JULLY BLACK IS BACK!
Jully Black is back with a double-entendre, inviting you to open her black book. As she tells it, the idea for titling her third album thus arose from a friend insisting that her stories were sacred things and that the album had to needed to be THE BLACK BOOK. “The stories in my book have earned their way there,” says Jully with a deadpan look that tells you she’s no naïf.
The normal connotation with a black book is that it’s a private cache of secrets. Is THE BLACK BOOK then meant as a revelation of Jully’s innermost secrets or stories of others’ private lives or some combination of the two? “It’s a combination, certainly,” admits Jully. “These stories are special; ones I’m comfortable sharing and what I’m comfortable writing for others.”
Jully’s life story is an open book but that doesn’t mean all the privacy goes out. “It’s a push-pull. People will invade your privacy but my way of deflecting that is to tell the real story –then all the gossip-mongering withers.” Jully Black tells her stories on her own terms; she’s a storyteller by profession thrice over, after all.
Musician, actor, interviewer; Jully knows where the heart of a story lies and how to tell it. She is the consummate communicator. Instead of waiting for when to start her new record, she concerned herself with how and promptly went about it. Stepping into the role of co-producer on THE BLACK BOOK, Jully created songs at home and brought them into the studio for tweaking, sometimes recording as many as three songs in a day. “This record did not take a lot of studio time. At home we have a saying, ‘if it doesn’t give you chills, it’s not in the will’.”
The album was also made entirely without the benefit of samples, an unthinkable step for many modern artists. “That was in itself so liberating. We benefited from people and their passion. We had musicians, players, in the studio. People who have had a dialogue with their instrument since childhood and still dance with it every day. I was privileged to have them in the studio to do their dance on my record.”
And dance they did, but this isn’t a Dance record. It’s also not an R&B record. It’s not a Pop or Rock record. It’s the sum of all these but the total is greater than its constituent parts. The name they christened to this sound in the studio was Durban Rock. Defying genres comes naturally to this Juno award winner, but it’s not without its own daring, to confront people’s expectations.
At the same time, Jully’s impact transcends her music. “I’m consistently amazed by learning how others see me. Nine times out of ten when people meet me they don’t tell me that they love my music, they tell me how I inspired them to be. I’m amazed at how people are connected to Jully Black. I accept that I’ve been chosen to be a leader in more ways than music. But music is where it all springs from.”
From Jully Black’s pen THE BLACK BOOK flows; an album in only Jully’s words. There are no cover songs here, just what’s in her heart. “I have a passion that I want to share with others and inspire. Listen and take these stories with you. They speak for themselves. It’s simple without being simplistic. It’s 38 minutes and not that complicated. Just take a listen. Open THE BLACK BOOK and go cover-to-cover. Wait! –There are no covers…”
Request “Running” at your local radio station and look for THE BLACK BOOK available everywhere November 23, 2009.
Tags: Jully Black
