Diva Divo - Dance Magazine

There's something refreshing about a conversation with Samantha James. Most dance divas and electronic artists live in a perpetually caffeinated headspace, consumed with the glittering lights of the club stage and the energetic sweat of a writhing club crowd. Not Samantha. Ask her to describe her favorite live performance, and she points to a summer gig at Burning Man, the summer festival of avant-garde artists, hippie-folk, and their respective contraband substances, held annually in the middle of the Nevada desert.

"I did a show sitting in the back of an 18-wheeler," she says. "The decks were set up there, and the sun was setting. The crowd was sparse, with the people spread out. But it was the most magical moment that I've ever had singing. It felt good. The vibe was right. No pressure. Mellow."

"It was nice."

Like the music found on her debut album Rise, Samantha is geniune and heartfelt. It's appropriate that this talent would land on a record label named OM, as there's something holistic and meditative about her. While her language is sprinkled with new age buzzwords about "energy" and "connections," she never comes across as a trite Whole Foods shareholder. Instead, she's produced Rise… a sincere, soothing, organic dose of electronic soul, fused of equal parts downtempo house and world music. The soft grooves combine Brazilian jazz with shimmering chillout, a recipe equally suitable for the dance floor and the yoga mat. Indeed, it's probably the first album that invites club kids to burn patchouli along with the midnight oil.

Samantha's debut single "Rise" certainly burned its way up the club charts when it was released in early 2007. Armed with two EPs worth of remixes, the stellar title track hit #1 on the Billboard Club Charts. Its success gained Samantha early attention as a new artist to watch, and its adventurous hybrid of sounds immediately introduced listeners to her signature, genre-defying style.

"As I grew up, I always had a passion for music," says Samantha, explaining the varied influences from which she culled her own sound. "From the time I was five years old, I started getting on coffee tables at my father's get-togethers and singing Madonna songs for the guests!" she laughs. But it's international rhythms, not manufactured pop, that is probably the biggest stylistic influence on Rise. For that, Samantha credits her mother: "My mother exposed me to a lot of world music as I grew up," explains Samantha, an early globe-trotter who spent her late teens living in Brazil and Europe "Basha, Sade… I was singing to these artists and having a love of music like that from a really young age."

Indeed, the influence of Samantha's mother is pivotal to the development of her music… and of Rise. At only 15 years old, Samantha lost her mother to breast cancer. The loss was devastating, and Samantha naturally took solace in a place she felt at home: In Music. "I got involved in the rave scene," she says of the period following her mother's death. "I discovered that I could go, trip out and listen to this electronic dance music. I fell in love with that."

Next came those soul-searching trips abroad, where Samantha began to fully hatch her plans for a serious career in music. "I realized I wanted to make music, but I was going to need to find a way to fuse all of these sounds," she says. And it took a long time before the right combination of pop, world, and rave would meld into the tracks on Rise. "I worked with R&B producers, hip hop producers, jazz musicians," she says of her quest to find the right balance of styles. "I worked with every producer imaginable and wrote every kind of song imaginable. But I wasn't happy with the tracks. I really wanted that electronic sound backing me. So finally, when I was 25, I met Sabastian Arocha Morton [aka ROCAsound]." In Morton, Samantha finally found a kindred musical spirit: "He totally understood what I was trying to do and what kind of music I was trying to create. And here we are with my album, two years later. It's my dream album. It's everything I ever wanted.

Well, maybe not everything. What Samantha really wants – more than commercial success, chart-topping hits and club kid credibility – is to transcend the traditional limits of musicianship and use her work to inspire others. Samantha admits that writing Rise was part of her own healing process in dealing with the loss of her mother, and reconnecting with her Spirit: "This album was definitely, definitely inspired by my mom," she says. "I went on a journey to find my mom again and reconnect with her Spirit. Within the past 9 years, I realized that people never really die… and that she's very present in my life. Most of the songs on my album are about connecting with her Spirit, and being aware of her presence and all of that magic that she helped to create for me while I'm still living on Earth."