Lorraine Segato

By Alex Teitz and Karen Weis

FEMMUSIC is far from a magazine focused on “Where are they now?” but when the chance to speak to Lorraine Segato came up, it couldn’t be missed. Segato is best known for her work with the multi-Juno winning The Parachute Club during the 1980’s. She also released a solo album called Luminous City in 1998. In 2001 Segato directed and produced the CD for The Rebel Zone: Queen Street West, a documentary focusing on the Queen Street area between 1975-1985. This time period was known for great changes across the entire arts community. Segato speaks honestly about the documentary, her music, and her life in this interview. FEMMUSIC can not say how thankful we were to speak with Segato.

FEMMUSIC: My first question is, what made you want to direct The Rebel Zone: Queen Street West?

LS: Well I had previous to being, you know, recording records, dating back to now I guess 1979 was my first record. And previous to that I had been in film school. So I’d always had a parallel love for the cinema, for documentary, and for experimental film. And while I was recording and I was touring and doing all of that kind of stuff, I kept my hand in filmmaking, you know by directing videos. But I always knew I was going to return to documentary filmmaking and this seemed like an important part in my life, TIME in my life to do this. Because I noticed this was an area and a territory that I knew very well cause I was an artist who basically came out of, busted out of the Queens Street area and so it made complete sense for me that I would be able to go back and actually tell an authentic point of view documentary. So you know I found a project, I guess, that allowed me to make that jump back into documentary, and the Queen Street one was it for me.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making the documentary?

LS: One of the biggest challenges was, we’re dealing with a time period between 1975 and 1985 which was basically a very interesting time in Canada and I think in the United States, in certain areas of the art world, because we’re dealing with the post-Vietnam thing, and we’re dealing with the Cold War. I’m just talking about environment, as an environment. We’re talking about conservative politics, and we’re talking about issues like that really influencing a lot of the art that took place at the time, including places like Soho in New York. If you look back on that time period, there was a lot of…there’s a big parallel between Soho New York and Toronto Canada, Queen Street where the film is positioned. The biggest challenge for me was because I lived through that period of time was that there was so many artists, there was so many visual artists, so many musicians, so many theater artists and performance artists that it was very difficult to encapsulate within a one hour documentary the total depth and breadth of the kinds of really rebellious and exciting activity that was going on. So that was one challenge, and the other one of course was trying to find archival material that was, you know, interesting and translatable and very visual. The most difficult aspect of that was finding interesting musical visual material. All the performance artists and all the visual artists had documented their stuff really quite accurately and it was you know exciting to put that to film. But music was basically…(laughs) it was hard to find. And you know I’d have to go grab snippets from old radio stations of anything they might have kept from the late 70s, and it had this particular look, right, which was pre-video. It was pre-the advent of like SMTV, your MTV and our Much Music. So that was a difficult thing for me. Oh my goodness, how am I going to deal with this massive amount of archival material, and how am I going to make it look interesting to a youth culture now and you know, to myself even as an artist twenty years later?

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making the film?

LS: The best experience for me has been being able to actually have a document that is about culture history. You know the interesting thing for me as a musician is that I’ve been able to travel to different parts of the world with my music and to tour and stuff like that, and people have always known about us but wanted to know more. And as Canadians, we’re not really a culture that really sort of puffs our stomachs up and go, “you know, here’s who we are and here’s what we’ve done”, right? So this for me was really…I wanted to do cultural history, and this is cultural history and it’s one of the first pieces of its kind in terms of this particular art community, and so bringing that in the actual day of screening when I got to invite all the artists and the community. I was very nervous, and I said, ‘You know here’s hopefully the first of many of its kind. Come and see it.’ It was I think an incredibly gratifying experience to see the reaction of the people in the community. And then to have been able to show it to other people outside of Toronto, and you know wonder, is this going to be interesting to other people, other artists, and other younger people who are creators and are interested in history. And it HAS been. It’s been like, “oh, I didn’t know that about Toronto” or “oh yeah, we had something like that in Seattle” or “yes, in Paris we had something like that”. So that’s been really been really gratifying for me.

FEMMUSIC: That’s great. How do you think society has changed since that time?

LS: Our society, or North American society in general?

FEMMUSIC: Our society.

LS: Our society, like Canada?

