Lina

WHEN you hear something truly original, there is definitely a method to the madness, according to Atlantic debut recording artist Lina: “You know how they say we only use a small percentage of our brains? Well, it’s because we’re not really being creative. We’re reacting the way we’re programmed, for an outcome based on past experience. When the outcome is different, it’s because we’re being creative. I admire artists who just are who they are – the people that don’t follow the trends.”

On her debut Atlantic album, “STRANGER ON EARTH,” the singer and songwriter boldly discards all artistic blueprints, achieving an unexpected, brilliantly satisfying musical fusion – in effect, coming on like a one-woman Harlem Renaissance. Lina’s here to do no less than reclaim decades worth of musical heritage for a new generation, and do so in the spirit of today. With a striking look and compelling character, she stands well-poised to deliver a singular musical statement that thrives on rich, jazz-era orchestrations, as complemented by a modern R&B and hip hop flavor.

Born in Denver and raised in a number of Texas towns, Lina first sang in church alongside her mother, before discovering classical, opera, and choral music in school. “In seventh grade, I started going to competitions and winning,” she recalls. “That’s when I started appreciating my upper, operatic tone. It’s the part of your voice that actually sounds like an instrument.” At the same time she was turning on to the likes of Chaka Khan, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder, Lina was developing an affinity for the instrumental jazz and swing of the Forties and Fifties: “My mom woke me up to Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington, so I learned all the standard jazz songs. They really inspired me.” As she explored the roots and history of jazz and learned about the lives of its great pioneers, Lina’s eyes were also opened to both a new realm of style and the harsh social bigotry against African American performers. “I’m fascinated with the clothes, the femininity, and glamour that women had back then,” says Lina. “That was a good time creatively for black people, but we were robbed of that memory, because at that time – even at the Cotton Club – blacks couldn’t go to see other blacks perform.” “There were a lot of racial boundaries,” she continues, “but the music brought the races together. I’ve always wanted my music to be colorless, timeless, and positive. As artists, we’re messengers. It’s a fad to be hard or materialistic now, but we need music to feed our souls. I want to elevate people. It’s time for the past, present, and future to come together. That’s what I wanted to accomplish with this album.”

Having written her first songs between the ages of eight and eleven, Lina surfaced as a professional soon after arriving in her current homebase of Los Angeles. She bunked with a cousin, also a singer, and planned to pose as a writer to get her foot in industry doors. But the pose became her actual occupation, as she placed songs with Tyrese, Keesha, and Jazzy Jeff’s production company, Touch of Jazz. “I always wanted to go to a bigger place, whether it was New York or California,” she explains. “I started doing the Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston kind of music: write the song and do the vocals. I used the couple of songs I’d do for one producer to get to another producer, until I built a real strong pop and R&B catalogue – I wrote and sang, that’s all I did. I turned in 130 songs.” Lina’s vocal versatility also led her to demo singing and repeated invitations from hopeful girl groups. But Lina needed to rediscover her own voice. That happened just when things looked most difficult. Luck seemed to be with her when a New York friend tipped her off to the still-incomplete Tyrese project. Although co-writing “Ain’t Nothin’ But A Jones” and having it appear on a platinum-certified album should have been an occasion for celebration, it instead destroyed her relationship with her then-manager. Devastated by this setback, Lina looked inward: “I started doing this music because I needed the good feeling of creating it. I was thinking that my career was over.” She encountered Travis House, professionally known as T-House, when they both needed a spark: “We started writing together and I played him a jazzy ’20s thing I’d set aside long ago, and he said, ‘You should do more stuff like that.’ I said, ‘I want to do stuff like that.’ We did this music to make ourselves feel better; it was fun, it was positive. Next thing we knew, we had half an album’s worth of material recorded.”

Lina’s work on “STRANGER ON EARTH” gives voice to the subtexts of her jazz sources, unheard by most listeners in their time, and then aptly connects them to present-day lyrical material, in ways that are both deft and complex. The tunefully arranged “Step Up” and “U Don’t Know” are as straight-up as this morning’s talk-show panel, while recalling the eternal truths of classics like “Don’t Explain” and “My Man.” Ingeniously sampled orchestrations create an archly ironic ambience in “Playa No Mo” – and in “Don’t Say Nothin,’” they conjure the awful beauty of an approaching thunderstorm. Elsewhere, “Waiting” achieves the stunning gorgeousness of Lena Horne’s filmed vocal performances, and Lina turns in a heart-gripping reading of Dinah Washington’s “Stranger on Earth,” the only cover tune on the album. “Baila” handles Latin source material in a rough and elegant way, while “Dirty South,” “Too Good,” and “Batches” all demonstrate Lina’s fresh approach to representing her own time and place.

Hearing the album in its entirety makes it obvious why Lina and album co-producers T-House and Jeeve felt so compelled to follow their musical vision off the beaten path: “I did that first song because it makes you think at a higher scale. Whether you’re a person on the street or a rocket scientist, experiencing music opens your mind. That’s what music is for; to raise emotions; to make you think.” Lina adds, “I really believe in the unity of people, and of music that could cross all boundaries, no matter what the era – yesterday, today, tomorrow, everything in between. But I do want people to know that it’s beautiful to be black. I’m proud of our history, of our survival, of the gifts that we have, and our passions. We have a lot of wealth as black folks. I’m trying to learn something out of everything. That’s what creation is. I’ve decided that we’re not going to react, we’re going to create.”