Sandflower Power
Sandflower Dyson's on a mission and nothing's going to stop her. On a warm Friday night, I took a walk with Sandflower to talk about music and her life's great purpose.
The first time you see Sandflower Dyson, with her electric blond curls and single lightning bolt earring, you’re generally in a state of awe, she radiates an amazing energy, at once whimsical and badass, that can be seen even from a distance. You know immediately that she was meant to be a rockstar and so did she. “It’s something I always wanted to do. My mom asked me when I was three years old what my great purpose on earth was because we believe that maybe you choose to come down from the stars or whatever, but you already know what your great purpose is as a child. ... I’m like, ‘To sing!!’”
Sandflower’s great purpose is rooted in the sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Cyndi Lauper, Carlos Santana and her childhood. “Both of my parents are musicians, and I grew up always going to rehearsal—going to the studio.” Born to musicians, Sandflower’s mother is D.K. Dyson, one of the co-founders of the Black Rock Coalition and the original lead singer of funk metal band Living Colour. “I kind of grew up in this balls to the walls female rock thing, and I actually thought that that was what I wanted. But I’m really, really a pop singer at heart, and for a while I wished that I could sing R&B … but that’s not me.”
Growing up with parents who knew the music industry, and the pitfalls that come with it, doesn’t always lead to being guided to pursue music. “She [my mom] wanted me to be a diplomat,” and she appeased her by following down a path that included the Princeton Model Congress and Harvard UN. “Then when I went to school, I just instantaneously wanted to do music. I was always playing music in high school—I was always writing songs—and my mom really tried to stir me away from it.” Everyone’s seen those episodes of VH-1’s Behind the Music. “They [entertainers] don’t really seem to want their kids to follow in their footsteps, because it’s really hard. And also unless you’re really high up, nepotism doesn’t really work. So it just you don’t want your kid to go through that.”
Sandflower remembers words getting encouragement early on while hanging around her mother’s rehearsals. “My mom was in a band called Jazz Passengers with Debbie Harry, Mavis Staples and Jeff Buckley. I was ten years old and I had written this song on the piano called ‘Over.‘ I always went to private schools, so it was about being not black enough, not being white enough— just not fitting in. He [Buckley] was in one of the rooms. ... I was going in there to play the piano, and I didn’t know anybody was there.” Buckley asked her to play her songs. “He was so encouraging and had such a great spirit.” Her mom told her several months later that he had passed due to accidental drowning. ”Only now that I’m older, now that I’m going online, researching his music am I blown away by what a great person he was.”
Before making her move to being a solo artist, Sandflower rocked stages with former writing partner Solomon Cortes as part of The Solomon Cortes Project and part of a girl group. “Only recently have I even started to believe in myself as a solo artist. When I met Solomon he already had a girl group in place; we were writing a lot of songs together, and then he was like ‘Do you want to be part of a girl group?’ And I did it but then I realized that I was kind of hiding behind it a little bit, because I knew that I didn’t want to go on a traditional path.” After this realization, and with encouragement from her close-knit group of supporters, Sandflower’s ready to step out on her own.
It’s safe to say she continued to toss tradition aside when she hosted this summer’s Afro-Punk Festival, which featured artists such as Saul Williams, Janelle Monae, Tamar-kali and Earl Greyhound. Afro-Punk is a community of people of African descent that genuinely love punk/rock music but in some cases feel like outsider because of their varying taste in music. “I’ve always been one of those people that felt like an outsider but, I’ve always appreciated those people who also felt that way but kind of brought me into their world.” The first day of the festival she graced the stage with a lightning bolt across her face and platform boots that elevated her petite frame above most. “I would love to get on stage and fucking rock out puck rock style … but then there are parts of me that wants to play Madison Square Garden and being on the cover of Rolling Stone. So it’s about finding the mixture between the two.” Above: Sandflower hosting the Afro-Punk Festival. Photo by Deneka Peniston.
“Everybody’s doing the next big thing … sometimes I think it’s so important to create your legacy of who you are and who you’re going to be right now. And of all my friends that are artists, or doing their thing in the city, they’re all doing that and that’s big thing for me too. It’s not just to have the next hot song, or to look cool, it’s also to have integrity and perseverance.“ She pauses and laughs, “And that’s why I want to be Miss America.” Now that Sandflower’s harnessing her Sandflower Power, it’s hard to believe that anything could keep her from achieve her great purpose in life. “I see myself really creating the kind of career that I want to have and also establishing a pathway for people who can identify with me that are artists, and hopefully paving way for them to feel comfortable enough to come out do what they do. That’s really important to me.”
Sandflower performing at SOBs. Photo by Steven “Lucky” Benson/DJL Studios
jhaagen
Oct 15th 09
05:36 AM