Natalia M. KING

NATALIA'S BIOGRAPHY She’s accomplished much on the road separating the miraculous “Milagro” (2000), her first record for Universal Jazz France, from the brand-new “Flesh Is Speaking”. The blues rock deflagrations of “Milagro” were reminders of the searing intensity of that pioneering group Living Color. As if she’d sprung from nowhere - actually, from the underground corridors of the Metro - the media and the French public discovered a young Afro-American singer of Spanish ancestry whose talent was dazzling. As soon as Natalia M. King occupied a recording-studio or a stage, she would light up with arresting charisma.Three years after the success of “Milagro”, “Fury and Sound” (2003) magnificently converted her first try. Her sonic fury reflected an even stronger artistic and human commitment: it was an outlet for Natalia M. King to free herself, thread after thread, from suffering. With hindsight, “Fury and Sound” revealed itself to be a portent for “Flesh Is Speaking”, an album realised with a maturity that rhymed with serenity - and sensuality, as always -, but which wasn’t averse to taking a risk for all that. In the texts and music (all by Natalia, who also arranged and produced), this third opus for Universal Jazz France conserves her raw audacity, refusing all formatting, and pulls creativity up to dizzily high levels.“Flesh Is Speaking”; the title says a lot already. It possesses the dense, direct energy with which this Brooklyn native has asserted herself uncompromisingly within the music industry. When she declares “flesh is speaking”, you can read between the lines: it’s a matter of both body and soul. “I’m referring to the needs my body and soul are thirsting for, but as a whole: screwing, singing, making love, drinking, smoking, writing, listening to music that’s soft or noisy, in a smoke-filled bar where eyes are ferreting about. Sensuality, psychology and spirituality form an indivisible whole.” The album’s title track, ‘Flesh Is Speaking’, sweats funk that’s suffocating and----- irresistible. Here, as on the rest of the CD, the musician associates her (acoustic) guitar with that of Ben Coulentianos, a Greek shepherd who wields his instrument like an unsavoury Mediterranean, which is quite appropriate for an iconoclast of his ilk.Her pen sometimes wanders in the direction of the blues, as on the final track ‘Lover’s Blues’. What motivated the beautiful rebel wasn’t so much a desire to lock herself away behind the blues’ twelve bars, as a wish to slake her thirst at the spring. Her cry, which her voice sometimes hints at, has something of the holler about it, the chanting work songs of slaves that were taken up by the blues. “Blues lies at the heart of most major modern movements - folk, rock and funk; pop, even. It constitutes the dark side of my nature: solitude, melancholy, affliction... On ‘Lover’s Blues’ I don’t throw my own blues in anyone’s face, but I do throw light on it with a touch of humour.”-----To introduce the record (‘Pop U’), the harmonica - played by Natalia M. King - and the washboard, once used by the poorest as rudimentary drums, bring in a rustic jazz/rural blues flavour. The lyrics, which play with the sound of the consonants, speak of love. At once both realist and full of mystery, they dissimulate the fragility of a bursting bubble, and the power of their hopes. How do words come to her? “Any place, any time,” explains the poetess of the extreme. “I write them down on the corner of a table-cloth, in my diary, on the palm of my hand. The words come out by themselves, or they’re called up by a guitar-line, a chord that gets away from me and exhumes an emotion buried in my memory.”Natalia was born in 1969 in Bushwick, an Afro-Hispanic neighbourhood in Brooklyn. She never knew her father - who was from Panama - and it was her Dominican mother who raised the little New Yorker alone, together with her brother. ----- Sometimes in interviews the singer has made reference to the conflicting relationship she had with her mother, ties that wavered between passion and anger. Right from the very first notes of ‘Mama Did You Love’, she uses her guitar to establish a peace of mind that welcomes her chanted little secret: “I never realised you’re a