Singer-songwriter SONiA doesn't just play world music with her latest CD, "Tango," she lives it. The collection features 13 songs in Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and English and the music has sent the Baltimore-area native and her band "disappear fear" on tour throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
This week, her stop is in Madison for the National Women's Music Festival at Alliant Energy Center today through Sunday. The festival also features veteran women's music performers Cris Williamson, Ellis and Madisonian Tret Fure as well as film, comedy and workshops. SONiA will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday. (For more information, go to www.wiaonline.org.)
SONiA, born Sonia Rutstein, has been performing with her band and solo for nearly 20 years. The first "disappear fear" CD, which teamed SONiA with her sister Cindy, won multiple awards including Best Album from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Her solo release "No Bomb Is Smart," earned SONiA a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk.
The touring has been constant; in 2006 she found herself performing in a bomb shelter in Carmiel, Israel when her scheduled performance took place in the midst of bombing in Lebanon and northern Israel.
SONiA took a break from her busy summer schedule to chat with 77 Square about her work, past and present.
You've been to Madison several times. What keeps you coming here?
Good friends, good feelings, lots of people who like my songs. And the Soap Opera.
What inspires so much touring? Is it what you have to do at this point or you just want to get the music out there?
It's kind of both. There's no large corporation backing my music so you're not going to be inundated with my music without me presenting it and a great way for me to do that is at the festivals.
Also, particularly with "Tango," touring is really big and important because what the songs are about is really important. It's a world CD and most of my music in the past would be categorized as rock or Americana. This is mostly in Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic. Not only do the textures and the genres of the song have a Latin and Middle Eastern basis, which is a departure for me, but the words are in other languages. I love doing them, I love the songs and I love sharing them with people.
I love being on the road, I love touring, it's not a chore. I know we've been on the road a long time, but that's my nature. My nature is to play, sing and make a living that way.
Were you particularly eager to get this music on the festival circuit? It seems perfect for it.
Definitely. It is a perfect match. It was also incredible to be able to play it in Israel, to an audience whose first language is mostly Hebrew. It was like, "OK, it's definitely working." It was very thrilling to be on stage and have it happen that way.
How did you go about writing and recording it in the foreign languages? Do you speak all of them?
I'm mostly fluent in Spanish. Hebrew, I'm working on, Arabic I'm working on as well, it would definitely be in that order. I'm really dedicated to being at least conversational and understanding. I'm Jewish so I learned the prayers in Hebrew and I've always been intrigued by it. I love it because it's giving me a map of the world.
Every song was different. I've had Hebrew and Arabic in pieces of my music, even 14, 15, 16 years ago. The Spanish I've had in my songs too. Even in middle school I remember translating songs into Spanish. I like the sound of Spanish words in song, it's a very musical language.
Four or five of the songs are songs I've done before. "Telepatia Sexual" is an old song, "Sexual Telepathy," which had a Latin feel. I worked with a woman from Ecuador to get the Spanish right.
"Metzotzim Anaqueem," a Hebrew song, I did write in English and worked with someone to translate. "Shorasheem" I wrote in Hebrew. "Tango" I had written those words out in English for some time. That whole song is the essence of "disappear fear." They're the words that are the notes on the liner for "Deep Soul Diver," which came out in 1989. When I heard them in Arabic, it became a song.
You talk about "the essence of 'disappear fear.'" To new listeners, what would that be?
It's very simple, when you disappear fear between people, what you have is love. So you come from a place of respect and mystery and it's like planting a tree together instead of being scared of each other and picking up arms.
When you go on tour, you're not just hitting the glamour spots like Paris, London and Rome. How many times have you been to the Middle East and what took you there?
I've been there six times. What first took me there was the book "Be Here Now" by Baba Ram Dass. I got very into this book, which is about Buddhism. For me, as a 15-year-old, it was incredible to get a sense that there was more than this material world and fine dining and really cool jeans. The book had huge impact on me and I was starting to study yoga and my father was very worried I was going to dress in orange and join a cult so he sent me to Israel. I actually went with a Jewish group, with young people my age and met people outside my beautiful ghetto of Pikesville, Maryland. And it was an amazing experience, it really just strengthened and empowered my spiritual connection.
How did you end up playing in a bomb shelter?
I was scheduled to be there for World Pride, which kind of fell apart. I had other tour dates planned for August of 2006. I was scheduled to be there when the war broke out, which is probably why World Pride fell apart because a lot of the sponsors pulled out. I was being sponsored by Orbitz Gay Travel and they said, "If you want to still go, here are the tickets, we're happy to make it happen." We spoke to our friends there and we said to each other, "You know, they're there all the time. It's a constant state of unrest and wars and suicide bombs."
It was important for me to go. It was a real turning point. It's easy to go play songs and be in a room where people love you. But I named the band "disappear fear" and if I didn't go, did "disappear fear" really mean anything? I decided that I would go and if anything would happen to me, it would happen to me. If nothing happened I could live with myself afterward but I couldn't live with myself not going.
Music by women in general is part of the mainstream now. What is the continuing significance of women's music and women's festivals?
Each person comes to it at their own reckoning. For me, the first festival I went to was Michigan and I was there for three or four days. It was just cloud nine for me, probably because I was just newly coming out. Now, it's just got a really cool vibe to it. I can't describe it more than that.
There are certainly other great festivals that are full of hugs and gentle souls, men and women. But being women around women is especially positive for young lesbians and not even lesbians but young girls who can see women fully expressing themselves. I have to say, too, after we speak after the media blitz of Barack Obama getting the delegates he needs to go to Denver, it shows we need women's groups empowering each other because I think there's a big dialogue missing from mainstream media. We need little voices like our own to move us along more positively and I hate to say it, but aggressively. I hope this festival and other women's festivals will nurture that. We need to regroup a little bit.
There are so many labels, with hyphens and slashes, to describe this album and your music. Does that get tiring or does it kind of come with the territory?
My manager is also my partner and she's called me a marketing disaster. For my creation and what I'm doing, it's all very natural. But in looking at how you're going to put it out to the universe, it gets to be more challenging and I understand that in looking at it from her perspective.
Art is communication and making a difference. By being inconsistent, that can be detrimental in having an impact.
I have no doubt that through time it will continue to resonate.
And I think the other thing is this: Phil Ochs was a huge mentor to me. He is not a household name. Bob Dylan would be, but Phil Ochs wouldn't be and I love his music so deeply.
Though my numbers are not as big as some other people, the level that my music touches people is really deep. So there's depth, but on the surface that's not where the numbers are large.
Is that more gratifying?
No (laughing). I shouldn't say that. Yes. No. It is and it isn't. It's great playing for a huge crowd, I've played for a million people in Central Park honoring the celebration of Stonewall. I've played for hundreds of thousands of people, it's incredible and really, really fun. But most of my concerts are smaller than that.
What have the last couple years been like for you? Your band is called "disappear fear," yet we live in a very fear-based culture these days. How do you overcome that?
When I first started making CDs, albums actually because they were vinyl, I thought, "What is it I can leave that will be here longer than I will be here? What do I really want to tell people?" Rather than create something full of my angst and fear and anger, I wanted to create something that would be wonderful and that's the essence of my music and the essence of what I strive for.
It's way beyond that current baloney fear. When I was in that shelter during the war, I didn't have a rocket launcher, I had my guitar. That's what works for me.