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Club Paradise
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by GERARD DEE Stephane Moraille says her parents really wanted a son, which is why she has a guy’s name. Regardless, when the Haitian-born, Montreal-based artist opens her mouth to sing, there’s no doubt she’s all woman. She’ll have a chance to put her powerful pipes to use at the Bad Boy Club of Montreal’s Black & Blue weekend, where she’ll perform the theme song for this year’s event, “Digital Paradise.” Surprisingly, singing did not come easily to Moraille. “Early on when I started singing, I looked like I knew what I was doing, I had all the moves and the persona, but I sounded awful,” she says, laughing. “People in the audience were confused, and they would be like, ‘She looks like she’s a great performer, but it sounded like shit, so we’re not sure if we should applaud or not.’ So they would clap with this confused look on their faces.” Undeterred, she forged ahead. “I found this really good teacher who taught me the basics. I found out that a lot about singing is physiological—it’s about controlling your breath and opening your throat. You can work as a technician to improve your range, and improve the quality of the sound that you give out. And a lot about singing is how you interpret the song.” So far, her two most successful interpretations are the mid-’90s dance hit “Get Away,” which she recorded under the pseudonym the Shauna Davis Project, and her lead-vocal stint on “Drinking in L.A.” with Montreal music collective Bran Van 3000. These days, Moraille is looking forward to releasing her solo debut, due October 28. She describes the album as “pop with an edge.” The video for the rhythmic lead single, “Lover” finds her in a familiar club setting. “I love the freedom that club music allows you to have. You don’t get that anymore—they have little boxes where they want to fit people in musically nowadays. If you don’t fit the box, they kind of don’t know what to do with you, and club music is not like that.” Additionally, Moraille says that, from a singer’s point of view, club music requires a certain level of skill. “It’s a genre that you step into when you’re solid as a singer. And I’m not saying that I’m comparable to Jocelyn Brown or Barbara Tucker, but that’s what I aspire to and that’s what captured my imagination, that kind of skill and presence. And that’s what brings me back to the Black & Blue all the time, where you’re in a big place with a lot of people—you need to make your presence felt.” But her attachment to the BBCM, with its fundraising mandate, goes beyond just the opportunity to sing. “HIV is my cause. I mean, if you think about it, if this was a movie, and the premise of the movie was that this inexplicable virus is attacking people and they become very weak on the inside and they can never live a normal life if they survive it, everybody would be running around like Godzilla’s walking down the street. We’re not doing anything, it’s not happening—we’re burying our heads in the sand. The reaction needs to be a little more extreme than what’s going on right now.” WITH MIGUEL GRAÇA, DAVE SEAMAN |
