PRAYZEHYMN Online | where gospel music lives [Oleta Adams Unplugged]

By J. MATTHEW COBB
Editor-At-Large, PRAYZEHYMN Entertainment
Posted: June 5, 2009

	Listen to exclusive music from the smooth singer - including the gospel radio hit "Holy Is the Lamb" and three new selections from her newly-released Let's Stay Here album.
	Picture You the Way That I Do from the album Let's Stay Here
	Let's Stay Here from the album Let's Stay Here
	Act of Forgiveness from the album Let's Stay Here
	Get Here from the album Circle of One
	Holy Is the Lamb from the album Come Walk With Me

When you think of silky soul and easy-listening jazz, not many names come to surface in today's modern music. Names subject to appear in what has been coined adult contemporary in today's music world include Anita Baker, Lalah Hathaway, Ledisi, Chrisette Michelle and Kem. Among them, you will also find Oleta Adams.

With eight projects under her belt and a healthy career in R&B, pop and jazz, Oleta Adams - with her low, smooth vocal ornamentation of Anita Baker and the soulful jazzy vocal influences of Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway - has become one of the quintessential soul artists of our time. Her career breakout, "Get Here," became a pop hit in 1991 and ended up becoming a timeless tribute to the U.S. soldiers deployed in Kuwait and Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Ever since Tears for Fears discovered her performing in a local Kansas City nightclub, Adams continued to electrify her audiences with new strides, new career breakthroughs and organic music. She went on to perform with Phil Collins in 1998 as a guest vocalist with his Big Band Jazz group. She reunited with Tears for Fears on their live DVD and Raoul and the Kings of Spain project and she already has two "best of" compilations available in record stores.

With best-selling mainstream projects like 1993's Evolution and her GRAMMY-nominated gospel project Come Walk With Me, which yielded the radio favorite "Holy Is the Lamb," Oleta Adams is living the good life. And you can easily feel that on her new album Let's Stay Here; recently released on E1/KOCH Records. The R&B/jazz sensation recently spoke with us at PRAYZEHYMNOnline.com in an exclusive interview that chronicles a number of major highpoints in her life. She talks with us about her healthy marriage with musical director John Cushon, her reflections on singing "Get Here" after all these years, her new album and her unfaltering love for Jesus Christ.

I want to ask you the big question. Most of your fans have been awaiting a new project from you and championing your return to the recording scene. It was as if they slept on your 2006 Christmas album. Still it’s been five years since your last album. Why such a long hiatus?

Well - for one thing, if you’re not signed to a label then of course you can’t put out a record (laughter). And in spite of the fact that, just about everybody and their neighbor has their own record, um, there’s really no way for you to really go and march up to any record company and say “Guess what - this is your lucky day. You can get a chance to put out a record." (laughter) So you have to wait til' you’re invited to be a part of that sorta thing. And I have to say that KOCH Records has been asking for a lot of years - waiting for me to put something out and when the deal was right and the time was right, then of course I was eager to do it.

And the other thing is you have to sorta wait for creativity to happen. You know, I think that one of the downfalls of this industry is the fact that people can put stuff out so easily. But I didn’t want to arbitrarily just throw something out. I wanted to have something to say.

Well, people may not know this, but you have strong roots in the church. Your father was a pastor, which makes you a PK. And because my speciality is gospel music, and being in the gospel field, I noticed that a lot of critics mention the spiritualness in your music throughout all of your projects. Is this intentional? Is this part of what makes you Oleta Adams as an artist?

This is all of it (laughter). For those of us who are Christian, we know that it isn’t like clothing - you don’t put it on and take it off. You are or you aren’t. It should be every part, every bit of your fiber. You know people use the term “spiritual” because they don’t want to offend anyone. Yes I am spiritual, but I am just flat-out Christian. (Laughter) And so it is a part; it has everything to do with my music, to do it the way that I express myself, to do it the way that I live my life. My perspective on life also comes from that point-of-view. We have a relationship with God, we have a relationship with each other, we have a relationship with whom we work and even though, with whom we struggle. Relationship has always evolved and we are directed in the proper perspective and how to deal with it. I try to put that in all of my work. And more than anything, Christ was all about love. He could relate to people on a very human basis. What made Him different than any other deity in historical times was the fact that God would actually lower himself to become human for our sake. And that’s what was so incredible about Jesus Christ - human and deity, divine and earthly. He came here and showed us the proper way to live and to love. And so I write for all of that to be a part of my music and my personal expression, without being judgmental, without necessarily heaping a lot of theology on people - uh - and I think there’s a lot of ways to express the love of Christ without, you know, beating people in the head with the Bible.

I have to mention your 1997 Grammy-nominated gospel album Come Walk With Me. Songs like the title track and the worshipful “Holy Is the Lamb” became serious staples on gospel radio. And the album remains one of the best projects in modern contemporary gospel. As a mainstream artist, why was it important for you to do a gospel project?

I guess in this industry they have made it so polarized. When you go to Europe, you can hear all kinds of music on one station. Here in America, they separated everything. So in order to hear pop, you have to turn to one station. If you gonna hear R&B, it’s on a different station. If you gonna hear gospel, it’s on a different station. It’s the same thing on television, you know, you don’t get it all on one station. But me, the way I see myself as an artist is that, I like to do all of those things because it’s all a part of me. It’s all a part of expressing myself musically. Just like I don’t say - um - I don’t say, "You know, now I’m going to the post office so I’m gonna take off my Christian clothes (laughter)." People just say, "I’m going to the post office" because that’s a part of life. But it’s not that easy in our industry so, to express another part of me. It was time after I had some experience living the life as a Christian to share some of those thoughts with other people.

I always see my music as...it’s meant to entertain but it’s also meant to soothe people and to help them with their daily lives. I guess that’s the part that was very important - the peacefulness, the solace of the gospel album. And I heard some people all over the world, even telephone operators (laughter) who would stop and talk to me about that album. And when you hear people in South Africa in a township called Durbin, when you hear South African people singing the words to the song with you, it just goes through you how powerful music is and that’s why we have to be careful in what we sing.

In speaking about the gospel and knowing you are not one to compromise your faith, do you sing gospel songs in your concerts?

That’s a part of every show. It’s always been. Always been. Even back in the day when I was singing in the clubs and stuff. Gospel music was always a part of it. It has never stopped being a part of that. There was one time where I was asked not to sing gospel music at a charity event and it was because I was told that some of some of the contributors were said to be Jewish. By the way, I'm not saying that Jewish people don’t like gospel music cause that’s not true. I’m just saying at this particular event, they said in order to keep from offending anyone of any particular religion - they asked me not to sing gospel music. So I didn’t and I’m happy to obliged. But uh, every place else, I sing it.

On part II of the interview, Oleta Adams discusses the new album Let's Stay Here, talks about some of the songs, why she doesn't get tired of singing her memorable best-selling hit "Get Here" and future developments for her career. To read the second half of the interview, click here.

READ PART II:
CLICK HERE

OTHER VALUABLE RESOURCES TO LOOK INTO:
We perish because of the lack of knowledge. Get schooled.

Oleta Adams - Official website
Oleta Adams: Let's Stay Here - Listen to and purchase CD or MP3 files at Amazon.com
Oleta Adams Unplugged: Part II - Second portion of the PRAYZEHYMNOnline.com exclusive with Oleta Adams.
Oleta Adams [MySpace.com] - Official page at MySpace.com
Oleta Adams | Come Walk With Me - PRAYZEHYMNOnline.com album review