Tuesday February 17, 2009
Musical bliss
By S.S. YOGA
The indomitable Sister Bliss blazes a trail for female DJs around the world.
SHE laughingly confessed to being in a school band called the Queen Bees. It was Sister Bliss’ answer to Bananarama, a girl group that wowed the crowds in the 1980s way before the Spice Girls came on the scene. While she noted that it was all done in fun, it signalled the onset of her involvement in music.
But it was a visit to a gay bar in London’s King’s Cross Station that set Bliss on her chosen career path.
Sister Bliss: ‘I wanted to be like Prince and play everything.’ “The deejay was playing late 80s music from Madonna and Prince, mixed with other music; it was very electronic, very raw and very dancy. I was hooked on house music from then on,” said Bliss in an exclusive interview the same evening of her recent performance at Zouk, Kuala Lumpur.
Fittingly, her first professional gig in London was at one of the biggest gay clubs – Heaven. She saw a flyer asking for people to try out and was surprised that she got hired, becoming one of the first female deejays.
Now a top deejay, Bliss is a pivotal member of the trio called Faithless, which has played the Kuala Lumpur circuit numerous times. Bliss’ solo gig this time around was set up by Topshop.
Bliss readily acknowledged that she was luckier than most. Her father got her a synthesiser when she was 13, and the first thing she did was to make her own tracks.
The young Ayalah Bentovim (her real name) also learnt to play the piano, violin, saxophone and bass.
“I wanted to be like Prince and play everything. But the truth is I play a lot of things badly (compared to the music geniuses she grew up with). Now I just need to play the keyboards – it’s like my orchestra in a box. I’m like a one-woman band; don’t need to play anything else anymore.
“It’s funny how my mum dragged out my violin at home; it was under my bed and it’s been there for 19 years. Maybe I’ll hand it down to Nate (her two-year-old son).”
Bliss does not restrict herself to composing music and producing record albums; she has expanded into other fields too.
She has done musical scores for movies, television and theatre. Her most recent project was the music for the play Emperor Jones (directed by Theo Sharrock who directed Daniel Radcliffe of Potter fame in his buck-naked stint in Equus).
“It’s the best review I’ve ever had. My next project will be a lay by Hanif Kureishi (the famed British playwright/screenwriter/filmmaker/novelist) based on his second novel, The Black Album (coincidentally the title of a Prince album).”
Her deejay gigs and tours with Faithless have taken her to practically every corner of the world. Bliss takes time off to enjoy the local attractions during her travels. There was a gig in Singapore some years ago, and Bliss took the opportunity to travel to Langkawi for a break by the beach.
“I’ve had so many great gigs but the one that stands out in my mind was when Faithless did Glastonbury (one of the top music festivals) in 2002, the one where Coldplay got noticed and won major acclaim. I think there were about 100,000 people there and we were one with the crowd; it was so exciting.”
Sister Bliss doing her thang at Zouk KL, decked out in stripe-print sequinned camisole and black sequinned leggings from Topshop. Bliss said she felt honoured that when acclaimed director Julien Temple made a documentary on Glastonbury, Faithless was one of the few acts featured. “But now that I have a family, I’m scaling down on the number of gigs and tours.”
With a new Faithless album due this year, Bliss, 38, does not see herself as DJ for much longer. “Perhaps I might give it up at 40 despite my reputation as a workaholic. It’s a bit weird to be doing the club scene after 40. But I can immerse myself in producing and doing work with musical scores,” said Bliss.
Before coming over to Kuala Lumpur, Bliss popped over to the Topshop store in Oxford Street, London, to pick up a few outfits for her trip here as Topshop was the presenter.
As she travels extensively, Bliss has chanced upon lots of fashion finds, among them Custo Barcelona and Erotokritos (a Paris-based designer of Greek-Cypriot origin that has caught the eye of Kate Moss).
Bliss admits to infrequent shopping binges but like she says: “I live out of a suitcase so don’t need much and am not very materialistic.”
Ah, but Bliss does confess to owning lots of shoes. Surely a woman who can rock the house down at Zouk or any club or concert venue in the world is entitled to a bit of indulgence?
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