Innerviews_Sethsharp

Inner Views: Up close & personal Interviews with working musicians

Welcome to the Music Village. Here you will meet musicians & people involved in music that I have worked with or had the pleasure of knowing. Feel free to mingle, browse, spend some time in the village, because in the village you never know who you might meet. Thanks for coming.

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This page was last updated on: March 4, 2009

Lionel: (While tapping his hands on his thighs, playing a dance beat; Boom, tap, boom, tap, Lionel sings the opening lines to Seth's dance hit single, "Every Sunday"... It's Sunday again.) ha ha, I guess I better leave the singing to you. what's up Seth?

Seth: Hey Lionel. I have been sick, then lazy and then celebrating for a solid week with my friends who visited from France and Austria so I am great again. Finally getting over my Christmas cold and settling back into the winter darkness of Iceland.

You are certainly multi-talented, but if we could discuss singing for a moment...when did you first realize that you wanted to be a vocalist? And is there a particular vocalist, group, style of music or event which brought you to this realization?

I remember watching Jennifer Holiday on television when I was about 10 years old and I started mimicking her song, "And I am Telling You". My mother was fascinated by my ability to sing like that so she had me sing this song at every possible occasion until I got sick of it. I used to love Stevie Wonder when I was really little but I mostly danced to his music and didn't try to sing like him until I was a teenager. I was always very shy on a one-to-one level but found that the stage was most comfortable for me. I had studied acting and had been performing since I was three years old, so I was used to the stage by the time I had started singing. I found it much easier to communicate with songs than with words, so I felt I could communicate on a larger and larger scale the more that I sang.

Sounds like mom was instrumental in guiding you to a creative path.

My mother took me to a lot of concerts when I was little and a lot of jazz series in Bushnell Park (Hartford, CT) and in New York City. I fell in love with the atmosphere surrounding singers and musicians. I sought out a career in music when I was a teenager but decided to go to Yale to pursue my studies instead of pursuing a record deal. I was a bit intimidated by the thought of dealing with sharky record executives and music producers, from my limited experience of pursuing a recording career as a teenager. After Yale I went to New York and pursued a career in theater and directing; and put the idea of being a full-time vocalist on the back burner. I still did concerts in New York but I didn't see a plausible way for me to break into the music business in a way that I wanted to.

Around 2002, I started giving vocal lessons to my friend Jason Sellards, who had started an indi-band with a couple of friends in New York (The Scissor Sisters). He encouraged me to pursue my own career in music and I watched his group rise from an underground band in New York to an international pop band. While Jason's band was growing in popularity, I got the idea to move to Iceland because I was getting restless in New York, so I moved to Iceland and jumpstarted my career as a vocalist.

Let’s change direction for a minute and try this. I'll mention a phrase or song title and you tell me what comes to mind and why. "Ribbon In The Sky"

Stevie Wonder, of course! My mother told me to study Stevie Wonder's mouth while he sang and that was incredibly helpful to me.

"Fever"

"Fever" reminds me of Africa because I sang it while I was on tour there in many locations and usually it was so hot!

That’s the tour I missed. I really wanted to play drums on that one but sounds like you had fun though. Hey, I can swear I remember hearing you, as a deejay, on WQTQ, Weaver's High School radio station, while you lived in the US, tearing up the airwaves with R&B, Funk and Urban sounds. That was you, right?

That was me! I had the highest voice when I first started as a deejay. One day the head of the radio station called me into his office and played a tape of me speaking on the radio. I sounded like a very beautiful woman (which explained the random phone calls that I got from horny men wanting my phone number). So I practiced speaking in my baritone register which lowered my singing voice until I learned how to speak low on the radio and maintain my upper register.

You mentioned Yale earlier. Did you attend Yale University's Repertory Theatre? How was that experience and what would you say to young aspiring actors/singers who were thinking along the same educational lines?

Actually I didn't attend the Yale Rep, because that's for the graduate students, but I was in the undergraduate theater program. That was not the most pleasant experience in the world. In fact, it was pretty awful sometimes. I could really bore you with how awful my experience at Yale was sometimes but the best part of the theater program, for me, was directing many shows. The university had a great system in place for aspiring directors. I founded a multi-cultural theater company with a friend of mine and that was absolutely incredible. I learned more running this theater company than I could have learned in any classroom over a decade.

My advice for the youngins': don't take anyone's advice! Anytime I have tried to squeeze myself into someone's ideal of what it takes to get into a good college or what it takes to become a successful actor, I have been miserable and not myself. The biggest gambles I took in pursuing a higher education were the ones that paid off the most. I wrote my main college application essay in third-person and I wrote an essay about a rogue friend of mine for a scholarship. Some people were especially unhappy about my essay about my friend, but I got the scholarship. So, I think as long as you satisfy the basic requirements; be yourself and do what you do best and if people hate it, go to a college where people love it. Your voice will grow and your independence will grow and you won't end up playing drug dealers all your life after studying Shakespeare at Harvard.

What were some of the productions that you were involved in while at Yale and were there any outstanding or dynamic individuals who helped influence your career path while in New Haven, Connecticut?

