Urban Mama: Neneh Cherry

One more thing. Neneh Cherry had broken big by scratching Malcolm McLaren's 'Buffalo Girls' for the single 'Buffalo Stance'. In 1989 she released her debut solo LP, Raw Like Sushi. 

In the background to this Rip It Up interview was the discussion about what sampling and sequencing was going to mean for "real" musicians. Such debate seems quaint nowadays but it was a major topic for artists and fans at the time. There was a lot of fear about the new technology and its implications for copyright and creativity.

Likewise my precious questions re: dance vs mainstream and UK vs US styles, the distinctions between which have all but disappeared. (Cherry was speaking from New York.) But would a modern musician with a top ten single name-drop Fripp and Eno? Some things were better then. 

By happy coincidence I had just done a phoner with Malcolm McLaren and he'd given me my opening line.

Well, Neneh Cherry, Malcolm McLaren says you're just doing what he did, but with a pretty face.

"Ha! Someone said to me, 'I'm so glad that you could go and rip Malcolm McLaren off because he's been ripping everyone else off for so long. It wasn't ripping him off, of course, but I thought that was so funny. It was so obvious -- 'Buffalo Stance', 'Buffalo Girls' -- y'know."

Neneh Cherry is a child of the modern dance: an intelligent talker, a muscled mover. You might recall her as part of Rip Rig And Panic who were making a lot of noise as dance was breaking into the mainstream. Black grooves were fusing with white technology, Kraftwerk were bumping into Afrika Bambaataa. Now it's crossed over, it's hard to know where anything stands.

"I think that we're all for more aware at what went down in the last 20 years than people were 20 years ago when they looked back. That's the availability of communication that you've got now -- you can sit down and watch Woodstock on TV. We're far more open in a way, and that's why music is becoming more open. You listen to the De La Soul album and sure, it's basically hip-hop, but you can hear more -- soul, 70s songs, Walt Disney."

People wax lyrical about the artistic virtues of naiveté. Do you think it's harder to find that sort of naiveté in popular music now?

"The best things that are coming out are really naive, still, because people are capable of breaking the rules. As for as I'm concerned, people have an awareness, and that's good, but they also feel they can do something themselves. They know about all these old songs, and they use them, they're playing around with them. It's great when you're in the studio; you can find a song that matches what you're doing, and make a break out of it, a drum roll, or loop it into a track. It's like a giant puzzle. And to me, creatively, that is really exciting."

I remember an old Rip Rig and Panic interview when you were slagging anyone who had anything to do with drum machines or synthesisers. Yet now you work with very little else.

"I found what happened to people when synthesisers and drum machines first came out was very embarrassing. People stopped playing the machines, and the machines played the people. Now people are actually playing them -- playing them -- so they're like new instruments rather than computers. People are taking them for less seriously now than they did a few years ago.

"Kraftwerk have done some great music, so have Fripp and Eno -- they were the start of that sound. And then guys like Teddy Riley came along, making synths sound jazzy, or whatever. Those people did what they did with a certain kind of passion. But the ones who followed in their footsteps lost it.

"So I know why I said what I said when I said that. A lot of barriers have been broken down since then. One thing that machines have done is to give people who may not have any formal, technical ability, a way of making music. Now they can throw the manual away once they've learned how to operate the instrument.

"It's great because the kids that are buying records can also sit down now and make records. That's why the energy now on the dance scene is very similar to the energy that was on the punk scene. The people that are young are making sounds, and there's a hell of a lot of difference between that and a bunch of over-bred session players making music which they think people want to hear."

Neneh's mother is a Swedish artist. Her stepfather was avant-garde trumpet man Don Cherry. (You might have seen Don Cherry when he played in NZ with Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell as Old And New Dreams. Charlie Grey toured them here in 1980.) As a musician she's hob-nobbed with some of the cooler individuals in pop: Rip Rig and Panic, Float Up CP, Phill Chill and Bomb The Bass's Mark Saunders and Tim Simenon.

Simenon produced 'Buffalo Stance', but his name only features once on the LP. How much of your sound and success relies on him?

"I don't think I could say that I've relied on anybody. We just like each other. He's cool to the music I like, which is the most important thing. Tim is easy, y'know; he likes the same ideas and we work together well. I feel really easy about the stuff that we do; I can go in and trust him. It wasn't really a question of him doing something for me -- we did 'Buffalo Stance' together, at the same time. We've got a similar attitude.

"Sometimes I know what I like but I don't know how to get what I like out of myself. Tim is one of those people who's really good at getting that. It's a nice balance.

"'Buffalo Stance' is the only track that he produced on this album. The track 'Manchild' and 'Heart', we didn't really know what to do with, so he came into the studio and finalised things. So that's a healthy exchange -- better than giving a song to someone who's completely insensitive to what you're doing, who then goes off and makes it into their thing."

How did you two meet?

"Just from around town. Whether you're in a city as big as London or a village, the longer you stay, the smaller it gets. I'm automatically drawn to a certain type of person, I'm always hunting for my people, you know? Tim's part of the family. I met him and I thought yeah, I know you, I know where you're coming from."

One of Bomb The Boss's maxims was a search for a dance sound that London could call its own.

"If we're talking dance music, a lot of the initial ideas come from America, but England's starting to make its own interpretation of that. They've been very dogmatic in their following of what's been happening here for a long time; now it's moving in a direction. You've got Bomb the Bass, Soul II Soul; they take their music from a lot of places and I guess we've got a lot ofthe same energy.

"But England's a good place to work. People will let you be, you're allowed to carry on with whatever it is you wanna do without being pressured."

Who else would you like to work with?

"There's a couple of people over here [in New York] that I'm starting to hook up with, like Red Alert, he's a DJ who does a hip-hop show on Kiss FM. He does things like Boogie Down Productions, the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul all those people, what they're doing now is very significant. They've made the hip-hop thing a great success in the States."

What's the difference for you between the UK and the US?

"It's pretty similar. Unfortunately Acid House is beginning to break here... Otherwise it's pretty close, especially between New York and London. When you go out in London you do hear a bigger variation of music, not just hip-hop. Here you hear more dance music -- mixes rather than tunes."

What do you think are the characteristics of English dance music?

"I think it is finding its feet. Soul II Soul is the biggest dance record in this country, you hear it everywhere. It's a traditional R'n'B formula together with that street sound, it's got that garage, slick feel -- it's killing people. Soul has followed hip-hop in the studio. The sound which we've all been raised with has been taken and made into something different. So England's standing in a really good place at the moment. Also, England has a reggae heritage, and you can feel it in the songs."

(1989)