Vanessa Daou | |
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| Born | Vanessa Dale (1967-10-04)October 4, 1967 (age 58) |
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| Years active | 1990–present |
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| Website | vanessadaou |
Vanessa Dale Daou[1] (born October 4, 1967) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, visual artist and dancer. Most notably a musician, her work is known amongnu jazz,trip hop andelectronic music circles for her trademark spoken word and aspirated singing style as well as its erotic and literary subtexts. Daou's songs are represented byDowntown Music Publishing.
Daou was born and spent her early childhood inSt. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, relocating in 1984 to attend boarding school in Massachusetts. As a young adult, she attendedVassar College for two years and spent several years in New York City's Hell's Kitchen area before earning a scholarship to study dance atColumbia University.[citation needed] There, she would train with choreographerEric Hawkins and explore visual art withBarry Moser and poetry withKenneth Koch, whom she cites as having sparked her interest in spoken word. Daou ultimately graduated cum laude with a visual arts and art history degree fromBarnard College/Columbia and frequently appeared in her senior year atPostcrypt Coffeehouse, the university's on-campus poetry lounge.
While still a student, Daou began her career recording for NuGroove Records, one of New York's underground electronica labels. Demos that Daou had recorded caught the attention of two NuGroove DJs, and they invited her to provide guest vocals on a developing track. The experiment led to the label's top-selling single "It Could Not Happen", which later was released onNetwork Records in the United Kingdom. Daou also performed as "Vandal" at Los Angeles' Stranger Than Fictionrave at theShrine Auditorium in 1990.
Daou's underground success brought her to the attention ofColumbia Records, which signed her to a seven-album record deal. Daou, along with a five-piece band releasedHead Music asThe Daou in 1992. An airy fusion of rock, jazz and funk,Head Music enjoyed moderate success and received praiseworthy reviews in theNew York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section and CREAM andBillboard magazines. The album's first single "Surrender Yourself" was remixed byDanny Tenaglia and reached No. 1 on Billboard's Dance Chart. Creative disagreements with Columbia would see Daou negotiate out of her contract and subsequently releaseHead Music's next two singles for the independent Tribal Records.
In 1994 Daou, now billed as a solo act, recordedZipless, a sexually charged collection of pieces inspired by the work of the poet/novelistErica Jong. A slight stylistic evolution fromHead Music,Zipless employed a somewhat more synthesized sound and introduced Daou's foray into recorded spoken word. Daou releasedZipless on her own label, Lotus Records. The album quickly established a cult following and attracted the attention ofBob Krasnow, the music A&R executive whose artist signings includeAnita Baker,Björk,Natalie Merchant andMetallica. Krasnow signed Daou to his fledglingMCA Records subsidiary Krasnow Entertainment and re-releasedZipless in 1995.
Zipless garnered favorable international press, with features and reviews inTime,[2]Billboard Spotlight Review,Bikini,Vibe,Wire,Mix Mag,URB, theToronto Star andLe Monde, among other publications. The first single, "Near the Black Forest", was featured in heavy rotation on VH1 and, along with follow-up single "Sunday Afternoons", enjoyed moderate radio rotation. Daou toured nationally with New York rapperGuru and his hip hop-jazz fusion projectJazzmatazz, playing at venues such as L.A.'sHouse of Blues,Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco andLee's Palace in Toronto.
In 1995 MCA underwent significant management changes, at which time the company faltered on the momentum that had been building for several months aroundZipless. Daou recorded a sophomore solo album,Slow to Burn, and released it in the Fall of that year. With each song a vignette inspired by the biographies of such celebrated female artisans asBillie Holiday,Gertrude Stein, andFrida Kahlo,Slow To Burn enjoyed moderate to heavy smooth jazz format radio play with its first single "Two to Tango". It was featured in reviews in VIBE, URB, Billboard,Curve, and Cover magazines. "Two to Tango" was remixed by Danny Tenaglia and reached the top of Billboard's Dance Chart, remaining at No. 1 for three weeks. It was featured in theMatthew Perry filmFools Rush In. Two other songs from the album, "If I Could (What I Would Do For You)" and "How Do You Feel?", were featured in the filmsAn American Werewolf in Paris andIdle Hands, respectively.