woman/I never wondered where your man was.” “Becoming aware that my mother had been in love and suffered, I sort of made peace with her... and with myself”, she explains. Her chant, which contains an inner fever, distils immense tenderness.Love, whether it’s filial, sentimental, or love for humanity, plays the principal role in “Flesh Is Speaking”. “I wrote almost all the songs during the blessed period when I was falling in love. That spiritual dimension you can sense in my feelings is something I experienced reading the Sufi poet Jalalu’ddin Rumi. When he speaks to Allah, it’s as if he’s speaking to his lover. I don’t believe in God but, for me, daily life becomes divine----- through the love we inject it with.” ‘H..la Helena’, whose incantations remind you of the circular, hypnotic energy of whirling dervishes, is a celebration of the person she loved and who turned Natalia’s existence upside down some two years ago. “I don’t publicise my private life, but I don’t hide myself either. It’s useless arousing the fears of people in ignorance. I live my life without caring what other people might think. Otherwise I’d have committed suicide a long time ago. I’m Black, Latino, an atheist born in a super-religious country, and I lead the life of an artist who believes in the integrity of her reasoning. I don’t give a shit about social pressures and taboos.”Natalia M. King approaches harmonic sobriety by stripping it down with fertile constraint. Investigations carried out in the same key allow her to sound out colour, climate and spirit. The album alternates tension and release, repeating riffs to bewitchment (the obsessive guitar on ‘Who Of Me’, ‘Blessed Be’),----- and we’re deliciously reunited with trance. In the abandonment to which the artist surrenders herself here, her gift is even more apparent, and her generosity totally illuminates “Flesh Is Speaking”. Out of her intimate burns, the miraculous survivor has invented poetry that heals. A regal road to bliss.Natalia carries the history and genius of her people inside herself. And even more than that: a singular universality that she’s edified according to her own curiosity, eminently attentive to otherness. At University she studied the work of the Middle-Ages humanist and poet John de Salsbury, took an interest in the literature of James Baldwin, listened to musicians as different as The Doors, Janis Joplin, Tom Waits, Thelonious Monk, Compay Segundo and John Coltrane, or the Pakistani maestro of the qawwali Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan... The girl who chose to wander through the United States in 1992 with a guitar slung over her shoulder finally opted to settle in France (June 1998),----- thanks to the country’s hospitality, praised by Miles Davis and Chester Himes, but also thanks to Paris’ reputation as a world crossroads for culture.All this richness gleaned over the years, Natalia M. King breathes it into her song and, more broadly, into the original style she’s forged for herself. A country fragrance, freedom of form and a spirit drawn from jazz, contrasting atmospheres, psychedelic spasms, introspective lulls, alluring arabesques... The music of this complete artist (discovered by the public in 1999 on a Canal+ programme and also when she opened for Diana Krall at the Olympia) can’t be reduced to a single label. In her songs, the tireless globetrotter explores the human soul, the infinite geography of suffering dreams and rebellion in which the listener, wherever he or she may be, recognises something from personal experience. After three albums produced by Universal Jazz, Natalia M. King presents to us her new Opus « Sincerely Yours », absolutely own-produced, published by the label « ELP! Records ». Became « Arlésienne » of heart NMK puts all her energy, takes all the risks ones in order to give the day to her last and so much awaited creation! Nine titles compose this new album but this time in Trio : NMK : folk guitar/electric/harmonica, Sylvain Terminiello : bass/double-bass, Olivier Liardet : rythmic/percussions/tablas. NMK does not hesitate to play sobriety, put in light the essence of her music, her purity, her unity and her opening.Her first three albums explore very different and at the same time