Soul Sista

In so many areas of our society, we’re encouraged to be passive receivers of music. Songs in elevators, restaurants and waiting rooms are played to help us temporarily escape and ease the discomfort of being in an intimate space surrounded by strangers. But Sparlha Swa will have none of that. Her music is intentionally created to encourage us to think, love, live and heal.

“Someone said that it’s the job of the artist to make people feel,” shares the Kingston, Jamaica native and Brooklyn transplant. “It’s definitely part of my work to help develop in myself and other people healthy relationships. A lot of people are very allergic to pain. How can we make pain less difficult or make it beautiful so that people aren’t avoiding it within themselves? How can we ease the process of being with ourselves, being with our sadness, being with our anger? The job of the artist is to help ease that process for people. It’s the opposite of avoiding and escaping — it’s about making self work beautifully and encouraging people to do it.”

Unlike many up-and-coming artists attempting to distinguish themselves, Swa isn’t caught up in creating a new musical genre for her sound. But is there truly an existing category that can include her eclectically melodic compositions that marry inspiration from Sade, Nina Simone’s ‘Little Girl Blue,’ Astrud Gilberto, and Miriam Makeba? Swa isn’t concerned, feeling that labels are simply words that hold no true meaning. Though as her career progresses, many will attempt to tag her music as some variation of soul. But right now, she says, some feel her music is reminiscent of the blues.

“A friend of mine said that most Black people write blues songs, whether it’s hip-hop or jazz. Blues is about sadness and changing it to something else. A lot of blues songs come from struggle and sorrow and the effort to overcome that. My music definitely comes from that place. If it’s blues, then it’s modern blues because it includes world, rock and folk.”

Blues may be partially fitting since Swa’s first CD was a compilation of Billie Holiday’s work. She remembers the poetry and the certain sadness of Holiday’s lyrics resonating with her adolescent angst and adjustment to American culture after arriving here from Kingston, Jamaica at the age of 11.

“I also loved that back-to-back with some of her sadder songs are these playful, joyful, upbeat songs that she would mix in,” reminisces Swa. “The experience with her music for me was very cathartic, very human. I think music has always done that for me, something that is healing for me. My primary goal with my music is that it’s healing for other people.”

With Swa, what you see is what you get, and she’d have it no other way. She plays an active role in her music and not only composes and plays guitar in all her songs, but is also involved in the production.

“I really want to learn the craft and master the craft of songwriting,” says Swa.
Much of her poetically poignant lyrics come from Swa’s own life experiences and touch upon relationships — the one we have with ourselves, others, and our higher power. Whether it’s the insight that comes from the process of getting through a breakup or reading a really significant book, Swa wants her music to communicate ideas and ‘emotional honesty.’

“The purpose of my music is to wake other people up and wake myself up spiritually through the process,” shares Swa, whose last name means ‘self’ in Sanskrit, “Help them get closer to living wisely, learning how to be in the driver’s seat of their life. Creating your own freedom and happiness, getting pleasure from the random possibilities. Getting people aware that they have a choice and power in the matter of their lives.”

“There are alot of people who come from a place of mimicry,” she continues. “They do what they see happening around them and they don’t realize that they’re living inside a very limited sense of what’s possible.”

It is her father, Noel Swaby, an uncompromising visual artist, that Swa credits for influencing her approach to writing and her work ethic and drive to her mother.

“My mom has such a fighter’s spirit. By herself, she brought three of us up to this country, got us all our citizenship, put us all through college and is still an undying support and help to us in a daily way,” shares Swa. “I learned a lot about persistence and commitment from her. It takes a certain type of person to endure the difficulty of this lifestyle, paying your dues until you get to a place of success with the music and art. She’s taught me how to stick things out and believe in myself.”

Swa’s diligence is paying off and people are beginning to take notice. Her debut album was picked up for a distribution deal in Japan; two songs, “Love Addiction” and “Too Late,” were licensed to the nationally-syndicated television show Girlfriends; she was commissioned to write a song for Joshua Bee Alafia’s film, Cumbamor; and as of April 21, 2007 her music video has been chosen to air three times a day on BET J’s Soul Session.

Swa is currently touring in the UK, which will bring her to Paris and Germany for the first time, and working on her second studio album, tentatively titled Moongazing.

The genuinely humble artist acknowledges that sometimes, while forging her own path in music industry’s trenches, she pops her head up and is surprised by all her accomplishments. To keep things in perspective, she keeps a to-do list, a done list, and a list of all the things she’s proud of. Swa embraces the fact that she’s a work in process on a large journey she’s committed to.

“I feel like I’m on the verge of collecting everything I’ve been seeding,” affirms Swa. “… feel like I’m on the verge of harvest.”

Swa hopes to collaborate with other artists like Bobby McFerrin and Susheela Raman in the future and reach a place where she can tour half the year and spend the other half creating music.

“I want to get my music to a place where I can back off for a little bit,” she said. “That would be a sign for me that I’m at the success I want to be at … being at a level where it’s carrying itself, so I don’t need to carry it.”

Visit Sparlha Swa on MySpace http://www.myspace.com/sparlhaswa