I told you about her before (here) and how she'd just spent two weeks tending sick elephants with the Stay Another Day organisation and thought it was the best thing she'd ever done in her life.
However, this is another story about her that I've recently been reminded of. When we bumped into her in the E'Stranger reading room, she was reading a South American novel, but in front of her, to be read next, was a biography of singer Nina Simone and when I asked "Why her?" she said it was because she knew of so few other powerful female singers who didn't become a victim of the men in their lives.
Don't you just want to throw people up against a wall and slap them senseless! However, being immensely civilised, I put on my best school-ma'am face and very prissily snapped "Listen here Lassie, you just get out your little book (all travelers have one) and write down the names I'm about to tell you!" and, just off the top of my head, I reeled off a dozen names she had to immediately find out more about so she would never ever say something so absolutely stupid again!
So if you have very silly young people in your own life who say similar things and you're after names that aren't mainstream to bandy around and a wee sample to show 'em, please feel free to use this list:
1) Because her family comes from Fiji and I know her cousins, you may like to start too with the incredible Tanita Tikaram and her amazing South American-novelists-influenced ...
2) You could then follow up with the amazing Patti Smith, simply because she was so inspiring to me as a poet back when I was a university student ...
3) And next you could tell them about Marianne Faithfull and skip over her silly "Stones Girlfriend" period and go straight to her groundbreaking album "Broken English". However, here I'll only link you to her recent wonderful duet with Senegalese singer/songwriter Ismael Lo ...
4) Next tell them about the astonishing Buffe Sainte-Marie and choose either of two songs to introduce her ...
... or maybe ...
... and let them take her from there. A whole wealth of amazingly powerful songs!
5) And maybe you can throw in any of a dozen powerful New Zealand singer/songwriters like the Tang sisters or Sharon O'Neill (who went to school with my sister, I think. And I think she's the pop star in Jane's lovely story about how they took a faluka cruise down the Nile together and sang the entire journey and stopped the Egyptians in their tracks.) (And they were all telling Sharon (?), already famous in NZ with about half a dozen hit records, she needed to think about becoming a professional singer.)
However, because I love her, instead just introduce them to Shona Laing ...
... and let them take it from there.
6) And finally, although I could go on and on about this for many hours, you may like to introduce them to the beautiful Deborah Conway with ...
And that should be enough to get them started: half a dozen powerful female singers who never became any man's victim. And if that doesn't convince them, throw them up against a wall and slap them senseless. They deserve it!
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