Throughout a career full of countless Grammys, lifetime achievement awards, and sold out concerts, Chaka Khan has traveled all around the world as a decorated artist.
Throughout a career full of countless Grammys, lifetime achievement awards, and sold out concerts, Chaka Khan has traveled all around the world as a decorated artist. But despite a duffel bag worth of passports, this “South Sider,” who remains carefree and down to earth, admits that there’s no place like home.
“I love Chicago! It holds a whole lot of memories for me. I feel like one of the lucky ones to have been born and raised, for the most part, in that city. Everywhere I go…if I see an American anywhere in Europe and they are getting down or doing something big, they are always from Chicago! So I know it’s a special city,” the celebrated soul and R&B recording artist told the Defender.
Our favorite songstress will return home Thursday to headline WTTW-Channel 11’s annual benefit at the Harris Theatre in Millennium Park.
“I love educational TV. I love The History Channel, Discovery…all of those. And WTTW started me on that path to using TV as an educational tool. I got a lot of information from WTTW and I’m just honored to finally be a part of it,” she explained. “It’s like going back to Mecca! All of my cousins, great-aunts, and old friends come out. It’s wonderful!”
In addition to coming home to perform, Khan is hard at work on new material that she is very excited about.
“Ledisi and I are going to do some recording together as well as Rashaan Patterson. I’d love to do more classical stuff like the Philharmonic Orchestra and some more jazz. But I am writing with a lot of people. I don’t want to do any full CD’s right now,” she said. “I want to do like four to five singles, so I can keep a continuous flow and go straight to the people with it. Since I am a free agent, I don’t have to be tripping with a record label, deadlines and trying to get a CD out when they are ready.” But don’t expect to see her performing with her old band, Rufus.
“My daughter is singing with Rufus now. She is singing the same stuff I was signing with good ole’ Tony Maiden. But I am not. You will not see me with Rufus. We did that, done it, burned it, it’s a wrap!” she said.
Despite no longer performing with Rufus, a lot of the songs Khan created with her old bandmates have remained relevant with newer artists remaking and sampling some of her old works. And unlike a lot of artists whose music has been sampled, Chaka is happy with it and where the music industry is headed.
“What I like is that most of the big giants are dead. We need the music to go straight to the people. That’s the way it should be. You don’t need a middleman to get your stuff out there; taking all your money – with what little money we can get with the Internet and all that,” Khan said. “That’s a good thing and I love that. I find that the youth are a lot savvier and are becoming brands. They are getting paid and I think it’s a fabulous thing. I am very proud of the ones that do.”
And getting the music out to the people is something that is very important to Khan. Coming from the days of the “big labels,” she knows the importance of an artist owning their music and having control over its distribution. But she, like many artists who came up with her, has been in an ongoing battle with her former record label, Warner Bros., to retrieve some of her old recordings. One that specifically stands out is Robert Palmer’s smash single, Addicted To Love.
“I arranged the vocals and sang on it. But this shows how trifling Warner Bros. was at the time. How could they say no to that? That was a win-win situation. I think it was some racist (expletive) going on with that. We met each other, went in the studio that night, and put it down that night. And they went nuts but they had him take all my vocals off,” Khan said. “But the kind and wonderful man that (Palmer) was, he did give me credit for vocal arrangement because that was all he could do. They have the original somewhere but I am going to try to get my hands on it if I can.”
Her determination to get her music back is a journey that she is prepared to take with her fans. “They (Warner Bros.) have stuff that we recorded…that I forgot, I’m sure because we had to pick how many songs would go on a record out of 20-30 songs,” she said. “They are just holding onto the rest. But I will get it. I might start a campaign with my fans to get it! I need to have them help me with this fight cause it’s going to be a fight. But we did this music for the people.”
And Khan is very much for the people, especially her fellow Chicagoans. As a woman who carries the soul of Chicago in her heart, she recognizes the important and influence of the Windy City.
“We have something special. I don’t know if it is the great lakes, but I believe it has something to do with the geography. It’s a marvelous city. And the things that are great about it are really great and the things that are bad about it are really bad. It’s a city of extremes. It’s got a real kind of bipolar thing and so do I but that’s a good thing because it makes me who I am,” she said.
Copyright 2010 Chicago Defender.
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