Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

KataWeb (Italy, www)
kataweb.it
April 2007

[translated from Italian by Andy]

Tori Amos

In the new album American Doll Posse the artist returns to singing about women. And this time, she does it with divine flare.

by Luca Trambusti

Five different women. Five divine voices. To confront universal and feminine problems. Political as well. Tori Amos returns to singing, she returns to speaking, and she does so in American Doll Posse, the new disc that will be released in Italy the 27th of April. By strength through unity the five women - four plus the artist herself - are ready to confront the powerful world, each linked to a female Greek divinity. (Isabel - Artemis, Clyde - Persephone, Pip - Athena, Santa - Aphrodite, and Tori divided between Demetrius and Dionysus.) This interesting multiplication brings a marked stylistic variety that takes Tori Amos away from her musical conception and closer to a harder sound.

"Women are multi-faceted. The stereotype of Christianity that wants women to be either mothers, saints, or a whore is decisively limited," explains Tori Amos. "The Christian Right has been growing in influence since the beginning of the year 2000. I've wondered what a woman could do to regain that lost territory. I asked myself what the Right-wing detested. It was necessary that I found the proper instruments to help women understand how they could change, to make them capable of escaping from the role to which they have been relegated, the same role that wants them to fit inside the lines. It seemed to me the best way to do this was to use the Feminine Divine, because the Christian Right does not tolerate the idea of 'God the Mother.'"

Tori Amos is secure. Beautiful. "When I compose the songs, I hear them first in my head. During the writing of American Doll Posse I realized that in my head I had different voices, and that the songs were divided among them. As if they had been written by more people. The idea came to light for this reason. During the past few years, I had buried the tomahawk to give my daughter a different view of her mother, to separate me from the musician me. But now she understands, and I have been able to dig up the tomahawk and speak again.

Does she consider herself a feminist? "The word feminist lends itself to being misunderstood, like Christian, Muslim, or even the layman. I prefer The Feminine Emancipation." During her world tour - kicking off at Rome the 28th of May at the Sistina Theatre (and then there will be others at Florence at the Verdi Theatre the 30th of May, and Milan at the Smeraldo Theatre the 31st) the five personages will interact with one another on the stage. "I chose Rome as the beginning date because I want to invite all the Vatican to the concert, including the Pope. This is a community, a communion among women to which all are invited." The concert will be complex. In the first act every night one of the goddesses in turn will open with her songs and others from the disc. The second act will be completely in the hands of Tori Amos, who will sing songs from the disc, others from her repertoire, and some covers. "We're not talking about one show, but five shows. I'm making the band prepare different shows. Every night." Different voices. All of them divine.

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