FEMMUSIC: Yes.

LS: That’s sort of a good question. I think in many ways the period of time that I’m talking about is a period of time by which there was a lot of influx of immigrants coming into this country. And Toronto was certainly populated by a lot of the immigrants. A lot of Jamaicans, a lot of Caribbeans, lot of Latinos, a lot of people of color, of every kind, Europeans. And since that time, Toronto has really truly become a multicultural city. I hate to use that word, it’s too often used, there’s no other, better word, but we certainly are a country and a city that has really incorporated a lot of the musical and artistic and cultural influences of other countries who’ve come here into our artwork and our music, into our living experience. And that’s made it a less conservative society for us, it’s made it a more enriched society. And certainly one that is able to expand many points of view. And that for me personally is very gratifying, because that means as artists that we’re not really afraid to push boundaries. We don’t live under a more repressive regime than other people do, and so you know, it allows us to do really interesting work.

FEMMUSIC: In terms of the music scene itself, one big thing that I remember of the 90s was the Lilith Fair.

LS: Oh, of the 90s?

FEMMUSIC: Yes. And since that was originated by Sarah McLachlan, I was wondering what effect did that have with musicians of Canada, both male and female, from your perspective?

LS: That’s an interesting question. Sarah McLachlan was probably better known in the United States for having cut some new ground than she was here, because here there was a lot of other kinds of stuff going on. Lilith Fair I guess what it’s done up here would be to bring I don’t know, gosh, I have to think before I answer that question, because I can’t really speak to the effect of it on a larger scale, I think, I guess, one of the best things is that it’s one of the very first music festivals of the 90s to have a large amount of women performers. Although when you look at the mid-70s and the early 80s, there were a lot of, let’s say, more alternative festivals that had things like Lilith Fair, like the Michigan’s Womyns’ Music Festival, or the one that happened in Washington. There were gatherings of women performers often in the mid-70s and mid-80s. Not quite to the degree of the mainstream success that Lilith Fair was, so if anything, I guess it’s brought it to a younger woman’s audience or a young gender, you know, gender-changing audience. (laughs) I don’t know how to put it. “Multi-sexual”, I guess would be the word, kind of audience. She’s a different generation, I think. I think perhaps Lilith Fair would be perceived differently up here than it would be in the United States. I think it’s had a larger impact in the United States than it’s had up here. Yeah, I think that’s what I can say about it.

FEMMUSIC: One thing you touched on earlier was this time period was a time when the Cold War was going on, and since the fall of the Cold War, the world has changed in many different ways. And in the U.S., it’s almost been sort of a state of shock.

LS: Say that again, that last line? In the U.S….

FEMMUSIC: …it’s almost been sort of a state of shock for members of our generation who remember the Cold War.

LS: Right. Yeah, it’s interesting. The Cold War, I think, also of course included your Reaganism and our Mulronyism in terms of politics. And included a lot of issues being discussed around the women’s movement and around issues of racism and issues of the environment. Issues of environmentalism first started to take off in the early 80s, right? And were subsequently, I think, called postmodern in the late 80s, right, cause by the 90s it just seemed to be that…I don’t know. I don’t know where the world went politically actually. (laughs) But it certainly seemed to create a different level of music that was coming up, just a different focus was being placed on music, and a different kind of art was coming out of the world at that point. Art less focused on, I’d say, community interests and community concerns. And music more focused on “the me.” You know, “I” as the individual. And that’s one of the things I’ve noticed, if you look at pop music for instance. And I’m not sure I’m answering your question, but I think I’m confirming with the fact that it was a radical change that happened after the Cold War. And in many ways, having this huge fear of the possibility of getting blown up at any point was a collective fear that in many ways kept us all asking questions around civil liberties and you know questions around freedom and all of that. Questions that stopped being asked in such a passionate way, I think, in the late 80s and then throughout the 90s. That’s just my opinion. (laughs)

FEMMUSIC: I would agree. It was almost apathy.

