All roads lead to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this week. The popular Standard Bank Jazz Festival will feature local acts like Kesivan Naidoo, Concord Nkabinde and Bokani Dyer. There will also be international artists like Yuri Honing, Lionel Loueke and the Stokholm Jazz Orchestra. Cape Town’s Auriol Hays (pictured) and her band are not to be missed.
“I’m very excited about that,” says the songbird about performing. “The audience will be getting a sneak peek of my third album as well as the fan-favourite songs from the first and second albums. Maybe even a cover song or two.”
Hays first made a name for herself as a vocal powerhouse on her debut album, Behind Closed Doors. Her second album, Call It Love: Amina Sola, saw her tear off the Elastoplast from her broken heart and use music to bare the scars that a divorce can leave: “Someone told me that album was like eavesdropping on an intimate conversation and I wanted it to be like that.”
But now, with her third album, Dreaming Music, due for release this year, the jazz-soul-blues singer and songwriter aims to do something different. She says this album is “bolder because I’m not in that space anymore. The album is happier, but not that much happier. The theme is sanctuary and sincerity.”
Dreaming Music features big ballads like the James Bond-inspired When Worlds Collide and a cover of Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse’s hit, Burn Out, which she slows down and delicately sings so that the up-tempo song takes on the sombre tone of love lost.
“How can it not make it onto the album,” Hays asks. “Sipho loved (my cover) and it’s great that he approved of it. The lyrics are incredibly sad. How much do you have to lose someone to stand there and burn out? This song is great because it does what art is supposed to do: it bridges the gap between what’s happening in our heads and hearts.”
Another song that tugs at the heartstrings is Child Atone featuring Riaan Smit. The beautiful blues song is a look at redemption through dialogue between Auriol and the devil. It’s also the theme song for an upcoming sci-fi TV show called Spelonk.
“I like anything post-apocalyptic and what’s particularly intriguing is that the show is partly in Afrikaans but also modifies other languages to imagine what the future will sound like,” she says.
In Spelonk, Hays plays the role of a seer who happens to also dress well. “There’s a character on a quest of sorts,” she explains. “He’s dishonourable when we meet him and he comes to the seer – and you don’t know if she’s good or bad. In that world, her currency is information. They’re going to dress me like a badass.
“What I love about the grace that music has allowed me is that my life is so much richer because music is always pushing me out of the comfort zone. It leaves me completely energised and on a high.”
l Don’t miss Auriol Hays and more in the Standard Bank Jazz Festival programme at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown from Thursday to July 12.