Sarah Gillespie
Encyclopedia
Sarah Gillespie is a British-American singer songwriter based in London. She is known for combining beat poetry lyrics with folk, blues and jazz and for her collaborations with writer and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist and writer.Atzmon's album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. Playing over 100 dates a year, he has been called "surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz." His albums, of which he has recorded...

.

Biography

Sarah Gillespie was born in London to an American mother and British father. She grew up in Norfolk, England – interspersed with numerous trips to Minnesota, where she soaked in the sounds of Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

 and early blues and jazz. From the age of 4, Sarah composed songs on piano, and then at 13 began playing guitar. At 18, she moved to the USA, busking in the streets and playing gigs.

On returning to London, she gained a first class degree in Film and Literature and an MA in Politics and Philosophy from Goldsmiths, University of London. Supporting Ian Dury
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...

’s band The Blockheads
The Blockheads
The Blockheads are an English rock and roll band. Originally fronted by vocalist Ian Dury as Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the band has continued to perform since Dury's death in 2000. Current members include Chaz Jankel , Norman Watt-Roy , Mick Gallagher , John Turnbull and Davey Payne...

 at Ronnie Scott's jazz club one night, Gillespie met the saxophonist and composer Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist and writer.Atzmon's album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. Playing over 100 dates a year, he has been called "surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz." His albums, of which he has recorded...

, who produced Gillespie's albums Stalking Juliet (2009) and In the Current Climate (2011).

Gillespie plays festivals, jazz clubs, arts centres and theatres in the UK and Europe. She has performed live on BBC Radio 4’s Woman's Hour
Woman's Hour
Woman's Hour is a radio magazine programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom.-History:Created by Norman Collins and originally presented by Alan Ivimey the programme was first broadcast on 7 October 1946 on the BBC's Light Programme . It was transferred to its current home in 1973...

and Jazz FM, and received airplay on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and local stations in Europe and America.

Musical style

Gillespie composes her material on the guitar. She cites her main influences as Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

, Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

, early blues and jazz, poets TS Elliot and James Tate
James Tate (writer)
James Tate is an American poet whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

 and the 1950’s Beat Poetry movement. Her style has been described as 'mixing folk, jazz and middle eastern blues’ with an emphasis on the lyrical content and delivery. The Guardian’s jazz critic John Fordham writes "Gillespie, who joins Bob Dylan’s lyrical bite and languid delivery to the forthrightness of Joni Mitchell, with a little rap-like percussiveness thrown in, is an original of real promise, even if she does, perhaps, try to hurl in too many ideas at once." Robert Shore of London’s Metro points to "her Beat-like verbal collages (‘Cinnamon ginseng bootleg bourbon Calvados Berlin’) and beautifully controlled associative word strings, all delivered with her distinctive vocal mixture of dark romanticism and punkish attitude", but mentions she "occasionally slips over the line into boho pastiche".

Gillespie's compositions with Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist and writer.Atzmon's album Exile was BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. Playing over 100 dates a year, he has been called "surely the hardest-gigging man in British jazz." His albums, of which he has recorded...

, Houdini of the Heart and Cinematic Nectar have been described by nemurous critiques as Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

ian, while Atzmon’s Arabic-infused harmonies on clarinet and saxophone add middle eastern jazz elements.

Discography

Stalking Juliet - 2009 (Egea)

How The Mighty Fall - single, 2009 (Egea)

In The Current Climate - 2011 (Pastiche Records)

Reviews

Gillespie has received 3, 4- and 5-star reviews from The Guardian, Mojo, The Independent, Mail on Sunday, Metro, Rock n' Reel and the UK local press. English musician Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...

 described In The Current Climate as "an utterly wonderful new record. Expected and got in spades Sarah’s unique way with words plus terrific guitar playing, inspiring production and not just great songs, but totally original music. Brilliant, the bee’s knees.”

Her live performances have been described as 'outstanding, vivacious and forceful'. The Nottingham Evening Post noted 'her verbal exchanges with fellow front-liner multi-instrumentalist Gilad Atzmon were at times hilarious and on other occasions explosive'.

Writings and politics

Gillespie writes articles on politics for Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

, Middle East Online and The Palestine Chronicle. She writes about issues surrounding liberalism, Islam and the west, critiquing liberals "who imagine that their belief in equality makes them superior". In the Arab News, Shabana Syed described Gillespie as "an artist at the forefront of the demand for change". Gillespie also critiques the missue of feminism in the interventionalist agenda and what she refers to as "atheist fundamentalism". She says: "The mantra of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 was: ‘Freedom, equality, fraternity or death!’ Pragmatically this has now unfolded into its tragic meaning: ‘Be free, equal and secular - or we’ll kill you.’" Gillespie is an outspoken critic of Zionism and has orchestrated several fundraising concerts for Palestinian organisations including Medical Aid for Palestinians
Medical Aid for Palestinians
Medical Aid for Palestinians is a British charity that offers medical services in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Lebanon and, advocates for the universal right to health.-Aim and history:...

. In October 2010, she performed alongside The Unthanks, Cleveland Watkiss
Cleveland Watkiss
Cleveland Watkiss is a versatile English singer who performs in a variety of musical genres, including jazz, reggae, rock music and drum and bass. Watkiss also performs on piano and guitar.-Life:...

, Seb Rochford
Seb Rochford
Sebastian "Seb" Rochford is a British drummer who spans many musical genres.He comes from Aberdeen and has a large family of 2 brothers and 7 sisters...

, Palestinian hip hop artist Shadia Mansour
Shadia Mansour
Shadia Mansour, also known as "the first lady of Arabic hip hop is a Palestinian singer and MC. Much of her music focuses on Middle East politics. Her first language is Arabic and she raps in Arabic. Mansour has recorded music with producer Johnny Juice of Public Enemy. Her first single,...

 and Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble at the JAZZA Festival for the Free Palestine Movement.

Some of Gillespie's lyrics have a strong political element. Reviewing In the Current Climate, The Jazz Breakfast wrote: "The personal life and the socio-political one are blended with references to everything from the Dow Jones and the Hang Index to John the Baptist and Zeus. For How The West Was Won, Gillespie sings an imaginary first person song of Shaker Aamer
Shaker Aamer
Shaker Aamer is a Saudi Arabian citizen and the last British resident currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was arrested in Afghanistan in January 2002 and as of today, Aamer has been held at Guantánamo for...

, the remaining British prisoner in Camp X-Ray".

External links

  • http://www.sarahgillespie.com
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