Music | Arts & Culture | Arts & Anti-racism | Yale Schwarzman Center
Lotta Studio Photo.
As the lights went down, a short mic stand and orange carnation peeked out from the stage. Beside it, a music stand stood cluttered with tools, as if it was a surgeon's table. Chimes, sound bowls, hand drums, shakers and rattles all waited neatly on the small surface. A little before 8 p.m. Corinne Bailey Rae hit the stage, hair down with a flowing patterned blouse and some striking red pumps.
Saturday, the Yale Schwarzman Center welcomed two-time Grammy award winner, genre-bending musician and artistic groundbreaker Corinne Bailey Rae, who is set to drop her album “Black Rainbows” on all platforms on September 15. As part of an eponymously named tour, Rae took the audience through her new album, both singing and speaking about the inspiration for its creation and the messages that it relays.
“Sometimes it's very stark and open; sometimes it has some aggression,” she said of the album during a conversation with Yale Professor Daphne Brooks. “So here we are here together, just working it out. And, it’s beautiful.”
As much inspiration does, “Black Rainbows” started with an intervention of the digital age. Months ago, Rae spotted a photograph of Theaster Gates on a Pinterest board that a friend of hers had assembled. It was his gaze that captured her—and his surroundings.
“He was staring with such self possession, confidence, and clarity,” she remembered. “Around him was contemporary art. I looked into who he was and found out he was Theaster Gates, and that part of his art practice is saving these buildings that are about to be demolished in the South Side of Chicago.”
After researching Gates and the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, Rae paid the Windy City a visit in 2017 and found herself enthralled. It began a journey of curiosity and creativity that would take six years to come to fruition.
“Opening books, seeing photographs and things I haven't really seen before like the Black Indian chiefs or a Black family in a Model T Ford ... I felt mainly that it answered questions that I had perhaps been asking since I was a child,” Rae said. These are just a few of the discoveries Rae made in the Arts Bank catalog. During her time exploring the Bank, she also found answers to some of her lifelong questions about race.
She embedded those discoveries from the Arts Bank into the rich musical landscape of “Black Rainbows,” creating an album that criss-crosses musical genres including jazz, punk, R&B, sweet ballads, and pounding, exorcizing rhythms. Together, they weave a complex tapestry of Black history and expressionism.
The song “He Will Follow You With His Eyes,” for instance, picks up on the tone and gimmicky nature of sanitary and cosmetic items—soap, shampoo, makeup, perfumes—marketed to Black women in the later half of the 20th century. Often, these products focused on lightning skin, straightening hair, and attracting the attention of men—using whiteness as a standard. The saying “he will follow you with his eyes'' mimics a perfume ad from the 70s, showing the unrealistic, racist and objectifying nature of this marketing approach.
In contrast, “New York Transit Queen'' celebrates the sonic explosion of Black punk.
“There’s this photograph of Miss New York Transit ... She's wearing this bathing suit, and she's hanging off the back of this fire truck in these men's fire boots,” Rae said Saturday. “She's looking over her shoulder with this kind of cheeky and innocent expression on her face, and I thought, ‘Who is this woman? What is this competition?’”
Rae concluded Saturday’s concert with the song “Put It Down.” As the music started in the background, she relayed a story from her time at the Arts Bank. Before a DJ night, she was asked to write her worries on a notecard and drop them into a large ceramic vase. After dancing for hours, the vase—containing all the worries—was ignited in flames. It liberated the party goers, allowing them to leave unburdened.
Rae spoke of the hope that transformation brings to her. During this final song, she took it upon herself to transform the largely quiet and contemplative audience into a raucous chorus of clapping and dancing. With the help of her band, she brought everyone to their feet, liberating the crowd from their chairs.
“You have to lay down your woes and dance,” she said.
“Black Rainbows” will be released on all platforms September 15th, 2023.