Source: SPEAK UP
SANANDA GOES SOLO
If you want to hear a biting indictment of the music industry, then you could hardly to better than have a conversation with Sananda Maitreya. If the name doesn’t sound entirely familiar, then that’s because he has changed it. In a previous life he was known as Tenence Trent D’Arby and he sold millions of records in the 1980s and 1990s.
The decision to change his name (in October 2001) came after a series of dreams, but he thinks that the prime reason was his sense of revulsion at an industry that had to “assume control of my identity.”
EVIL
Today Sananda Maitreya lives and records music in Europe, where he recently met with Speak Up. He told us that he had left “the system” because he was tired of being “bullied and dictated to. They owned me and they tried to dismantle every thing I put together. They saw me as a corporate brand: they ripped away my identity.” Yet he doesn’t think that it’s only the recording industry that has been mistreating him: “I can’t remember a time in my life (he was born Terence Trent Howard on March 15th, 1962 –ed) when someone wasn’t trying to manipulate me to get something from me.”
THE CURRENT CRISIS
Sananda sees the music business as being part of the “corporate system that has been bashing us for years.” He believes that the recent financial meltdown was inevitable, as these people “have been stealing from us for years.” Yet eh finds satisfaction in to be one of the world’s top six industries. Now it isn’t even in the top 25.”
Of course Sananda isn’t the first artist to turn his back on the labels. Prince famously began calling himself “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince,” while Radiohead (like Prince) recently started to distribute their own ‘work online, enjoying the freedom that the digital revolution has allowed.
Maitreya similarly releases his music online. His album Angels & Vampires Volume I (2005) and Volume II (2006) are downloadable on MP3. So are his latest albums Nigor Mortis – A critical Mass and Lovers & Fighters. The latter is a live recording of several of his European concerts. Given that he is now free to “do his own thing.” We were curious to know why he was so angry about an industry is “part of the octopus that is controlling western consciousness” and he is particularly irritated that it has lost its “spiritual sides,” which was represented by ground-breaking artists like the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, and that it is now dominated by “its corporate side.”
ON THE TEAM
For, as is perhaps apparent, Sananda (whose father was a Pentecostal minister) has a strong spiritual and religious element and he sees his musical talent as a gift: “I belong to Gabriel’s team. I work for heaven’s music department. It (his talent –ed) doesn’t come from me.”
Sananda also sees himself as part of a tradition of musical independence. For, as he reminded Speak Up: “Mozart and Beethoven also had a problem with the system!’ And left the system.” Clearly, Sananda is not alone.
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Yes I remember Terence Trent D'Arby - Oh how time flies! The music industry these days is like many other businesses these days; it's only real concern is sadly the bottom line. Find someone preferably young, who looks good, who can sing and then market and sell them to the masses. So much of the music these days seems to sound the same - only difference is same type of music sung by someone else with perhaps some ability to sing but most importantly the ability to woo the fans. So I can understand Sananda and staying true to his identity and wanting to be true to himself and not become something else he is not, purely for the sake of money making and satisfying his music employers.
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