Kisses in the Pouring Rain

Silhouette of Sirens is Chastity Brown's first album in five years. It has ten songs and it plays front to back in less than an hour and, listening today, it's hard not to think about time. Hard not to think about what happens in five years. Front to back, there is time for a lot of life to unfold. Wherever we've found ourselves, it's hard not to think, in the end, "I / don't wanna be lost, don't wanna be lost, don't wanna be lost."

At the beginning of the month, Chastity described Silhouette of Sirens as "the most vulnerable work I have created thus far." By that measure, this record supplants her second album, Sankofa--a sparser, rawer recording that she described at the time as, "the most difficult writing experience I've ever had." The title referenced an African proverb about the value of returning for those things you've forgotten; for Chastity, that meant nightmares from the work of dredging up notes to narrate her sexual abuse. When the record came out, she said, "I completely laid that out and I never want to sing that again, but it was all me."

If Sankofa wrestled with pain endured in the past, Sirens wrestles with the pain we encounter day to day. These encounters are subtle, fraught, expansive, and in some moments wholly joyful. They comprise the pain that all of us endure simply by living in the present, and they smolder long after present is past. I will not pretend to know what "My Stone" is about, specifically, except to say that I've been there, too. And none of us want to be lost. Especially not "from you." Especially not after we "consider the cost." Front to back, all of us have ached the way Chastity's voice does.

Five years ago it was important to define this familiarity. Reviewing Chastity Brown meant talking about how she defied genre--how she had forged a new kind of "Americana-Soul", or invigorated gospel-rock, or renounced all of the above. We were fixated on the label. The fact that she'd been named City Pages' Best Folk Artist only intensified our fixation. What kinds of songs are these? And who do they belong to? Chastity took to addressing the dilemma from from the stage. One summer night at Mill City Ruins, she announced--not for the first time and not for the last--"I am a folk singer!" Her songs were proletariat songs, she said. Like Woody Guthrie. "And I'm glad to play for y'all tonight." Then she drove her band straight down a gospel-blues tempest that would have caught Dylan blushing at Newport.

That show was on August 28th, 2013, in the ruins of the Washburn A Mill. It was the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Chastity had spent the year playing shows all over Minnesota in support of her last album, Back-Road Highways, and as a vocal advocate for marriage equality, which had become law just three months earlier. These kinds of details offered a tempting narrative for those of us writing from the comfort of sundry cis-white-male outposts in South Minneapolis. Chastity Brown will lead the way and set you free! (Dancing to "After You" did little to discourage this impression.)

Chastity previewed her Sirens release last year, telling Heather McEntire, "there's stories to tell other than just the specifics of politics or my certain stances on things." After so much campaigning, it could sound like a betrayal. Of Woody Guthrie, no less! Of folk music itself! Except that the "folk music" epithet has a long served as a convenient excuse for not actually listening to non-white singers. Alynda Sergarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff recently described how isolating the label can be:

When people of color are "allowed" into the world of modern folk music we are held up as spokespeople. We are thought to be special, unlike the voiceless others of our background...

Her diagnosis?

People who experience oppression are not voiceless; their voices are simply not being heard...What does it mean when we ignore people and then label them "voiceless?" What does it do to our collective psyche? I believe it conditions us not to listen to them. 

Chastity Brown insists that we listen to all of the voices her songs embrace. 

My first goal in playing music was to feel like I was part of something. The style of music that I play has the tradition of being integrated with the surrounding community. When I first started playing music in Knoxville, Tennessee, one of my mentors told me that before I took off to "tour the world" I would have to first give the music to my neighborhood which, for him, meant everything from funerals to weddings to front porch jam sessions to fundraisers. 

Chastity's vocals on Sirens are part of this kind of community ensemble. Her songs unfold the way life does, taking time to share the moment's pain on friendly front porches. DeVon Gray's spacious orchestration on "My Stone" leaves time for a bass line to scuttle out from underneath honeyed strings and the chirping flutters from eager flutes. Somewhere between resilience and melancholy, flutes and strings, Chastity Brown insists that we cannot leave her on her own. There must be time for her full story. One summer night...

I came home after the mass demonstration that we did for Jamar Clark through the streets of Minneapolis and wrote this song called "Hey You." It's very gentle. Initially, the song was more like, "Fuck you." [Chuckles] But what I realized was that that changed the focus. If I'm saying, "Fuck you," that means I'm on such high guard that I'm also not celebrating. Alice Walker says, "Where there are tears, there will be dancing." 

Insisting on both is what keeps us from being lost; that is what makes it a political act. Each of us needs those moments where time falls away and we are left to celebrate whatever pain has brought us here. On "Pouring Rain", Chastity's voice charges out ahead of her band, exposed and pleading, "I only wanted you to miss me!" Her pain is so familiar that it is not quite catharsis when she insists that time fall away for a stranger we've all known to "kiss me standing in the pouring rain!" Our ache is still present, but the rain hides our tears. Right now, front to back, all of us are dancing.