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Persistent beats
House diva Ultra Naté

BY MICHAEL FREEDBERG

Take the title of Ultra Naté’s new CD, Stranger Than Fiction (Strictly Rhythm), to heart. Like soul singers since the idiom’s beginnings, Naté sings truth — her truth — about life. That’s one reason she has retained a faithful audience for almost a decade now, despite performing entirely within the underappreciated (in the USA, at least) genre of house music. She shares house’s tiny American space with other cherished divas: Barbara Tucker, Liz Torres, Crystal Waters, Sabrina Johnston, Heather Small of M People, and Joi Cardwell especially. Only Naté, however, has four full-length CDs to her credit.

Her steady, unaffected singing is a big reason for her continued success. Of all contemporary house divas, Naté sings the purest. No odd distortion or scant melisma. No soaring sopranos à la ’70s Aretha or screams in the manner of Chaka “I’m Every Woman” Khan. She sings just the facts. She doesn’t tease you, doesn’t come and go, pretend, or cajole. She lets the rhythms move around her while she stands firmly in the center. Naté has always favored breezy light beats and nimble and understated bass lines. Her rhythms move constantly, but they do not throw heavy drama around a room. And her vocals are never shrouded in texture.

On Stranger Than Fiction, her vocals once again dominate without overreaching. Emblematic of her approach are the pensive “Dear John” and the pulsating “Ain’t Looking for Nothing.” The first delivers what it promises, a Dear John letter to a lover; the second addresses a perennial house-music desire, going out clubbing in search of romance. The usual soul-music approach to these topics is to burst out, crying, howling, calling loudly, whatever it takes to get the singer directly in your face. Naté never cries out. She whispers, croons, speaks her speech in a sultry, feline low register. She sings, in short plain sentences ended by periods rather than exclamation points.

A singer of this sort cannot help persisting. Understatement has no cup for short bright outbursts to fill. And persist she has, overseas at least. “My audience over there is huge,” she explains over the phone from Baltimore. “I do live shows over there constantly, in Asia, too, in all venues, from underground gay clubs to bigger clubs, even huge outside festivals with 300,000 people.” As for America, she knows the score. “I’m in big cities especially, but also Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland. We’re getting in, away from the coasts!”

As a Baltimore native, Naté understands how narrow the rim of America she thrives in is. The goal, as for all performers of borderline musical genres, is to get into the American heartland. She has no illusions about the difficulties: “The house-music scene here probably will remain just cultish.”

But she sings in a way no DJ can replicate or play tricks on. DJs regularly use outcry-style vocals to “peak” the rhythm — i.e., make it as demonstrative to the dancers they’re playing for as possible. Naté’s secretive, low-riding, unmannered vocals call for a different, opposite response: she demands that the listener (and the DJ) come to her. The many producers, none of them house-music specialists, who helped her create Stranger Than Fiction provide danceable, sometimes fierce rhythms. These only support her singing: they’re never the main story. On “Twisted,” the rhythm does indeed twist and turn, but off to one side, highlighting her vocals but not leading them.

Naté’s taste in DJs remains classic, old school, mid-’80s. “I go out when I can. When I’m in New York, I’ll go to hear Timmy Regisford, Joe Clausel, François K. My clubs? Body and Soul in Vinyl on Sunday evenings.” And her favorite house-music vocal rival? “Byron Stingily! He’s the greatest.” Many house-music adepts would agree. As for “François K,” he’s François Kevorkian, who, as an A&R man at disco label Prelude Records from 1980 to 1984, invented the disco dub mix. Talk about persistence.

Issue Date: June 14 - 21, 2001