For Des’ree, Music Is Mostly Self-Expression
After many months on the road, touring both the United States and Europe, Des’ree has finally found herself somewhere she didn’t expect to be: At home in London.
“It feels quite strange,” she says, laughing. “‘Oh, so this is what it looks like!’ But I’m having a good time nevertheless. It’s nice to sometimes have maybe a few hours just to catch up on paperwork, and maybe ring a few of my friends I haven’t spoken to in the last four years.”
Life has definitely been a blur for Des’ree since her second album, “I Ain’t Movin’,” began climbing the charts on the strength of the insistent, infectious single “You Gotta Be.”
After a lengthy tour with Seal, Des’ree has been very much in demand, turning up on “Saturday Night Live,” at the British Music Awards and at the Grammys. That peripatetic pace has her feeling slightly frazzled.
“So far, the pace is quite hectic, but I feel I can just about handle it,” she says, over the phone. “I do go through quite a lot, musically. It does really drain and exhaust me. But in a good way, and it’s not something I ever resent.
“I love that feeling of pushing myself, and delivering something I’m proud of and am quite prepared to let the rest of the world hear.”
Just what it is Des’ree delivers can be hard to define. Taken at its component level, it’s easy to find elements of folk, funk, Latin and rock in her music, but the overall effect she gets is too diffuse to fit any one category.
That’s fine with her, though. “I don’t know if originality still exists,” she says.
“We’re always influenced by what we like, our heroes and heroines musically, and we just interpret that.
“For myself, I suppose the music I make is a conglomeration of sounds and styles I listened to as a child. So without it being intentional, maybe you extract just elements of what you like, and inject your own personality and character and experience - your own ‘you’-ness - to that situation.”
Whatever its source, Des’ree feels her music is mainly about selfexpression, and adds that what we see and hear from her is largely untainted by training or stagecraft.
“I’m not a seasoned performer,” she admits. “I haven’t had five or 10 years of singing in clubs or bars and knowing how to work the crowd - I’ve never had those tools. And I’ve never really wanted to learn.
“People always say, ‘Did you train to do this? Did you train to perform? Did you train to use your hands?’ I just do what is natural, and I feel that works best for me.”
That’s not to say she doesn’t pay attention to the nuts-and-bolts of singing and performing. For one thing, she’s a fanatic about proper diction, believing that “it’s important for me to get across what I’m saying.
“I found that with a lot of the songs I like, the diction always lets them down. ‘If only I could just make out what he’s saying in that third verse …”’