On a WING and a PRAYER

It’s a long way to the top and it took Lady Blackbird a change of name and style to get there. This extraordinary vocal talent reveals to Fiona Shepherd the ups and downs that eventually triggered her breakthrough >>

Lady Blackbird has truly taken flight since the 2021 release of her album Black Acid Soul. But her fledgling years were long, varied, instructive and frustrating, taking in dues-paying bar and hotel gigs, session singing, abortive solo contracts and a whole heap of styles, both musical and visual. The diva born Marley Munroe in Farmington, New Mexico, first found her voice as a pre-schooler. Her mother had little Marley in a recording studio at the age of five, singing hymns and gospel standards.

‘I loved to sing,’ she says. ‘It was all I wanted to do, and my mother wanted to put that on tape. She found a local studio in someone’s home and I was so excited to go in and record these songs; it was just for us. I remember having to stack apple crates up to the mic; there was no possible way for me to reach it.’

Munroe was signed to a Christian music label throughout her teens and sang with rap rockers DC Talk before making a move into the secular market. It took years for her to find her niche; along the way, she dabbled most capably in soul, rock, R&B and hip hop, sang anywhere that would have her, and took on session work, songwriting for the likes of Anastacia.

She was signed in her own right to Epic Records ten years ago, but her polished productions failed to catch fire and she was dropped. Down but not out. ‘I don’t know how I would get through life without singing,’ she reflects. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to last very long. But you definitely get torn down a bit and you start to doubt. There was a point I let it go a bit, just loosened my grip on my dream to give room for everything to naturally grow and fall into its place.’

The turnaround came in collaboration with songwriter and producer Chris Seefried. A Munroe-fronted demo of one of his songs, ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’, hit a nerve that previous recordings hadn’t. The approach was simple: strip away the arrangements and focus on Munroe’s superbly honed voice. ‘When it works, it works,’ she says. Encouraged by the positive response, they began to put together a new set of mostly jazz and folk covers. Munroe was rightly bold in her choices, recording a version of Nina Simone’s ‘Blackbird’ which resonated with a new generation of civil-rights activists when it was released in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Her breakthrough song supplied her with a new artist name (the Lady being a reference to another of her diva inspirations, Billie Holiday aka Lady Day) and she coined an album title and style, Black Acid Soul. Lady Blackbird has been dubbed ‘the Grace Jones of soul’ and her distinctive look is key to the package. ‘When Chris was talking about doing this more stripped-down sombre jazz style, I’m going, “yeah, but can I still wear my costumes?” For me, you can tell a story through fashion. You put the right pair of heels or suit or piece of clothing on and it can change everything: your mood, your walk, your attitude. And music does the same; so, for me, they go hand in hand.’

Lady Blackbird is now playing stages big enough to fit her voice and persona, and where bigger in the Scottish summer than Edinburgh International Festival where she is set to whip up a quiet storm. ‘It’s such a true and genuine and authentic project,’ she says of her Black Acid Soul epiphany. ‘Maybe that’s why people are gravitating towards it.’

Lady Blackbird, Festival Theatre, 12 August, 8pm.

Basing his libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle on the French folk tale about a rich nobleman who murders his multiple wives, poet Béla Balázs described it as a ‘ballad of inner life’. The only opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, its psychological symbolism draws parallels between the titular duke and the composer himself, who bizarrely dedicated the piece to his 16-year-old bride.

The narrative usually unfolds with Bluebeard’s new young wife, Judith, opening a series of locked doors until the final one reveals the living corpses of her three predecessors, whom she then joins. Exploring their relationship in a very different way, director Daisy Evans retells the story with a new libretto that takes a direction still inspired by an ‘inner life’, but where the dark, deep recesses of Gothic horror are replaced by a loving husband facing the challenges of having a wife with dementia.

‘There is so much love in the music,’ says Evans, ‘and I couldn’t see Bluebeard having such beautiful music if he’s this terrible monster.’ It’s an opera which Evans and her Theatre Of Sound partner, conductor Stephen Higgins, had long wanted to work on together. Their starting point was looking at the four wives as different parts of life: youth, home building, mid-life and later life. The setting is domestic, and instead of doors, Judith opens a locked trunk full of memorabilia from happy times together.

‘Bluebeard is a dad, a grandad, with his tote bag and little anorak,’ Evans explains. ‘Slowly but surely opening doors to memories, he brings his wife back, as we sense that’s what he’s trying to do. She reverts to being a very virginal young bride again. Watching how much he loves her is transformative.’

Originally scored for two singers with a large symphony orchestra, Bartók’s music is now heard in a specially arranged reduced instrumentation by Higgins.

‘We thought about what the sound world could be,’ says Evans, ‘and it’s almost like a gossamer version, but still very full and expressive. It almost feels like the orchestra is part of Judith’s fractured life. It’s very clever in the choice of instrumentation for seven players and, of course, we’ve got an organ.’

Going smaller enables the opera to be staged in a more intimate space than Bluebeard would otherwise be seen. ‘It’s an incredible opportunity for performers to be so close to an audience,’ says Evans, ‘and quite an intense hour in the theatre.’

Bluebeard’s Castle, Church Hill Theatre, 23–27 August, 8pm.

Trojan Women

Greek tragedy and Korean musical storytelling meet with this blizzard of theatre, sound and movement to produce a stirring portrayal of finding strength in the face of war’s cruellest forces.

n Festival Theatre, 9–11 August, 7.30pm.

Gustavo Dudamel Conducts Mahler

The acclaimed and charismatic Venezuelan conductor takes us on a sumptuous trip through his country’s musical roots before launching into Gustav Mahler’s ‘Symphony No 1’.

n Usher Hall, 26 August, 8pm.

The Brutal Journey Of The Heart

Taking its cue from a line in A Little Life (the adapted play which seared many people at last year’s EIF), Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s L-E-V company return to platform the highs and lows of relationships.

n Festival Theatre, 13 & 14 August, 9pm.