I directed quite a few shows at Yale and each experience was incredible. My mom helped me with my first production, "Day of Absence". I was terrified but she really stayed by my side and sat in auditions with me. She encouraged me to pursue my own interpretation and to go as wild as I wanted and to be as conservative as I wanted. The review in the Yale Herald was pretty negative but that told me I had succeeded because the reviewer was angry and I wanted to make people angry and to make them laugh.

I had a teacher named Sandra Bowie, who rescued me from the ashes of racism and she re-built my self-esteem and told me to keep going. Under her watch, I directed, "Mojo and the Sayso" which received rave reviews in both Yale newspapers and shocked the audiences and packed the house. That was an incredible experience.

You live in Iceland now and I have never been there but, all I hear when I pronounce the word Iceland is "Ice" I don't even pay attention to the second syllable, "land", so the million dollar question is, Why Iceland? And remember you're talking to a person who grew up in Barbados, lived in Connecticut and think New England winters are very cold.

I love the cold. When I was younger, growing up in Hartford, there were fewer thugs hanging out on the streets in the winter time. I sneezed less when it was cold. I had fewer asthma attacks in the winter time. I read about Iceland in the encyclopedia when I was a kid and decided it was the perfect place for me. I didn't imagine there were people who lived there. I thought it was more like Antarctica with mostly scientists and puffins (instead of penguins) but I was surprised to meet really wonderful, intelligent, spiritual and supportive people.

I saw your Prince Tribute on your website, sethsharp.com, I know you would agree that Prince is outrageously talented. Is there one of his many talents; musician, singer, writer, producer, entrepreneur, etc., that you admire most?

I admire Prince's politics. In some ways, what Obama is trying to do in 2009, reminds me of Prince. Prince redefined what it meant to be a man, a black man, a sexual being, a rock musician, a soul musician, a funk musician, an intellectual, a short person, etc. I think that many aspects of American culture tend to be very conservative and limiting and I can see the attraction for free-spirited folks to live in Europe instead of America but Prince was not one of those guys who escaped to Europe to find his voice (like I did), he did it blatantly and loud and without shame right in the US and I really admire him for breaking down many doors, not just for musicians but for anyone who chooses to reject pre-determined cultural roles in favor of free-thinking.

I got the opportunity to perform with you at Juneteenth in 2006 at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT; a show which I totally enjoyed. Then you were off to Africa. Do you have any thoughts on the African leg of that tour?

Africa rules! I love Africa. Going to Africa changed my life, my mind, my spirit, my future, my past. It is absolutely incredible in both positive and negative ways.

Do you have any theatrical or musical events or projects in the works?

Now I am preparing for Iceland's pre-Eurovision competition. I am singing the song of an Icelandic composer who has had platinum albums in the UK. That takes place at the end of January and if I win that competition, I'll go to the finals for Iceland and then to Russia. So please wish me luck!

I wish you much success as always. On a lighter note, what was the funniest thing to happy to you or on stage while you were performing?

Hmm. Many things have totally embarrassed me or made me laugh like a madman afterwards. The first one that comes to mind took place in Mauritania when I was giving a concert with a Mauritanian pop star. This disabled man made his way to the front of the stage and threw his metal crutch at me while I was singing. He was smiling while he did it but I was both confused and a bit scared. I just let it fall and he sat back down and pouted a bit. I didn't go near the cane and it remained on stage after the show was over. Someone explained to me that the man liked my performance so much that he threw his cane as a gift of appreciation. I felt really silly afterwards.

Any closing thoughts?

Thanks for the questions. You made me think really hard. I haven't done that in a while. I just hope that we get to gig and record together soon!

Footnote: Since the interview, Seth has competed in Iceland's pre-Eurovision competition. He performed the song “Family” by Oskar Pall Sveinsson.

Seth Sharp was Interviewed by Lionel Crawford. For additional information on Seth please visit his websites listed below.

http://www.sethsharp.com

http://www.myspace.com/sethrs

Seth Sharp

"Anytime I have tried to squeeze myself into someone's ideal... I have been miserable and not myself."

My mother told me to study Stevie Wonder's mouth

while he sang and that was incredibly helpful to me.

I had a teacher named Sandra Bowie, who rescued me from the ashes of racism

Seth is quiet, but then again loud. He will sing an Icelandic folk song then slam you with Rock. The first time I got an opportunity to share the stage with him, I played drums while Bill Wallace played guitar. I really dug the R&B/Blues vibe Seth and the band projected at those shows. For the shows, the following year, my drums were packed and ready to go when Seth called and said he wanted to do an acoustical show and asked that I bring Djembe, percussion and my acoustic guitar, so I unpacked and packed again. It was worth it hearing Seth's rendition of classic material in an acoustic setting. Last year I handled bass guitar detail with Bill on guitar and Anthony on electronic drums. We looked and sounded just like a dance band. Seth, on the other hand, walked on stage looking like a Rock star, blonde hair and all. So like I said, Seth is quiet, but then again loud .