Linda Tillery is definitely not your California-massaged and botoxed singer incapable of forming an opinion without a spokesperson.
Even in a telephone interview, her knife-sharp intellect comes across. Tillery doesn’t shy away from any topic of discussion whether it’s America’s shambling health care system or the country’s economic collapse.
The Oakland-based singer is a refreshing package — articulate, funny, proud, definitely opinionated and with a heart as big as Texas. But most of all she’s a funky woman who shows us her soul through music. And she’s made it a personal mission to educate audiences about the different genres of African American music.
“When I see the effect our music has on an audience, I know I’m in the right place. Real folk music is enduring. It has a long span,” says Tillery.
Tillery is founder of The Cultural Heritage Choir, a Grammy-nominated group that has performed since 1992. Also composed of African American street dancer Rhonda Benin, African-Haitian dancer Elouise Burrell, bass singer Bryan Dyer, soloist Tammi Brown and Puerto Rican singer/dancer Rico Pabon, they will perform at the Arden Theatre Oct. 29 and 30.
“Originally we were all female, all over 40. Now we’re a multi-generational group with an age spread from the thirties to the sixties. We’re richer in terms of the quality of sound. We have seasoned voices and youthful sounds, and that creates a good combination of textures.”
Since their inception, The Cultural Heritage Choir has travelled to 22 countries keeping alive authentic African American roots music in the traditions of call and response, work songs, spirituals, play songs, field hollers, moans, ring shouts and plantation dances.
And it’s these slave songs that are the foundation of contemporary North American music from jazz, soul and funk to blues, rock ‘n’ roll and R&B.
The six-person choir just released their fourth recording in January 2010, an album that was seven years in the making and delivers a strong message of “who we are and what is our value.”
The 14-track album Still We Sing, Still We Rise pulls no punches. For instance Benin sings You Don’t Want Me, a song that reflects subtle racism.
“So many people love qualities about black people, but they don’t want us. I think this song speaks to cultural appropriation,” Tillery adds.
One thing that ticks her off is that white artists sing cover songs by black artists without crediting the source. “Black music is so compelling and hundreds of artists who are not black draw from the song pool. When you do that you have some obligation to acknowledge the source.”
On the album Tillery sings Little Rosie, a field recording originally done in the ‘30s and there’s also Hank Ballard’s composition of The Twist. They’ve included Ago Babania, a poignant history of enslavement, and for Bob Marley fans, there’s a version of Get Up Stand Up.
“We approach everything with humour. We don’t want people to feel wretched and guilty. We want people feeling informed, enlightened and maybe changed.”
