Elisa and Her Head Tone

I stumbled upon a contemporary dance performance of Lacey and Kameron of the talent cum reality show “So You Think You Can Dance” and I was completely blown away by their  take on the wonderful song which I came to hear for the very first time. Aside from the ever-famous leaping of Lacey’s crotch into the yummy arms and scruffy face of Kameron. Thanks to Mia Michaels. Her choreography was out of this world.

But I really liked the music that they used for the routine. Now I must have played that video for the hundredth time and still I could not hide the fact the I like the Elisa Toffoli’s “Dancing”. This track is really fantastic because personally I want to listen to it when I travel or even on a long drive anywhere or even just during bedtime. Its soothing and calming melody makes you want to take a break from the things you do or from anything that is stressful.

Now this is Elisa singing her wonderful song in Vatican City.

It’s difficult to find a copy of Elisa’s Dancing. I’ve been making the rounds of all record bars hoping that they may have the copy of the album “Then Comes the Sun” which was released in 2001. I’ve given up the search actually because most people no longer troop to the music stores to buy cd. Most people now download music from the net. According to sources, the use of Elisa’s “Dancing” in Lacey’s and Kameron’s dance routine last year had caused a resurgence in the interest on the Italian chantreuse. The song alone had been downloaded a lot of times last year. 

So I just content myself with the youtube video. She used a lot of high pitched head voice in this song, a style that made her apart from other singers. She a very talented Italian. She expressed her art in several forms like dancing, painting, writing poems and stories.

Now here’s a post about Elisa.

She has entered her native country over the course of three domestic multi-platinum selling albums and now with the release of her first British album, ‘Elisa’ (a greatest hits compiled from her three albums), Italy is finally allowing their protégé to leave the nest. They send her out with great pride, but also a twinge of sadness. For once Elisa’s beautiful, bittersweet, life-affirming songs bury their fangs into the rest of the world Italy knows it won’t be seeing nearly enough of her.

What special magic does Elisa weave? It’s very simple. Her songs are sung in English, but they speak the international language of soul. Not soul as in a brand of music, but soul as in songs that come from that human region. Songs that map every contour of the heart, songs that communicate love, pain, desire and feeling with a passionate insight rare in one so young.

“My songs are all about not trying to escape emotion,” Elisa explains. “I want to use my songs to express something true about myself, about all of us. They’re about the reactions to emotions and not about trying to escape those feelings. And the sound is eclectic because while my heart is always true it changes like the seasons. I write songs to evolve.”

Her output compares favourably with fellow sirens Tori Amos and Kate Bush, but the lineage stretches back much further, back to the day the eleven-year old Elisa went to see the movie ‘The Doors’. Entranced by the lyrical, mystical majesty of the band’s music, Elisa bought a book of poems by Jim Morrison and taught herself to speak English by reading aloud from it. And because all her favourite artists sing in English she figured she would too.

“In Italy, they thought I was English,” she laughs. “They’ve come to realise I’m not now, but that’s another thing I like. To surprise and shock people. I don’t want to be easy to predict. That’s what I love about artists like Bjork or Radiohead, that element of surprise.”

That element of surprise stretches throughout her personal biography too. The product of parents who never married, nor even lived-together but who were nonetheless together, Elisa has always been independently minded. She left school (and home for a year) at 14 and became a hairdresser. She then spent several years singing with a swing band in local bars, playing bass with a punk outfit and also locking down classical piano lessons along the way. Throughout these teenage years she honed her own songs, too, practising every day. She was trying to define her personal style, though, rather than searching for musical perfection. That’s never been her goal.

“For me, the ability to change and grow is far more vital than slickness. I want to recognise my own limits because that allows the music to be even more human. And I prefer an error to be heard because that makes it more soulful and it means you can trust the message of the music, too.”

Eventually, at 17, her songs found their way into the hands of Milan-based indie label Sugar and they agreed to sign her. Her trajectory towards the stars was subsequently very swift, although not entirely comfortable.

“I’m famous in Italy,” she agrees, “but that’s not something I search for. I see being famous as only method for people to hear my songs, a necessary one but sometimes it’s uncomfortable. But for me the most important thing is to communicate with people and so people need to know who I am. I like to therefore play with my image, to provoke a reaction even in my videos. I want to project the message of emotion through my music and I want everybody to get a sense of me.”

I get to sense her now. And I sensed that I could download her music in the coming days.