference to the past as well as in defiance: heroine and heartbreaker, wagemaker and homemaker, mythmaker and mythbreaker.

It's interesting to me to think of how the visual idea of Venus, who has traditionally been the human embodiment of (menís) desire, has changed over time, how she is now the subject of womenís desire as well. It's also interesting to see how our idea of Beauty is reflected in the changes in her physical form. Throughout the history of Western Art, Venus archetypes have been frequently portrayed with pronounced masculine traits, such as the "Venus de Milo" and the "Mona Lisa." I think this historic nod to the masculine has allowed both men and women throughout the ages to connect with the figure of Venus. Collin Kelly, an amazing poet from Atlanta whose work addresses these archetypes, has a new novel coming out titled Conquering Venus. The cover of the book shows a statue of Venus silhouetted against the sky where her figure is decidedly ambiguous and androgynous. Itís important that these boundaries continue to be pushed and re-drawn creatively, which translates to politically, in society.

Interestingly, many iconic works of art representing women, including images of Venus, challenge our notions of beauty as opposed to fulfilling them. A Google search of famous iconic portraits of women leads to representations of women who reveal a certain strangeness: works like the "Mona Lisa," "Ophelia" by Sir John Everett Millais, the often scandalous paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, the self-portraits of Frida Khalo, the raw portraits of woman subjects by Lucian Freud. It's fascinating to me that often the enduring images of women are the ones which present not the idealized women, but women who are in some sense flawed, martyred, doomed, or otherwise marginalized by society. It is as though, through Art, they experience a kind of redemption, not in a religious sense, but in a sacred sense that only an artist can express.

Two books that influenced me greatly during the writing of Make You Love were Uncontrollable Beauty and Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime. Some argue that Beauty and Truth are inextricably connected. For me, the search for Beauty/Truth is partially tied to Desire which finds resolution in Love. But, as Desire can never be fulfilled completely, by capturing and projecting the object of desire in a work of art, the artist in essence keeps Desire alive. It's a kind of "Feminine Creative Continuum," to expand on Rich's phrase, and this "continuum" includes every artist - regardless of gender - who is examining ideas that revolve around the subject of Venus.

Alex: I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on the resonance of your music for gay men. In 1994, the frankness with which you sang about men through Jong's poems - eroticizing them, reveling in the shameless sexual "abandon" of the album's original title - was absolutely staggering, particularly since so much music was (and still is) focused on the sexualization of women by men. I imagine many gay men identified with Zipless and saw in it a reflection of their own sexual lives and fantasies. How does it feel knowing your music speaks specifically to gay men as well as women? Had you anticipated that your music would attract a gay following, and was this ever an issue - for better or worse - in your dealings with major labels as they worked to market your music through mainstream channels?

Vanessa: My desire to work with Erica's poems had a lot to do with my being part of the "continuum" that Rich writes about - but, for me, it's less restricted to the idea of a "lesbian" continuum than it is to the female literary and artistic one: the "Feminine Creative Continuum." So many of my muses - from Anais Nin to Erica Jong, Josephine Baker to Nico, Maria Callas, the poet Anne Carson, artists Cindy Sherman and Nadine Robinson - have explored the literal as well as creative boundaries of their gender by pushing them and sometimes challenging and overstepping them.

It's interesting to me that the word "muse" refers to the female embodiment of inspiration; there is no equivalent word for the male embodiment. At the opposite end of the mythological female spectrum, there are the "Furies" who exact retribution and revenge on those who broke certain natural laws. The "Muses" and the "Furies" have no male equals. The "figure" of the female has been explored, expressed, distilled, and all facets discussed and dissected throughout history.

Also interesting to me is the literary idea of the [Male] Gaze ("La regard") - especially as a performing artist where the body is on public display. The notion of the Male Gaze is challenged further when the woman/object is:

• desired sexually by the female who is gazing


• not desired sexually by the male who is gazing

Any art that subverts, inverts, challenges, and in essence diminishes the power of the Male Gaze - which is so fundamentally rooted in Euro-centric art - and the male historical view of Art as a whole, is at its core very powerful and provocative. By making Zipless, I was exploring and expressing my personal freedom as an artist as well as a woman, and for me the creative urge is as vital as my gender identity. I decided to call the album Zipless, a shortened form of Erica Jong's phrase "The Zipless F-ck" which relates to the sexual act, because the idea of being Zipless relates to all aspects and modes of existence.

It's deeply gratifying for me that my music and art has resonated so deeply with gay men and women who connect with the messages I'm conveying. I think those of us whose minds are flexible seek out music and art that speaks to this openness. I initially released Zipless on my own label, and my motivation for making the album was - as it is always with me - purely artistic. When Bob Krasnow signed me to his label on MCA, the fact that Zipless was on its way to becoming "popularized" did not diminish the artistry of the album. The 'Parental Advisory' sticker was an unfortunate byproduct of its release on a major label.

One of my favorite artists is Adrian Piper whose philosophy of art is intricately connected to her imagery. One of the phrases she has incorporated into her work is "Decide who you are." These four words have guided me in many directions over the years: the idea that it's the individual who decides one's identity, not society. It's a very powerful realization, for men as well as women. There are so many obvious ways that society inculcates a sense of gender identity, but it's the subtle ways that are the most damaging. I think that artists who express these and other hidden realities in their art will always be stickered, censured, flagged, and generally considered subversive. I say, that's fine, because, ironically, it is that gesture of "stickering" that creates the forward movement of this "continuum."


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