News: DStv Interview (November 22, 2011)

It has to be a conversation so I, as Tori, have to get out of the way, and allow the songs to take over my being. The piano, itself, plays me. If you can surrender like that, you really just become a vessel, and that’s a tremendous charge for me. We’re magical beings.

Tori was DStv’s Artist of the Week last week and their post about her includes both a video piece with some interview clips and an article about her visit to South Africa, the making of Night of Hunters and performing. Check out the video, which they also kindly posted on YouTube, below and jump the cut for the article.

Artist of the Week: Tori Amos

By Text: Viantha Naidoo | Video: Jason Von Berg | Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:00

2011 has been an embarrassment of riches for fans of alternative rock, with the most recent visitor to our local stages being art pop icon Tori Amos.

The eight time Grammy-nominee took some time out during her current international tour to chat to DStv Online.

The tour included dates in Johannesburg and Cape Town, to the delight of both Amos and her loyal fans. “It’s the people that are making such an impression on all of us here – you get a sense of a country when you talk to its people,” she explains eagerly. “They’re not inhibited, and they’re able to talk to you not just as professionals but as humans.”

While on local shores, the pianist/composer/singer/songwriter is hoping to experience some South African music, and finds herself fascinated by the host of languages at play in our local scene.

“I’m beginning to understand that there’s a very healthy music scene here, made up of many different languages,” says Tori, her disarming green eyes now severe. “I want to expose myself to this, and the reason is: I don’t need to know what it means. You get a sense of the feeling and the emotion with the tone of the words, the rhythm, the chords; Music is a language in itself. I’m excited to hear that.”

The singer is as captivating as described, seamlessly switching gears from girly gossip about her jewelry from the African Craft Market to surreal planes of thought about time, sound and ancestry.

Amos is promoting her latest in a string of concept albums, Night of Hunters, her first record to be released on an exclusively classical label.

She speaks freely and at length about her little girl, daughter Natashya Lórien Hawley (“Tash” to her mom), who has lent vocals to the album at the tender age of 10. Of Amos’s experience as a working musician and a mother, she remarks, “Tash has grown up around us making records and touring. Since she was a baby, she’s gone on all our tours. In some ways, that’s highly unusual.”

She continues with marked intensity about her daughter as an artist, weighing her words as she speaks. “It’s been an amazing experience for us all to create together, because when we create we step out of ‘Mom’ and ‘Daughter’ and ‘Dad’ and we step into ‘Artists’,” Amos observes. “That way we expect the best of each other. We don’t treat it casually. It’s not like going to the beach and having a laugh – art is very different.” After a pause, she nods, “It was challenging, and there were some tough days, because it was very demanding on her. But she wanted to do it, and she helped create her character.”

On her experience of being on stage, Tori Amos switches gears again, speaking with studied focus about a spiritual, cosmic musical play, drawing on her Eastern Cherokee ancestry. “You have to make way for the songs themselves. I’ve always believed (whether cynical people respond to this or not), from my Native American tradition, that the ancestors walk with us. There’s just a veil that separates them from us, spiritually.”

Amos describes her songwriting and performance in mythic, timeless terms. “Songs have consciousness. There are songlines for Native American people, similar to Australia’s, and that means that the songs do exist. They don’t have flesh like you or I do, but they come from consciousness, so I co-create with them.”

She continues, “It has to be a conversation so I, as Tori, have to get out of the way, and allow the songs to take over my being. The piano, itself, plays me. If you can surrender like that, you really just become a vessel, and that’s a tremendous charge for me. We’re magical beings.”