Thursday, March 28

Embodying Tina Turner, the most personal vocal tear in music history


“There has been no one in the history of music like her.” The actress and singer Astrid Jones is blunt when it comes to defining Tina Turner. And she speaks knowingly. She was one of those in charge of interpreting her in the musical that covered her life for a year and a half at the Teatro Coliseum on Gran Vía in Madrid. The singer responds to elDiario.es shortly after learning the news of the death of the ‘queen of rock’: “The theater colleagues continue to have a WhatsApp group and the first thing we have commented on is how she was able to influence so many generations of different races, origins and cultures around the world”.

Tina Turner: The Making of a Rock and Roll Revolutionary

Further

“Getting into the skin of a woman who has been so brave, so strong, so persevering, with so much faith, with such a special and particular talent makes you realize the greatness she had as an artist, and as a person,” she says. Anna-Mae Bullock –Turner’s real name–, she died this Wednesday at the age of 83 due to illness, in her house in Switzerland where she had lived since the 1990s and whose nationality she had acquired.

“Tina made it possible for many women in music to have an artistic concept that stems from their strength. She was able to present something that was out of the ordinary. She has been and will be an example for women, women and people of how to defend what is particular and what is different, ”she claims.

Born in Madrid into a family of Guinean descent, Jones began her singing career at the age of twenty in a friends’ rap group called Subsuelo. From her recordings and concerts, she got in touch with a person who was an amateur choir. From then on, she was part of the Gospel Factory choir for fifteen years, in addition to working as a studio singer and backup singer for figures such as Raphael, Pitingo, Beatriz Luengo and Melendi. She has also collaborated with soul, jazz, reggae and afro groups such as Morodo, Okoumé Lions and Carlo Coupé.

He has his own soul project, Astrid Jones & The Blue Flaps, and the interpretation came thanks to Juan Diego Botto and Sergio Peris Mencheta, with whom he embodied the work An invisible piece of this world in 2014. Achilles and Penthesilea and deals are other functions in which he has worked. But it was a friend of hers who convinced her in 2019 to take the tests for Tub, despite the fact that until then he had not participated in any musical. She was selected, and she went on to play the lead alongside Kery Sankoh, as well as cover Zelma Bullock, Turner’s mother.

The actress explains that playing Turner was “a great trip” for her because of everything that involved the extensive documentation process that they carried out before doing the work. Knowing and soaking up her biography allowed him to understand the complex context in which she grew up and developed as a person and artist. And, from there, understanding “the human quality of someone who managed to break many barriers at a time when being a black woman, and in addition to more than forty years when she began her solo career; It was quite complicated.”

Jones thus values ​​”everything that he had to go through” before carving out and achieving a career “full of recognitions”. Within that ‘everything’ he was belonging to a dysfunctional family. “The strength and faith that he had that he could achieve what he dreamed of was what led him to be able to do everything he did. Along with his great ability to survive and overcome, ”he adds. Within this process, he considers that the moment in which Tina began to practice the Buddhist religion was a “very big turning point”: “she gave him the tools to be able to have that career.”

Forge ‘the’ career from nothing

The musical was directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Olivier Award winner Katori Hall. Jones recalls that the playwright, who came from the same area as Turner, told them about what she herself had experienced when visiting the area where the ‘queen of rock’ grew up: “She said there was absolutely nothing and she pretended He asks how it was possible that someone who came from where there was nothing would have been able to build a career of his characteristics. With the artistic identity of her, and that she would have been able to sustain it in totally adverse circumstances in the first stage of her with Ike Turner ”.

And not only that. Rather, after separating from him and having to start from scratch, she “did the same thing again: singing rock, her way, carrying out the musical concept and the career that she wanted. She built her own destiny. That conviction was what led him to do something so great.” In fact, she celebrates how even though she retired in her seventies, people “waited for her and wanted her.” Including her, who last January said goodbye to the character that she played at the Coliseum Theater – which is now dominated by the musical aladdin– for two seasons. “I know it will take a while to realize all that we have taken along on this challenging path,” she posted on her Instagram account at the time.

Jones was one of the many people who grew up influenced by Tina’s music. Hence, interpreting it was a challenge for her. Of course, he admits that what cost him the most was adapting to the “pure fire” that Tina was, being a “very calm” person. “To embody a person with that level of energy was a very big responsibility,” she says.

Also because of the vast vocal register that the ‘queen of rock’ had. She “she sang in a very particular way. she was unique. She had made an effort to differentiate herself from the rest of the singers of that time. She found her own way, with that particular tear and placement of her voice. She was totally recognizable. She didn’t look like anything, ”Jones extols. “Her vocal, physical and interpretive qualities of hers were very demanding and she had to rise to the task. That took a lot of work and preparation, as well as realizing the greatness of someone that she achieved so much even through some pretty heartbreaking domestic violence.”

“Having been able to get into his skin has made me value even more what he meant and the greatness he brought,” concludes his alter ego. In other words, in this case pronounced and intoned by Turner herself so many times: “Simply the best”.





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