Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, MBE is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. A three-time Grammy Award-nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She also received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.
Background
Armatrading, the third of six children, was born on December 9, 1950, in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts. When she was three years old her parents, Amos Ezekiel and Beryl Agatha Armatrading, moved with their two oldest boys to the industrial city of Birmingham, England, leaving Joan behind in the care of her grandmother on the nearby island of Antigua. Four years later she was reunited with a family she no longer remembered and who lived in an all-white Birmingham neighborhood, an experience that brought about a sense of "isolation" described by a biographer as "something which would later suffuse her songs . . . which finds an echo in so many hearts" (Mayes 1990, 2). Even though her father played guitar, the instrument was off-limits to her. However, watching her father's occasional strumming and singing whetted her musical appetite.
Education
In an effort to relieve the family's difficult fi¬nancial situation, she abandoned her secretarial studies in 1966 and began to work in an office.
Career
After performing (as a favor to her brother) in a concert at Birmingham University, she formed a duo with a school friend and played bass and rhythm guitar in local clubs. The turning point in her musical career came in 1968 when she got a part in the national touring company of the musical Hair. Aside from being part of the chorus, or "The Tribe" (Mayes 1990, 8), she also had a solo musical number "What a Piece of Work Man Is." During her years in Hair, she met Pam Nestor, a singer and lyricist with whom she would write over 100 songs and collaborate on her first recordings. By 1972 Armatrading had moved to London to pursue a music career. That same year, in collaboration with Nestor, she wrote and released her first album, Whatever's for Us, and made her professional debut in London's Fairfield Hall, which was followed by an invitation to join singer José Feliciano's 1973 European tour. In 1976 her third album, Joan Armatrading, considered her breakthrough work, made her a celebrity and the song "Love and Affection" an international hit.
By 1980, following a major record contract and various U.S. tours, she had received two Grammy nominations for best female vocalist, and 18 gold records and 10 platinum records in seven countries. She has performed to worldwide critical acclaim and has produced such music classics as Love and Affection (1976), Down to Zero (1976), Me Myself and I (1980), and The Messenger (2000). Deemed one of the best lyricists in pop music, her songs are considered revelatory in content; her performances, usually sold out, are hailed as masterful. Music critic Jim Sullivan, in reviewing one of her concerts, commented on the reasons why her fans have followed her for so many years: "Arma trading's deep expressive voice is soulful, her music is relatively complex and highly syncopated and her love still knows no boundaries" (Sullivan 1996, 59). Since 1986 Armatrading has been sole producer of her music albums, recording them at her home studio in Britain.
Politics
In the 1970s and 1980s, Armatrading was active in the movement to free jailed political activist Nelson Mandela. During the latter part of 1999, she was asked to write a song in tribute to Mandela's accomplishments over the years to mark his retirement from the presidency of South Africa. On April 6, 2000, at Wembley Stadium in London, Joan Armatrading, backed by the Kingdom Choir, performed the song "The Messenger" for him before a crowd of over 70,000 people. Mandela, in a demonstration of his approval, smiled and danced onstage throughout the entire song.
Personality
Armatrading is reluctant to discuss her personal life in interviews. In a 2003 interview with David Thomas of The Daily Telegraph, she said:
"People who like my music have a legitimate interest in me, but I need to retain some privacy, not to be telling people what's going on, or what I feel. When you go home, the reason it's beautiful is because it's personal to you and the people you want to include in it."