Nattali Rize Rising, an Interview

(Photo Credit UpliftFestival)

Nattali Rize, in this writers opinion, is the next Bob Marley. I had the privilege of conducting an interview with the inspiring artist while she was in Jamaica getting ready to perform at Wakarusa. The young artist has a global view of everything, everyone and everything being connected, and music uniting all of us. She provides something refreshing to the tired reggae genre, and contributes a wonderfully refreshing sound to the world music scene. She will be on tour with Michael Franti this summer, also performing at Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and Electric Forrest, you can but tickets to her shows here. I am hoping to attend her concert in Chicago later on this month and see the wonderful artist perform. You can read the interview below, and listen to some of her songs below:

Q.     “Enuff Coperate noise in the ears of our youth… Time to spread the truth”, along with your philosophy of belong to the global community as a whole rather than one nation or states, what inspired these?

A. “I think that somewhere in all of us we have a memory of a time where music isn’t                   constricted by the system. For me personally I’ve always been someone who’s                     been aware of things such as injustice. The inequality I saw as a child made me                     question the system and intuitively lead me to believe there’s more to life than                       what we’ve been told.

Q.  Rolling Stone said you are “One of the nation’s most refreshing voices”, how does that feel?

A.      “It’s a nice thing to be acknowledge in music media for sure. It’s important and when have people who connect I think it’s important. When music media and artist collaborate it can actually have an impact on communities. You’re always grateful to be acknowledge in music media, of course by Rolling Stone. At the same time we do what we do because we love it and it’s who we are and we’ve seen a bigger picture.

Q. You spent some time performing and writing in Jamaica, how did that shape you musically? Personally?

A.      How can Jamaica not have an effect? The island is amazing. I’ve been here on and off for the past twelve months, I’ve been doing a lot of work with my other band in Australia. Since a young age I’ve had a fascination with reggae from my mom. I’ve found that in the past couple of years in my musical career all parts have lead me to Jamaica.” Now we’re getting ready to launch the stage show that we’ve been doing all the work for here (Jamaica). What I found in Jamaica is a great community of artist that are so supportive of each other, and it was a gift to be among that.”

Q. How does it feel to be performing at Wakarusa?

A.      “We are so excited about it, I’ve only heard about it, so I’ve never myself been there ever before neither has the band out of Jamaica so we’re flying straight out of Jamaica to Wakarusa, it seems like a very creative musical event, it’s also the first two shows of our tour, and we’d love to get that energy from the festival crowd. We’re also going to Electric Forrest and Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and Wakarusa is going to give us the energy to get through the rest of the month.”

Q. I’m not fluent in your discography, so do you have any song that you feel strongly about and would like myself and our readers to hear?

A.      “Our next single is coming out next week and the one is called Generation will Rise, another is called One People and we’ll be performing on tour and it really captures everything about my philosophy and everything about the mission.”

Q. You describe your music as “World Beat. Lyrical. New Era”, and from what I can tell you have a heavy reliance on Reggae, to me personally this sounds like a mix of Bob Marley and Michael Jackson, would I be right in assuming you draw influence from them?

A.      “I’m not sure one musician who hasn’t been influence by them, they have some things in common. Bob Marley is Bob Marley he’ll live forever and he’s ever present he’s a huge inspiration for me. Michael Jackson is like the pioneer of the space-age, he created live shows which is something I’m inspired by to create a live show instead of playing music. Another artist is Fela Kuti, he’s a Nigerian pioneer of ethnic music, he’s very conscious, very outspoken his sons continue to play today his music, yeah man he’s a legend.”

Q. Is there anything you want people to know about you?

A.      “Well we’re releasing our new album in the month, and the single comes really soon and people can connect with the social and pay attention to the music and the lyrics and help it guide you."