Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going. The 3. 3- year- old musician Kelela favors the kind of fashion aesthetic that science- fiction films sometimes use to signify characters from the future: gravity- defying materials in iridescent or metallic colors. For a recent rainy night in Strasbourg, the small city in the northeastern corner of France, she strode onstage dressed like a lieutenant in an anime cartoon, in an oversize gray bomber jacket, matching shorts and heels made from white fabric that stretched above her knees. She raised her hands and gave a hard stare to the crowd. It has influenced every genre, pretty much, so anyone who thinks it is basic or rudimentary has another thing coming.”There were no whoops, claps or even smiles.
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The audience remained passive. Kelela likes to keep an eye out for the edges of the crowd, where her core fans (“the queer black and brown weirdos” as she put it to me) usually congregate. But tonight, the scene was homogeneous in a very European way: Women favored striped boatnecks, red lips and messy topknots; the men, zipped- up pullovers and spotless white trainers.
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Kelela nodded at her D. J., Loric Sih, a sweet- faced boy with bleached blond hair and wire- rimmed Harry Potter glasses, and they dove into her set. True to her word, amid the switchbacks of her feathery falsetto voice, there was no mistaking the roots of classic R.& B. The room became a sound installation of Kelela’s reverb- y vocals and synthetic ’9. Miami bass. Kelela’s stage was minimally adorned, but her lighting team is adept at creating James Turrell- like lightscapes that drape her figure in rich reds, purples and blues. At one point, her face and body were illuminated by an electric shade of cyan, while the background remained shaded in dark azure. The effect made Kelela look as ethereal and spectral as the music radiating from the speakers.
The handful of times I’d seen her perform in the United States, the audience was rapt for the entire performance — reverent during her atmospheric songs, breaking into exuberant, feverish dance during her fast- paced ones. Stylist: Mischa Notcutt.
Hair: Virginie Pinto Moreira. Makeup: Michelle Boggs. But that night the concertgoers remained inscrutable. When she transitioned into a new song — “Blue Light,” the first single from her long- awaited debut album — I pulled out my phone and sent the recording to some friends back home.
Some 4,0. 00 miles away, they seemed more excited than the people physically present in the concert hall. Finally, about 3. Sih began playing “Rewind,” the closest thing Kelela has to a pop song. The audience, charmed at last, succumbed to the irresistible beat and danced along.
The moment was buoyant but short- lived: It was her last number. She thanked the crowd and then bounded offstage. When she was back in her dressing room, the composure Kelela had projected to the audience quickly dissipated. She stood with her hands on her hips, chewing on her lip. Her boyfriend — a filmmaker named Cieron Magat, with whom she shares an apartment in London — murmured words of reassurance and handed her a cup of homemade ginger tea. Magat told her not to worry, but Kelela wanted to deconstruct the performance.“The thing I’m always looking for are the eyes, or even the face that’s like, I don’t know what this is but I’m into it,” she said. Earlier in the day, while roaming around Strasbourg, I noticed that the posters advertising the show didn’t even mention her name.
That night, in the nearly sold- out venue, a space that could hold 4,0. In the United States, Kelela is part of the vanguard of black female musicians who make emotional soul, women like Solange, SZA and Syd tha Kyd. The music of these women is aimed squarely at the heart chakra of young black women; it legitimizes as much as it asserts the value of being yourself — even if that self is thought to be a little off- center. Kelela, in particular, explodes the notion that blackness is monolithic, a single Pantone square instead of untold variations. Her music is geared to a generation that lives for juxtapositions and unexpected arrangements, sonically and visually. In 2. 01. 2, Kelela was performing at a show that Solange’s manager happened to see.
She asked for a demo and gave the song to Solange, who asked Kelela to come on tour with her later that year, introducing Kelela to an audience who could appreciate her innovations in R.& B. In October 2. 01. Kelela released “Cut 4 Me,” an impressive mixtape composed of 1.
At the time, Kelela wanted to see how far she could push herself as an artist and play with the boundaries of R.& B. Kelela’s uninhibited experimentation, as well as the rich latticework on songs like “Send Me Out,” impressed critics.
Pitchfork gave the collection a rare 8. Spin called the collection “stunning” and said the singer could “go anywhere from here.” That November, Solange chose two of Kelela’s songs for “Saint Heron,” a compilation album released by Solange’s label of the same name. In 2. 01. 5, she released a six- song EP called “Hallucinogen.” Her sound on the EP somehow managed to evoke Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Bj. It felt like a sonic relic of the past unearthed 1. Since then, fans have been waiting for her first full- length album, which Kelela expects to release this year. In her dressing room, Kelela folded herself into a pretzel on the couch next to me.
A candle burned in the background. She knew it had been an off night, but because she loves performing so much, she was still buzzing from the energy. She was raised in Gaithersburg, Md. Kelela’s parents introduced her to the violin when she was a child, and she practiced singing along to the radio in her bedroom at night and composing medleys in her head. Her father was fond of Blues Alley, an all- ages jazz supper club in Georgetown frequented by Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan. He often took Kelela with him, and she fell in love with the culture of music.
She listened to Kirk Franklin on the radio and learned to sing in ge’ez, an ancient language used primarily in the Ethiopian church, which she attended with her mother. You can still catch the influence in her voice — the way she turns sounds into sacred geometry, almost unconsciously stairstepping through the vowels and consonants. In her early to mid 2. Washington bar called 1. Street Lounge for its Sunday- night house sessions. I would create a flip,” she says. She joked to me that she was a “jazz wife” but also admitted that she received an unexpected education: She learned to listen to music, to get a feel for it.
Eventually the couple broke up, but Funn encouraged Kelela to trust her instincts and not be intimidated by her lack of formal music training. By that time, Kelela was a student at American University, studying international studies and sociology. In my head, I am supposed to be a college graduate. I wanted to finish. But I was not motivated to sit there and do that paper. I had a lot of resistance.” She felt alienated by the program.
She dropped out. This was in 2. Knife, was trending. She began recording in a punk house in Washington, a city with a hard- core lineage that included acts like Fugazi and Bad Brains. She thrived in an environment devoid of rules. Watch The Full Fahrenheit 11 (2017) The Movie.
Let’s just try to make it ourselves.” At first she sang over indie rock, but it didn’t feel authentic to her. She wanted to experiment with electronic music — “not real instruments,” she says. She spent hours on My. Space, scrolling through pages of music and listening to instrumentals. She recorded herself singing over sounds she liked. Then she would send the artist her sample, along with an invitation to collaborate.
Two notable electronic producers agreed, including Daedelus, who featured her on a track. At the same time, a friend introduced her to the electro duo Teengirl Fantasy, and they created a song.