… All rolled into one: Taja Sevelle makes dance music with something more on its mind than booty shaking - interview with sound recording artist - Interview

Interview, Dec, 1997 by Dimitri Ehrlich

On first listen, Taja Sevelle's single "I and I" sounds like a bratty girl singer going on about herself: "I-I-I-I and me and me," she half sings, half breathes. But what might be mistaken for self-absorption turns out to be critical self-examination - which turns out to be typical of Sevelle. An amateur mathematician, avid student of theoretical quantum physics, and budding novelist, Sevelle is a former Methodist who converted to Orthodox Judaism several years ago. She spent the fifth grade living in a cabin in the woods of Minnesota on a family retreat, which she says had a formative impact on her reflective, nearly hermetic nature. Sevelle met Prince in 1987 and signed a record deal with his Paisley Park label while she was still in high school. She scored a European hit with the title cut from her 1988 album Love Is Contagious.

Musical smarts and sensuality don't often exist in such close proximity as they do on Toys of Vanity, Sevelle's new album on Sony 550. It's danceable, yet eclectic enough to entertain the intellect, with lyrics that reward attentive listening. Sevelle asks big philosophical questions, both in her music and of herself. She's either going to open her third eye or die trying.

DIMITRI EHRLICH: Did you always want to be in the music business?

TAJA SEVELLE: I wanted to be a botanist!

DE: How does one go from picking berries in the wilds of Minnesota to recording an album for Prince?

TS: The one through-line in my life is that I love to sing. When I sing, it's like offering a prayer. I was always embarrassing my friends in public, belting out songs without realizing I was doing it. That's why I went into the music business. Prince knew me as a singer around Minneapolis. I ran into him in a club and he asked me if I had a demo. I said, "When it's finished, I'll get it to you." He said. "Just give me the demo, no matter what stage it's in, because I'm going to Europe and I really want to hear it before I go." So I did, and a couple of days later he offered me a deal.

DE: What were the early years of your career like?

TS: I was living in L.A., writing songs and living hand to mouth.

DE: How did you survive?

TS: I don't know - it was divine intervention.

DE: So you just woke up and wrote songs all day?

TS: I've always been fairly disciplined. I'm somewhat of an anchorite.

DE: A what?

TS: An anchorite: a hermit.

DE: I've never heard that word before.

TS: I had my world of writing and that was it. I've also been working on a novel, which I've finished. It's a mystery and a romance about two soulmates who have traveled life after life together.

DE: I hear you're a physics nut.

TS: It's true. I really like physics. I love to do math in my spare time. It's a little frightening.

DE: Did you read A Brief History of Time?

TS: Stephen Hawking is a tough read. You've really got to sit down with it, but it's double. You get used to the language, like you get used to James Joyce.

DE: Can a tenth-grade science mind read it? Because that's sort of where I am.

TS: Well, that's pretty much where I was!

DE: It's interesting how science and philosophy seem to overlap, like a lot of Buddhist thought meshes with physics. Your new album begins with the song "I and I." But it's not just Buddhists. Rastafarians, for example, use the phrase "I and I" instead of "you and me" as a way to emphasize the unity of all things. It's like an anti-ego thing.

TS: I didn't know that. That's cool. I was told that it was about finding your center. But this song has many different layers. It came from a very vivid and realistic dream that really brought something home for me: I spend a lot of time thinking about myself. I'm in my own world. I never saw it that way until I had this dream where I was living next door to myself and experienced myself as my own neighbor. Like watching this other entity and thinking. That person is really self-absorbed. Ever since then. I've been thinking a lot about my life: What am I doing with it? What are my motives? Are they coming from a place of ego, or are they coming from a place of true caring?

DE: Is the song "Wake Before I Die" about the desire to gain Insight before death?

TS: "Wake Before I Die" was inspired by another dream, where I drove off a cliff and was suspended in midair. I thought, What did I do in that last moment? What was I leaving behind? Would I call the one I love and tell him all my secrets? Would I be able to drop the facade?

DE: How nice would that be.

TS: It would be great. We're always seeking to fill voids in our lives with things that aren't really fulfilling - whether it's drugs, shopping, relationships that aren't working, channel surfing. I'm craving something. Am I going to wake up and realize that none of these things fills the void? What does fill it?

DE: What are the "toys of vanity"?

TS: They can be anything: drugs, cars, shopping, cigarettes, sex with the wrong people. It's all the things that distract us. Another song on the album, "Us," is about recognizing that we're human and sometimes need those distractions.