LABI SIFFRE / “So Strong”

03 (Something Inside) So Strong.mp3 (7.72 MB)

Well, I write about what interests me. I suppose I tend to focus on love and the lack of love and how we treat each other. I tend to write in an up-front manner; I'm not interested in writing crossword puzzles. The hardest part is having the courage to be vulnerable. I've never believed in this idea of giving people what they want because you invariably give them less than they deserve.
—Labi Siffre
http://www.thegoodnews.co.uk/regionfeaturesstory.asp?id=227&region=reg7

What makes an anthem? How does a song become so strongly iconic that a widely diverse host of others—the marginalized, outsiders, dispossessed—use it to express their own self-determination to survive? Can one successfully set out to write a song that the anti-apartheid struggle will adopt, that gays will adopt, that the UN will use with refugee work, that the IRA will declaim in the streets of Ireland?

When I first heard “So Strong,” I immediately wanted to know more about the singer and the composer. I used “So Strong” as a theme song on “Morning Meditations,” a long-running, 6AM to 9AM Sunday morning program I hosted for a number of years on WWOZ 90.7FM.

It’s hard to wear out a CD, but I damn near did. I had both the album and the CD single—over time its cardboard cover became frayed and wrinkled. New listeners always called at the end of the program wanting to know the name of the song. Old listeners wanted to hear the song’s entire five-plus minutes uninterrupted by outro announcements and station IDs. “So Strong” was that kind of song.

And the album, while not equally as good as the title song, was also very good with a potent mixture of non-gender specific love songs and socially conscious declarations. I searched for information about this soul singer with the odd name, Labi Siffre, and the indecipherable looks. From the picture on the back I couldn’t tell what he was. Clearly he was mixed, but a mix of what, but really, what did his parentage matter? His heart and head were clearly in the right place.

  

 

Born June 25, 1945. Labi’s father is Nigerian and his mother is Barbadian / Belgian. He had a moderately successful career as a soul singer in the Seventies, with a clutch of minor hits—"It Must Be Love" (1971), "Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying" (1972) and “Watch Me” (1972).

After a short recording hiatus, came the English release of “So Strong” in 1987. By the Nineties, he was phasing out of music and concentrating on creative writing, mainly but not exclusively poetry. Siffre did "The Last Songs Tour" in '98 / '99 and began working exclusively in the literary arena. He expanded his writing to include writing for radio and the stage.

Labi publicly acknowledges he is gay, and thus it is ironic that the piano hook on Siffre’s song, “I Got The,” was sampled for Eminem’s 1999 debut hit single, “My Name Is.” Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan have also sampled Siffre’s music.

Although there is a market for his music, Siffre has chosen a different path. Labi is the quintessential example of a socially conscious artist. Check out his website at: http://www.so-strong.com

 —Kalamu ya Salaam

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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