Melanie Fiona is excited about performing in Barbados. Not only is this visit her first to the island, but it’s also bringing her back to her Caribbean roots through a jazz show.
“How did I get on this jazz show?” she laughed, while repeating the question posed to her over a long-distance telephone call.
“I told my team I really love doing these jazz festivals. Being from a Caribbean background, I wanted to focus more this year on getting to the islands and doing these shows with my people,” she explained.
“I have been to Jamaica, St Lucia, Aruba last year for jazz shows. So when the producer of Naniki Jazz Safari reached out to us I said yes, of course.”
Melanie Fiona started out singing under the name Syren, doing songs with a Caribbean flavour mixed with pop and R&B. She changed to Melanie Fiona when the time came to sign her deal and make her first album.
“My roots have a lot of influence in my music. Absolutely.
“All of my family emigrated from Guyana to Canada, but I was born in Toronto. My culture is alive and well in my life . . . in my heart. It has really been the foundation for how I separated myself from the rest when I first started doing music because I wasn’t the black American girl when I came onto the United States music scene.
“When you listen to my albums or come to my shows you will always hear an element of reggae or calypso or something because I am so proud of my heritage . . . the food, the culture, the music,” she said.
“I love my identity and it’s a big part of my music.”
Naming her debut album The Bridge in 2009, Melanie Fiona accomplished what she was going for – a diverse album musically and culturally.
“The main thing about calling my first album The Bridge . . . it was about sharing experiences of crossing bridges, of using music as a bridge and bringing people together.
“Growing up, I was influenced by so many different types of music that I wanted it to be a bridge between languages and people all over the world. That’s what music should do and that’s why I didn’t want to make music for one type of person.”
The album’s breakthrough ballad It Kills Me topped Billboard’s R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart for nine weeks and earned the singer her first Grammy nomination in 2010 for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance.
Popular favourites such as Give It To Me Right and Ay Yo demonstrated Fiona’s unique ability to mix classic R&B/soul influences with a street-smart attitude and hip hop swagger, resulting in an entirely fresh sound that was all her own.
Appearing on tours with Kanye West and Alicia Keys, and the 2011 BET Music Matters II Tour, fans have grown to love Fiona and her sound.
Last year was a great year for the singer/songwriter who said her two most important moments were winning two Grammys “which was an amazing thing to happen”.
Initially, she had said that the second most important moment in her career was the release of her second album The MF Life and the release of the record Wrong Side Of A Love Song.
“I feel the album showed my growth as an artiste and really showed the world who I am.
“Let me take that back. Performing the song (which is also nominated for Best Traditional R&B Performance) at the BET Awards. The reason is that for the first time, on a visual, public scale, people really got to see Melanie Fiona as the singer, the songwriter, the performer, the artiste.
The singer said if the public had “any questions on what type of artiste I was, they really got it when they saw the BET Awards performance”. It was that performance, she added, that really “catupulted everything else”.
She called it a turning point for her and her career.
It’s not been an easy road for the Los Angeles-based native of Toronto, Canada, who is co-managed by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation imprint (she wrote Dem Haters for Rihanna).
Since her debut CD in 2009 Fiona is now working on her third album. She told the WEEKEND NATION that she had crossed many bridges to get where she is now.
“Oh my gosh”, she said loudly over the telephone, in answering the question. “Many, many, many bridges. Some were broken, some were burnt down while I was crossing them,” she chuckled.
“Some I had to build myself. It was difficult coming from Canada and building credibility in the States. Emotionally, also, it was tough. It’s a fine line between the love and the business. People tried to put me into a box. Right now, I’m here trying to let them see what people can expect from me and from my music.”
Why use MF for her new album?
“Naturally, it came from my initials – MF. But MF means many other things. The inspiration came from life being mighty fantastic. It is at times music for life, the might fine life, the magnificent fantastic life and then at times life being a MF.
“It is the highs and lows of life. You can get a good laugh out of it because people’s minds always go to the crazier, different side of it,” she said laughing. “But, yes, it is a reflection of the Melanie Fiona life.”
The maturity that Melanie Fiona displays on The MF Life is underscored by her remarkable versatility and cosmopolitan panache.
The album showcases a stunning mix of vibrant new sounds from a host of A-list R&B producers and songwriters, each partaking of the originality that has made Fiona a sought-after collaborator by everyone from Cee-Lo Green (Fool For You) and John Legend & The Roots (Wake Up! Everybody) to reggae superstar Stephen Marley (No Cigarette Smoking (In My Room)) and British rapper Tinchy Stryder (Let It Rain).
She calls the album a very strong body of work with a clever title.
“The MF Life is definitely less retro-sounding than my first album,” says Fiona. “When you hear the album, it’s these collection of emotional songs from emotional strength to emotional weakness to emotional vunerability and sorrow and love and all these different things. “
Fiona will be at Ilaro Court on Sunday, along with Elan Trotman and others for the Naniki Jazz Safari show and says the rest of 2013 looks good for her.
“It looks balanced, healthy, successful in continuing this journey, making more music and just growing as an artiste and a human.”
Fiona is very busy as she is booked for upcoming tours, in addition to working on her third album.
“I am in a very, very good place professionally and creatively, and the future looks very bright.”
