Joan Armatrading
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 25, 1999) -- When Joan Armatrading began writing songs and performing in the late 1960s, she had no role model in mind, no one after whom she patterned her music and approach. She bypassed the typical apprenticeship served by singer-songwriters who often spend time singing and studying other peoples' styles and approaches before finding their own.

"It wasn't by design or anything -- that's just the way it was," said Armatrading in a phone interview last week from a Chicago hotel, on the afternoon before the first concert on her current 20-city American tour, which comes to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams on Tuesday, Aug. 2, at 8.

"I didn't buy records or go to gigs," said Armatrading, 48, who was born on St. Kitts and moved to England at age 7. "I started writing songs because my mother bought a piano and put it in the front room. She thought it was a good piece of furniture. And it was there, so I just started to play it, and write my own songs. I never learned anybody else's songs."

Perhaps Armatrading's relative isolation as a budding songwriter accounts for her unique style, which defies easy categorization or classification. For over 25 years, she has been making records which meld folk, rock, jazz, reggae, pop and R&B in an entirely original manner. She has released 14 albums of new material and several compilations and greatest hits collections, garnered several Grammy nominations as best female vocalist, and scored several radio hits, including "Love and Affection," "I'm Lucky," "Drop the Pilot" and "Me Myself I."

Looking back, Armatrading says that even if she had sought out a role model back when she was starting out, she probably would not have found one.

"There was nobody for me to look at properly to say this is how I should do it," said Armatrading. "There wasn't a black woman writing her own songs and singing, or writing the sorts of songs that I wrote and playing guitar, or just being the way I was. There wasn't anybody to look at and say, `Okay, that's how they do it, let me try to do this.' There wasn't such a black person, and there wasn't even such a white person.

"You have to remember, I made my first record in 1972. I'm not trying to compare myself to them, but in the same way there wasn't a Beatles for the Beatles to emulate, and there wasn't a Stones for the Rolling Stones to emulate - although they had influences from other areas because they were into it in a different way from me. I wasn't buying records or following things.

"So as the profession itself grows up and different people grow up with it, there's more influences for other people who come along. It would be harder now for people to be totally original, because there have been so many other things that have been done before. I'm not saying people aren't original now. I'm just saying it's probably a little more difficult to come up with something people haven't heard before, because there's sort of a better history of popular music, there's more of it now."

Armatrading has been coming up with music that people haven't heard before for the better part of three decades, during which time she has established a fervent if cult-sized following, which now follows her movements and activities and even communicates with Armatrading directly through her website, www.joanarmatrading.com. Armatrading noted that during this current tour she hopes to post daily updates to the site, sort of an open-to-the-public tour diary.

Armatrading views the popularity of the Internet as more than just a way for her to keep in touch with her fans. An active humanitarian, she sees the Internet as one piece in a growing movement toward connecting people around the world in efforts to create and maintain peace.

"I think the Internet and globalization are both positive things that will help people to find out about themselves and about each other very quickly in a way that they weren't able to before because there's so much information," she said.

"People complain about too much information, but I don't think for me it's that way. The fantastic thing is there is so much information that you can sift and make a judgment because you've got a lot of information you can make a judgment from."

Among the humanitarian causes Armatrading has been associated with are Amnesty International and the international campaign to free Nelson Mandela, and was recently asked to write a tribute to Mandela marking the end of his presidency by members of the British Parliament. Earlier this month Armatrading participated in the Vienna Peace Summit. She says she is moved to take stands on public issues out of a simple impulse that one should treat human beings the way one wants to be treated, and not out of any strong partisan inclination.

One of six children, Armatrading grew up in the industrial city of Birmingham. She moved to London in the early 1970s, and her debut album came out in 1973. Her eponymously-titled 1976 album won her critical praise in the U.S., being named runner-up for Best Album by Rolling Stone magazine, and subsequent records, including "Show Some Emotion," "Me Myself I" and "Walk Under Ladders" widened her popularity here.

On her current tour, Armatrading is not promoting a new recording - she hopes to release one next year -- so at next Tuesday's concert, she will perform a selection of songs from throughout her career. She will be backed by an all-acoustic ensemble including bass, drums, keyboards and a multi-instrumentalist playing saxophone, percussion and guitar.

Armatrading especially enjoys performing in the U.S. "I think American audiences are the best," she said, insisting that she doesn't say that of audiences in every country she plays. "I say in every country that American audiences are the best, because I like the enthusiasm of American audiences, the honesty of them.

"If they like something, they're very enthusiastic, very vocal, very expressive. If they don't like it, they're sort of quiet. And you're in no doubt where you are.

"Sometimes English audiences can be quite quiet during the show, and then at the very end they're incredibly enthusiastic and very vocal, and you think, 'Oh, what happened here? I didn't realize you were enjoying it,' whereas the Americans will let you know just right from the get-go."

Cathy Grier, a Connecticut-born, jazz-folk singer-songwriter currently living in New York, will warm up the crowd for Armatrading (www.cathygrier.com). Food and drinks will be available in Mass MoCA's courtyard café before, during and after the show. A few tickets were still available to the concert earlier this week - call the Mass MoCA box office at 662-2111 for more information.

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[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 30, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]