Soul Songstress Divine Brown

Love Chronicles Story

BY: Afro P

With her album, The Love Chronicles, Divine Brown taps into a timeless soul vibe and roots sensibility. Sway sat down with Divine for a quick music breakdown.

With this album, you chronicle the musical sounds and feelings of ’60s era Motown, ’50s swing, ’70s soul, ’80s pop and the R&B sound of the last few decades. Why did you decide to move in this direction? For me, there was certainly an aspect of chronicling my musical roots and the type of music I grew up listening to. I don’t even think I got to touch on everything I wanted to. But the process I went through creating this album had everything to do with the feeling of the music back then and memories I had attached to those feelings. It wasn’t like I had to sit down and listen to music from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s to make the album. I didn’t have to — it was inside from being played when I was growing up. It was pretty easy to translate it musically.

It seems like a few artists have keyed in to bringing back the old soul feeling. For example, Amy Winehouse, Estelle and Jully Black. Do you see yourself doing any collaborations in the near future? I don’t really know what I’m going to do until I start doing it. I don’t really contrive stuff much in advance of doing it. I have ideas that germinate in my head — like a seed gets planted and then I think on it and the writing process begins. It’s not like I sit and say “I’m going to write about this.” I mean, there are different concepts that come to me and I’ll say, “Hey that might be a good thing to touch on.”

Were there some sounds/feelings you weren’t able to touch on with this album? I don’t think I got to dig into Motown as much as I would have liked to. I mean, even like rock and roll sounds like Chuck Berry and Little Richard; sounds that were really holding it down. The whole Motown movement was such an impactful time for black music. It may filter through on my next project but you never know.

Love Chronicles is available at major music retailers. For more info on Divine Brown, visit: divinebrown.ca