In the winter of 1996Seagram took over MCA and Doug Morris, a reputed adversary of Bob Krasnow, became president of the record label. Krasnow soon retired and folded his namesake label. Daou chose to leave as well, and negotiated out of her contract with MCA.[3]
Over the next couple years Daou again chose to release her records independently. With some support fromBenny Medina/Handprint Entertainment, she released 1997's dancy, cosmic exploration-themedPlutonium Glow, on her own DaouMusic label. The project was one of the earliest albums by a former major-label artist to be marketed and sold on the internet. The online release was followed by a 1998 UK re-release by independent international distributorOxygen Music Works. This latter version featured an alternate song sequencing and a new track, "Alive", in place of "Visions of You".
Artwork from thePlutonium Glow era was showcased in an exhibit called "Plutonium Show" at Untitled (SPACE) Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. A piece from the show entitled "Music Box" subsequently went on for display at aNational Arts Club student exhibition, securing the Jeffrey Seyfert Memorial Prize.
In 1999, Daou releasedDear John Coltrane on the Oxygen imprint. Somewhat more heady and nostalgic in the vein ofSlow to Burn than danceable likePlutonium Glow, the homage to thelegendary jazz saxophonist met with warm reception by fans, but sparse marketing, press, club and radio support.
Daou's next albumMake You Love, inspired by the travails of a girlfriend living in Paris, was co-released in 2000 on Daou's own label imprint andEMI in France. Generally positive reviews for Make You Love were featured in Le Monde,Elle, Magic, and Billboard Spotlight Review, and many critics received the album as Daou's most pop-oriented. The album's song "Julliette" was used in a scene for U.S. television seriesDawson's Creek; the single "A Little Bit of Pain" was used inLifetime TV movieSex, Lies and Obsession; and in the fall of 2000 Daou promoted the project as guest on a seven-week concert tour of France by pop vocalistEtienne Daho. The song "Make Believe" fromPlutonium Glow was re-recorded as a duet with Daho for hisCorps et armes album.
On the heels ofMake You Love, Daou would take a seven-year hiatus from releasing new material. Her catalog was tapped for various music compilations and for the soundtrack to 2005 French filmLila Says, but Daou would devote this time largely to visual arts, writing and academic pursuits.
In 2007, Daou announced on her official website that various pieces created sinceMake You Love were being compiled for an upcoming multimedia release, introduced under the working titleThen, at Midnight. The project, ostensibly a new music album with related graphical content, ultimately would undergo a name change toJoe Sent Me, apassphrase used to navigate freely among the clandestine U.S.Prohibition-eraspeakeasy subculture. Several pivotal moments during Daou's hiatus would shape her new output—the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York, where she then resided; and inspiring travel experiences among them.
On May 19, 2008, audio clips, lyrics and interactive graphic content heraldingJoe Sent Me premiered on the website for the Barcelona Poetry Symposium. The material thereafter became available on Daou's own site, and the album itself was released in November 2008 via Daou's online marketplace.[4] In May 2009, a program of original dances based on the music ofJoe Sent Me debuted atMercer County Community College'sKelsey Theatre, performed by the school's Mercer Dance Ensemble.[5]
On January 31, 2010, a collection of four tone poems from Daou, collectively titledLove Among the Shadowed Things, debuted on the seasonalWeird Tales for Winter segment of Jonny Mugwump & The Exotic Pylon, an experimental radio series broadcasting on London'scommunity radio/Radio Art-formatResonance 104.4 FM. Composed around the themes "Dream", "Snow", "Shadow" and "Night", the poems that compriseLove Among the Shadowed Things arestream-of-consciousness collages of spoken word, sparsefree jazz accompaniment and thickly layered sound effects. Daou describes this aural meditation on a particular December night as a juxtapositioning of things "secular and temporal ... familiar ... mystifying ... universal and eternal."[6]
In summer 2012, Daou's official website announced the online streaming debut of song "Revolution". The track would be included as a feature remix onNoozik – Volume 1, a collaborative music release between New York fashion house Nooka and digital indie music label Synth Records. Daou's website also announced that the original version of "Revolution" would appear on an upcoming 2013 album:Light Sweet Crude. Employing an array of producers,Light Sweet Crude (Act I: Hybrid) on its release would bear arguably a broader and more pronounced influence of discrete musical styles—e.g.house music,reggae,hip hop, andsymphonic—than prior projects. Lyrically, too,Light Sweet Crude would see Daou expand into new territory: Where earlier work all but exclusively explored the tumult of personal angst and interpersonal liaisons, those matters inLight Sweet Crude become corollary to such geopolitical phenomena as revolution and war.[7]
"I would say it has something to do with my own growing awareness and perception that politics is no longer something that exists outside of ourselves," Daou has said. "There is no longer much, if any, separation between what happens outside in the world and what happens inside ourselves."[8]
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