The Game by Yolanda Charles‘ MamaYo was really a very pleasant surprise to discover. And if you haven’t checked it out yet it’s time you do so…after you’ve read the following interview with Yolanda about her ambition and efforts to remain an independent artist who contains total control of her creative output.
Q: Please tell me something about your musical background. Which musicians were influential for you to pick up an instrument and become a musician yourself.
Yolanda Charles: I was raised in a household that really enjoyed music. My mum played 7inch ska and blue beat records and my dad would play a lot of Nat King Cole, Jimmy Smith and Bob Marley. I have 2 brothers older than me, the eldest of which was into soul and hip hop and bought all the latest records and the younger brother was heavily into lovers rock, so I was exposed to a very wide variety of styles, I guess all those tracks with great bass riffs led me directly to wanting to play the bass. I was listening to Marcus Miller a lot through Luther Vandross records and he must have influenced me too.
Q: Why have you decided that just playing bass isn’t enough for your creativity and went on with producing the MamaYo project?
Yolanda Charles: I’d always enjoyed writing songs and had loads of cassettes of 4 track ideas, which I’d had every intention of finishing, but I was always away on tour, then I had my 2 children Tait and Carmen and found that between doing sessions and child rearing there wasn’t any time left for writing. The change came when I had a studio space built in my garden so that my husband Miles, who is a percussionist/drummer and I, could practice and jam with mates.
I found myself in there at all hours of the night recording ideas onto our 16-track digital recorder. After finishing a particular song, I mentioned to Miles that I’d love to hear it sung by a great singer. He suggested that I ask one of my friends to record it for me, so I asked Katie Kissoon; we were working together on the Robbie Williams gig and had become good friends. Well she did a fantastic job and I continued writing in my spare time, then I asked Shaun Escoffery to record another of my songs. Up until this point I’d been putting down the tracks just to hear what they’d sound like properly recorded, but by now I’d got the bug and found myself enjoying the process more than anything I’d done before, so I decided to go ahead and make an album. I guess I was at a point in my life when I felt that being a session musician wasn’t quite enough to satisfy all of the musical creativity I had going on inside my head. As a backing musician you require many skills to hold onto your job, some of which is about fitting in and some of it is about understanding that your contribution is to help others realize their ideas through your ability to play your instrument well. That side of it has it’s rewards because there’s nothing like finding the perfect riff or doing a good job on another musician’s record, but it’s now become important for me to express myself in my own way.
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