Women's Blues Revue Preview
Anne-Marie
WOODS
Anne-Marie Woods makes her solo debut at the Women's Blues Revue at the Danforth Music Hall on November 23. Other featured vocalists will be Georgette Fry, Lee Aaron, Dawn Tyler Watson, Diana Braithwaite, Serena Ryder and Tracy K.
Anne-Marie Woods seems to have boundless energy and drive. She's a creative whirlwind, a playwright, actor, dancer, narrator, poet, singer and songwriter.
Woods' vocal credentials include 12 years singing with the Halifax a capella group Four The Moment. She's sang in her own and in other writers' stage productions and can currently be heard weekly doing her humorous tunes about current events on CBC Radio One's Metro Morning.
She brings her amazing vocal prowess, along with her self-penned songs, to the forefront for the Women's Blues Revue at the Danforth Music Hall on November 23.
Woods has performed as a solo artist, mainly as an actor. Last year, however, she got a taste of singing solo when she replaced singer Jackie at the Ontario Literacy Coalition Courage To Learn Conference. But Woods has never fronted a full band, with the spotlight on her alone. So singing at the WBR is a kind of debut for Woods, who's a seasoned performer.
"It's a different experience being with a group," she says of her years with Four The Moment. "We did group harmonies and I sang a few solos. I never thought I would venture out on my own."
Woods says she wouldn't call herself a blues singer, but she adds that as an artist of colour she believes "it's something that's in the soul."
Woods has written one song, "I Remember," which she intends to perform at the WBR, and is working on another one. Lately, she's been carrying a tape recorder with her to capture song ideas whenever they pop into her head.
For Woods, music has always been intertwined with her artistic endeavours. "I incorporate music into my spoken word poetry," she says.
"Almost every play I've done has a musical element to it."
Woods and her family moved to Nova Scotia from Trinidad in the early 1970s, first settling in Dartmouth and then moving to Halifax. Growing up, she listened to soul, Motown and R&B, along with a complete Barbra Streisand collection that belonged to her mother. "I knew all the Barbra Streisand songs," Woods recalls. Her mother, Rachael, is a classical singer, and Woods got some classical voice training herself, at theatre school and at the Maritime Conservatory of Music.
Woods first real introduction to blues and jazz came in the late '80s, when she was in her early 20s and formed Four The Moment with Andrea Currie and Delvina and Kim Bernard. The group, known for their ethereal harmonies rooted in gospel and African folk, sang about the struggles of black Nova Scotians, the largest indigenous black population in Canada.
After years of planning, the women finally hung up their microphones at the end of the Sankofa tour in October 2000. The lives of each of the members of the group were taking them in different directions, Delvina is the mother of two and Kim is a new mother, and Woods was ready to head to Toronto. Over the 12 years they were together, Four The Moment made three critically acclaimed recordings and a fourth, from their Sankofa Returning To The Source Tour, will be released soon.
In December 2000, Woods headed west to the Big Smoke from Halifax to act (she says she's never been able to do summer theatre because Four The Moment was always on tour then), write and get her young company, Imani Women's Artistic Project, off the ground. Through the company, she will work with young women of African descent, training them in the interdisciplinary arts, and do workshops with schools and community-based groups, focusing on societal issues that affect young people.
"Halifax was a great place to begin, to develop my talents and to workshop things," she says. "It's a smaller pool and I needed to take things to another level." As an example of the opportunities she's found in Toronto, she mentions her appearance at this year's Harry Jerome Awards, which she opened with a spoken-word piece, "I Am Canadian," and from which she got four other engagements.
"Performing here leads to other things. I think many artists leave Nova Scotia to pursue other things. (But) Nova Scotia is in my heart, it's in the work that I do, it was the breath of life into my artistic side."
Besides singing, on the radio and elsewhere, Woods has a lot on her plate in the next while. She hopes to get Imani launched by autumn 2003, has a script about African Nova Scotian history, which she hopes will be produced, with the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, and is working on a school tour, Artivationally Speaking.
Woods says she wasn't a well-behaved child and often got into fights.
Learning black history and her early involvement in the arts changed her life and she learned to take her rage to the page and then to the stage.
Artivationally Speaking addresses topics such as bullying and peer pressure, with the goal of encouraging youth to "not let anyone keep them from their dreams," she says.
Watch out for Woods in the future. She's sure to make an impact as a songstress in the city and beyond.
- Ruth Schweitzer
