Serah is a performer who knows all about the power of music in crossing cultural boundaries. Her newest album Senegal Moon has a strong African influence -- no surprise since Serah lived there for a year -- as well a European feel. Recorded in France (Bernard Paganotti, the bass player in Francis Cabrel's band is a co-producer), Senegal Moon is a testament to Serah's belief that music can cross cultural boundaries and lead to goddness in the world.
Serah will perform on May 11 at the opening day of the Hague Appeal for Peace, taking place from May 11-15 in the Netherlands. At the moment, she is also busy working on a new album with a projected Summer 1999 release date, producing other artists, and contemplating other charitable events. I recently spoke to Serah on the phone from her current home in California about music, cultures, and peace.
Serah: This is really a long story because I get involved with a lot of charitable projects.
There’s a group called the Women’s Summit Foundation based in Geneva Switzerland.
Their mission is to try to reduce, heal the problems of abuse with women and children
throughout the world and they really address some of the harsher sides of it as it relates to
African countries and Chinese countries and some of the countries where the abuse is so
severe to both the women and children. At the conference Mikhail Gorbechev had for
children’s rights and peace for the world ten years ago, they had presented one of my
earlier records to him as a present and a token of those ideals. They are the ones who
proposed the World Peace Conference to me. It’s a wonderful cause and will be fun
doing it.
Paula: As a music artist, what do you feel is music’s most important role in promoting
peace?
Serah: It depends on what the music is, and I love all kinds of music, but my ideal in
music always is that it’s inspired and that it inspires man’s higher nature. I don’t mean
that it has to be anything Earth-shaking, but that it moves us in that direction of making
people feel good and possibly igniting higher idealism through lyrics and music. Music is
a wonderful metaphor for world relation because with music you can blend the best of so
many cultures and when people get rid of egos and power trips the result is wonderful
music. We’ve seen this happen with so many different kinds of music.
I am very intrigued with blending the African/European sound and I got inspired from
that because I lived in African for a year and worked in a drought area -- I did that just
because I started to feel frustrated that my music wasn’t enough to do for the world and I
should really do something hands on -- but after doing it we had a wonderful experience
where we found families for 500 orphaned children with the help of some wonderful local
charity organizations. It was also an emotionally really challenging year. When I was out
in the bush with the Dorobo and Trikona tribes, the music was so beautiful and I had my
guitar and would play songs I was writing and they would just chime in with harmonies
and ad lib rhythms and lyrics and it was so exciting and really exhilarating. I thought
"one day I have to bring that into my recording experience," and I never knew exactly
how it would fall together. Some years later when I was recording in Paris we started to
pull it together because there is a lot of African music in Paris and we were able to bring
those elements into the recording and that’s what Senegal Moon really is.
Paula: Are there other cultures you are looking at incorporating into your music besides
African?
Serah: I love all cultures; I think all cultures have something really beautiful to offer and
I haven’t been exposed to all of them personally. I love Peruvian music; there are so
many different kinds of music that I love. In terms of my blood, my roots would be more
Celtic. Irish, Scottish, English and then of course that is sort of like folk music, but
having lived in France I ended up French musicians and some of the musicians -- one of
the musicians in Japanese and the drummer is Japanese, we had singers from Senegal,
one singer who sometimes sings with us is from Cameroon, and then one of my producers
is half-French half-Moroccan, so there is a variety in there and those are sounds I am
familiar with working with but I am always open to learning more. On my new album, I
also love the Native American culture a lot, and we have a wonderful singer who adds a
lot to what we are working on. He sings in Sioux, in Lakota, so I am really excited about
that.
Paula: For a musician who wants to incorporate different cultures in their sound, how
important do you think it is personally immerse yourself in that culture the way you did
with Africa?
Serah: I think that would be individual. In terms of me I feel like I am pretty sensitive to
certain things and if inspiration leads me to a certain culture, to using certain cultural
sounds I don’t feel like I’d have to have lived there to feel connected. I really feel that we
are all connected anyways at some level. I don’t know, what do you think?
Paula: I think you’re right. Personally, I don’t know anyone who is only one culture; we
all are sort of blended in certain ways.
Serah: I love finding metaphors that cross culturally blend. Sometimes a metaphor will
jump into my thought when I am writing a song and I’ll trace it and realize it’s in the
Jewish culture, it’s in the Christian culture, it’s in the Muslim culture, and you can even
find traces of it in the Bushman culture, Hindu culture, Buddhist culture -- different
metaphors that they may not be exactly the same but they are really saying the same thing
and can be really similar in their story which is an interesting phenomenon.
