Lost In Music
Kathy Sledge, of Sister Sledge fame, opens up to Hey Mag about her long career and colliding with destiny. Words_Aasha Bodhani [First published October 2018]
The most innovate artists are the ones that write from the heart and follow their passion. You can’t fool your audience, if you try and write songs that aren’t really you, it’s always going to be hard to perform.”
With a career spanning five decades, Kathy Sledge is well placed to give advice on how to master the music industry. Philadelphia born Kathy and her older siblings Debbie, Kim and the late Joni, formed Sister Sledge in 1971 and became one of the most successful female supergroups of the disco era, a time epitomized by DJ David Mancuso’s sets at The Loft and also by New York’s infamous Studio 54.
“I remember back then, I was actually a minor; I got the chance to go [to Studio 54] and our mum was with us,” recalls Kathy. “I wasn’t allowed to drink, but I watched. It was like a movie where the music just brought everyone to life. I definitely feel like I grew up in that era…”
Kathy and her sisters were trained by their opera-singing grandmother, Viola Williams, and were first billed as the snappily-named Mrs Williams’ Grandchildren. At the age of 14, she took vocal lead on Mama Never Told Me, which became a Top 20 hit in the UK in 1975. After record label Atlantic hooked the girls up with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, of Chic, their 1979 released We Are Family album catapulted them to superstardom. Songs from that album — We Are Family, He’s the Greatest Dancer and Lost in Music — remain evergreen party classics known around the globe.
Kathy, who departed the band in 1989 to pursue a solo career, can call herself a singer, songwriter, author, manager and producer these days, but the stage still holds a certain thrill.
She won plaudits for her journey into new terrain with her critically acclaimed show, The Brighter Side of Day — a tribute to the ’40s and the legendary Billie Holiday, and with her sisterhood roots, she created Kathy Sledge presents: My Sisters & Me, a concert series where Kathy and an array of singing ‘sisters’, including Deniece Williams, Karyn White and CeCe Peniston, perform classic hits. Kathy also tells her own intimate story, dubbed the Sister Sledge Storybook, where she performs songs that define her journey.
“As I’ve been putting these productions together, it really is the music that’s the backbone of the most successful plays; it’s all there, all the mechanics to make it happen,” Kathy says with passion.
Though disco lost mainstream popularity, plenty of modern day artists have all made a nod to it in their productions, including Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars. “It’s funny because disco, dance, whatever you want to call it, has reinvented itself to a whole new generation. The newness of that is really cool, it’s special,” reflects Kathy.”
Looking back, Kathy knows what advice she would now give to her younger self. “Be more daring,” she says. “I would always get offered to do solo projects, but I was like, ‘No, no, we’re in a group’. But I like the fact that I did the family thing.”
The most important thing, she says, is always to be true to yourself. “A colleague of mine says, ‘When your passion meets your purpose, you collide with destiny’.”
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Read more about music — across all genres, in the October 2018 issue of Hey Mag HERE
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