complementary universes. Of an Alternative Rock to a more conceptual while passing by the pop vein of “Flesh is Speaking” NMK reveals us here a new musical space, all the more nondescript as it is the subtle alchemy of these preceding ones productions.Always in research of something else, of new territories, new harmonies, new sounds, NMK meets the simplicity as an obviousness which hurt us head-on, gives us softest and most sorrowful of the caresses… without never leaving us regrets.The musical color of this album is very wide with very striking titles like “Not Again” and its obsessional groove , full with a generous appetite of the other, life in what it has surprising moreover, or “Dandy Andy” rock heavier, more spacial and at the same time unseasonable, ephemeral and provocative, moments of pleasure, plays and laughters, even of delirious…Other more intimate titles which speak to us about her, of us, of this world sometimes difficult to live, ultimate condition to reach its beauty, its depth, and sometimes, in its abysses its light. Her guitars are clear and deep, her voice is posed on the melody like a new promise, waiting of becoming, tells us Natalia all the possible ones, and the whirlings made alive by the Tablas… where the words are not any more… musical trance.Surprising NMK with her almost instrumental daring “Busted” mix of pop rock electro, trip in a strange sound world almost sub-aquatic which brings back for us to the life, and at the end to the fresh air with a “By Love” as an ultimate inspiration such one “I breathe”!One will not reconsider the musical richness, the force and the creative energy of NMK, one will endeavour to clarify heat, softness, simplicity and the depth, the musical maturity of an always rebellious artist. Rock of heart, nomad by the spirit “Sincerely Yours” will take you along towards new harmonic landscapes, new musical colors, a voyage throughout the world… dance of the life.To listen without moderation, “Sincerely yours”. ALL THE TOUR DATES Natalia M.King performing on stage the 24th of november 2007 in Paris-CLUB DE L'ETOILE
She played... in 2007
Period of July 31 to August 5 2007 in in Chalons en Champagne-FESTIVAL DES MUSIQUES D’ICI ET D’AILLEURS
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21th of june 2007 in Arles-PLACE DE L’ARCHEVECHE
25th of january 2007 in Montpellier/Paul Valery University-MAISON DES ETUDIANTS(salle Jean Moulin)
She played... in 2006
13th of january 2006 in Poitiers-MJC ALIENOR D’AQUITAINE
21th of january 2006 in Annemasse-CHATEAU ROUGE-Showcase in Gen..ve, Fnac de Rive
02th of february 2006 in Boulogne-sur-mer-LES PIPOTS
03th of february 2006 in Bethune-THEATRE LE POCHE
04th of february 2006 in Portes Les Valence-TRAIN THEATRE
25th of february 2006 in Vaur..al-FORUM
01th of march 2006 in Paris-GLAZ’ART
02th of march 2006 in Troyes-Showcase FORUM FNAC
03th of march 2006 in Savigny Le Temple-L’EMPREINTE
10th of march 2006 in Lausanne-LES DOCKS
11th of march 2006 in Lyon-Perrache-MARCHE GARE
24th of march 2006 in Arles-LE CARGO
11th of july 2006 in Lausanne-PLACE DU CHATEAU/FESTIVAL DE LA CITE
29th of july 2006 in Thonon-Les-Bains-"AU PORT"(74)
07th of october 2006 in Montreuil-Bellay-LA CLOSERIE
She played... in 2005
20th of may 2005 in Laval-BAR DES ARTISTES
14th of july 2005 in DOUR FESTIVAL, Belgique
15th of july 2005 in Paris-GUINGUETTE PIRATE
16th of july 2005 in Brout-Vernet/ROCK PRESERV FESTIVAL
8th of october around Beauvais-FESTIVOL FESTIVAL
15th of october 2005 in Annecy-BRISE GLACE
26th of october 2005 in Besan..on-LE CYLINDRE
27th of october 2005 in Nancy-AZIMUTH854
28th of october 2005 in Strasbourg-LAITERIE CLUB
29th of october 2005 in Nevers-FESTIVAL NEVERS A VIF
17th of november 2005 inMONTPELLIER-UNIVERSITY
18th of november 2005 in Cavaillon-GRENIER A SONS
24th of november 2005 in Grenoble-LE CIEL
25th of november 2005 in Geneve Carouge-LE CHAT NOIR
She played... in end 2004
17th of december 2004 in Arles-LE CARGO
19th of mars 2005 in Belfort-LA POUDRIERE
15th of april 2005 in Marseille-LE POSTE A GALENE
16th of april 2005 in St Raphael-CLUB FELIX MARTIN
BOOKING AND TOUR MANAGMENT: NMK¤PROD
NMK¤PROD : [email protected]
NMK¤PROD : [email protected]
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