[Entertainment News\Music]
Solange on Inspiration “Behind When I Get Home”: “I wanted to get to the point to where I allowed the supernatural, the Spirit, or whatever it was, to stare at it face to face, and not let it make me afraid. A lot of the album is confronting that very spirit. I feel really good at the end of this record because of all that I had to go through to complete it. That I was finally able to get to that place, to where that shit doesn’t scare me anymore. I can invite it in.”
Photo: Maggie Faircloth\Melissa Nyarko
Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist Solange Knowles is on this month’s cover of Garage Magazine.
The cover was unveiled yesterday and features a beautiful digital art installation woven into the braid of her hair designed by New York-based multimedia artist and Solange collaborator, Jacolby Satterwhite.
The inside feature includes both artists as well as an in-depth discussion between the two about the process of collaboration, Solange’s latest album “When I Get Home” and the album’s masterful film accompaniment, the idea of using art to confront and conquer one’s fears, as well as Black cowboy culture and how that history has been shared over time.
Here are a few quotes from the interview:
Solange on Inspiration Behind When I Get Home-“I wanted to get to the point to where I allowed the supernatural, the Spirit, or whatever it was, to stare at it face to face, and not let it make me afraid. A lot of the album is confronting that very spirit. I feel really good at the end of this record because of all that I had to go through to complete it. That I was finally able to get to that place, to where that shit doesn’t scare me anymore. I can invite it in.“
Solange on Her Homecoming – I felt bare, I felt naked, I felt really seen, and a lot of it was letting go of the ego. I think being someone who has been so visible since they were a child, when you deserve the space to have that solitude with yourself that is a moment…And I think my relationship to blackness as a space, as a dimension, as a color has really helped me to confront that visibility in a new light.
Solange on Black Cowboy Culture – I remember watching this documentary, and it started with this black cowboy saying, “Who the fuck is John Wayne?” It just stuck with me as a premise and a foundation for the entire film. This is not a fad, this is not a trend, this is not an aesthetic. This is real lives of black men and women who, every weekend, are going to the Zydeco, who are packing up their horses and trail-riding from Texas to Louisiana, who have been doing this for decades and decades.
Solange on Working with Jacolby – You combined all of the elements that I spoke about: black rodeo culture, Black cowboy culture; the way that sculpture and architecture is another language of expression for me. All of those things—Third Ward Houston, the lineage of growing up in a neighborhood that had so much rich Black culture. You literally took all of those elements and landed the ship in Third Ward Houston in the end of the video.
Solange on Collaborating With Artists – it can be so beautiful and so fruitful. Sometimes you need someone else’s voice to speak to what you are afraid to say out loud about yourself! I appreciate [Jacolby] doing that for me.
