Americana/folk-rock singer-songwriter Jessye DeSilva delivers a magnetic performance on their newest single, “Siren Song.” Using the Odyssey’s images of Scylla and Charybdis as metaphors for struggling with mental health, DeSilva weaves a sweeping epic that fits right at home with their influences Elton John and Stevie Nicks. Recorded with a live band, the energy in the track is magnetic.
“Siren Song” is the first single off of DeSilva’s upcoming album, Landscapes, which will be released on April 12th. In our interview, DeSilva talkes about their influences and how they are using their platform as an artist and professor at Berklee College of Music to fight for equality in the music industry.
Who are some of your musical influences?
I feel like I’ve had many musical lives, and I’ve picked up a bunch of influences along the way. I grew up in a pretty conservative church (my father was a Baptist minister), and so there was a time when I was really active as a musician in church – I loved Amy Grant’s quiet, earnest storytelling at the time, and I feel like it’s there in her religious and non-religious music. She was really my first “diva.” I was always really into witches and magic, even as a young kid (which I’m sure was troubling to my Christian parents), and when I was a teenager I discovered Stevie Nicks around the time that Fleetwood Mac were making their late-90s comeback. There was something about the way that mysticism permeated not only her lyrics, but also her vocal delivery, her melody, and even her fashion and the sort of mythos she created for herself. In college I studied opera for a while, and although I’m about as far from that world as I could be now, I’m still really moved and transported by the blood and guts sort of visceral way Maria Callas can sing an aria. I guess lastly, as an artist who accompanies themself on piano, I can’t fail to mention Nina Simone, Tori Amos, and Elton John. I feel like their influences show up in little ways all over my music.
Explain the title of your album
I often tend toward the internal in terms of the subject matter I write about. Themes like mental health, identity, love, and trauma are always there, and I think the past couple of years have probably heightened that inward-focus. I think that during a time in which so many of us have been stuck inside, often alone in small spaces, we’ve begun to trek through our inner landscapes. At the same time, I found myself marking time differently – I was acutely aware of the passing of the seasons outside. My partner and I started walking just to get out of the house, and we tried (not always successfully!) to keep this up even in the colder months! Then the past year in particular for me was about going back “out into the world,” and re-learning how I’m able to ground myself in that larger space, and how space and season and landscape even impacts my relationships with others.
How are you using your platform to support marginalized people?
It feels funny to talk about “having a platform,” just because I still laugh at the idea that anyone really cares what I have to say. But I do believe that if one is going to put themselves out in a public way, no matter how small the audience, there’s a responsibility there to use that to amplify marginalized folks. I’m also going to start off by saying that answering this question even now is showing me just how little I AM doing in this respect, but I think for me, this answer is sort of two-pronged.
I have my music, which sort of goes along with my social media presence as well as my job as a college professor at The Boston Conservatory/Berklee. In terms of social media presence – I’ve found such a community there of Americana artists of marginalized identities and experiences. I think my “way in” to this world was being a Queer country artist, but I’m immensely grateful for the ways I’ve been able to connect with Holly and the folks involved with Black Opry.
This is where the other side of my “platform” comes into play: my teaching. I teach in a Musical Theatre department as well as a Vocal Pedagogy department. My focuses are teaching young musical theatre artists vocal technique, interpretation, performance style, etc as well as working with graduate students studying to be voice teachers themselves. Right now, I’m sort of the person in those departments who focuses on music outside of traditional musical theatre (i.e. pop, rock, country, folk, etc). Last semester my voice studio did a recital of solely country/Americana music – so many of them sort of grumbled that they don’t listen to country, or just that they didn’t know where to start. I think some had a very clear picture of what they think country music is, based on the mainstream Nashville machine, and still others just really didn’t have much experience with country at all. I felt that if was my responsibility here to show them the country music I’ve come to know and love, and I really just sort of hit them with this epic playlist of country artists of color, Black artists, and artists from the LGBTQ communities, and I want to think that this really helped many of them to see themselves within a genre they may have felt alienated from.
I’m also teaching a course for the grad students about popular styles and from day one I’ve said that if we are going to teach American popular music it is our ethical duty to educate ourselves and our students to remember that ALL American music is Black music.
How do you feel your queer identity ties into your performance style or music?
I want to say simply that my queer identity ties into my music in every possible way, but I can probably do better than that! I think that even the music of others that I listen to or have listened to comes into my experience through the lens of my own queerness. I remember as a child and a teenager, feeling like music from artists like Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos and others was queer music for me if for no other reason than that it spoke to me of my own feelings of loneliness and helped me feel seen. I think, you know, that some folks can say “Oh, well my larger-than-life stage persona is an expression of camp…” but I’m sort of introverted and dare-I-say AWKWARD onstage. For me, a concert is an act of inviting others into this quiet space in which I feel my feelings and share my secrets, and even that is a reflection of my queerness and perhaps the ways I felt like I had to make myself small and invisible in childhood. Of course I also write about queerness and alienation and queer love and religious trauma, so that’s probably the answer you were looking for!
Recent release you cannot stop listening to?
I am endlessly enthralled by Allison Russel’s “Outside Child.” I know I’m by no means the first person to say this, but from my first listen I felt like I was witnessing an act of artistic alchemy. The way Allison is able to transform trauma into beauty and power is absolutely spellbinding, and even the musical innovation in the writing and the production and arrangements feels like it blows up my entire musical world in the best way possible. From the way “Persephone” juxtaposes the chaos of teenage love with real, earth-shattering trauma to the seething incantation of self empowerment in “Little Rebirth,” I find myself listening “cover-to-cover” with no skips over and over again. I really think she is to this moment the Joni Mitchell of our time.
You go, Jessye. You are getting everything right. Also my love and admiration for being all that you are and will continue to be.