LS: Yeah! Or a non-we, you know? Kind of like, “Hmm, yeah, OK, we can relax now. There’s no threat of world war.” And that’s when, sort of you know, in the late 80s, is you know if you just look at even social stuff. You look at, oh my god real estate rates were at their all time high. Like you look at what’s happening with real estate now in markets–and I’m sure the United States is similar to here-but they’re at an all time high with interest at an all time low. And because of the threat of recession. So we’re either dealing with a threat of a war or the threat of recession. (laughs) But it seems to be that when we’re dealing with the threat of war is when we collectively come together, you know, as a consciousness and start creating, you know, different kinds of art, different kinds of music. I mean, look at even since September 11th, what’s happened in terms of a focus around music and films and discussions that artists are having, the ways they’re having of describing their feelings of fear and all of that. That’s you know, one day changed that radically. When you look at the 90s and you think, “Oh my god. It was all, like…we were all…nobody was saying anything about anything about anything for about 10 years”, right? Anyways, so I think that songs will begin to reflect that again, a deeper sort of, you know, pulling the onionskin away and going, “What are we thinking? What are we feeling?” And what’s important to us now?” Because now of course we’re all going, “Our world is radically changing!” And you know artist will always be the ones who hold up the mirrors for the rest of the world to see.

FEMMUSIC: I agree, and I’ve already seeing it a great deal.

LS: Yes, I am too. Certainly in my friends who are songwriters and sort of my own concerns about what kinds of songs do I want to write now. It makes it less easy to kind of spout out a kind of formula. “Well, I can finish THAT song in a second.” (laughs) And what’s the point, really?

FEMMUSIC: Well I think you’ve led into one of the questions I had, which was Luminous City was the last CD you did. And I was wondering what’s coming next?

LS: What’s coming next for me? That’s a really good questions, because I’ve spent a lot of the late 70s and early 80s sort of doing pretty deep kind of funk and R&B style stuff, and that record Luminous City was sort of a return in a way, in a very simple way, to just kind of, songwriting. Kind of folky, kind of poppy, but just kind of internal emotional songwriting. And I think this next project is again going to mark another change for me in terms of genres. Part of the thing that’s difficult for me to reconcile within myself is that I love groove music and have always loved really deep groove music. And when I’ve tried to make solo records, I often try to experiment with other more traditional forms like folk or folk-jazz or kind of pop/R&B-ish, or whatever. But I keep getting drawn back to what I call just heavy groove music. So I’m now at the point where I’m trying to make a decision. Do I make yet another record of kind of, you know, grooves that have influenced me from all the different cultures, or do I do a totally other spin into perhaps a kind of more jazz record, or a more bluesy record, whereby I explore the song. And it’s a good question. It’s not a question I can answer right now, but it’s certainly a question by which the next project will either be defined by what do I want to do with my voice and what do I want to say, or what do I want to be playing. When I do concerts, do I want to be playing that groove music, or do I want to really be taking a whole other, you know, right turn. I think it’s because I know that you probably don’t know anything about my back history, about the groups that I was in and stuff like that; it’s easy for me to say that and you can go, “Ok yeah, but what have you done?” (laughs) But I can tell you “Luminous City” was very much of a kind of a…it was the very first time for me as an artist that I actually spoke about my feelings. Previous to that I had written records that were very political and very socially oriented issues. And so “Luminous City” was my first thing of “well, this is what I FEEL.” That was an important first step for me to do. And I guess the next record will be, “NOW what do I want to do?” (laughs) You know, will it feel too vulnerable to say what I feel or will I go back to my ideas? And it can’t be answered right now, cause I’m also working on another film, and trying to combine the two.

FEMMUSIC: With this other film you touched on earlier, saying that The Rebel Zone you would like to make as sort of a series.

LS: Yeah, I’m interested in cultural history, and not just my own. I’ interested in the cultural history of interesting cities. Like I’m interested in San Francisco, I’m interested in…for reasons because I love the architecture, and I think often architecture is what draws artists to a particular area. I think even that’s what draws immigrants to a particular area. And so I think in terms of the filmmaking stuff, I will continue to be drawn to issues around cultural history that include very peopled stories and how that affects, let’s say, the heartbeat of a city, and stuff like that. And perhaps within that is where I get the answer for, you know, which kind of a next record. I do already have 15 new songs for another record, and I’ve sort of been tenaciously holding onto them. Going, “Well do I commit this, or do I just kind of wait and see now how this film experience is going to sit within me?” And, “Is there just another 15 songs right there that I would never have written if I hadn’t done this film, and do I need to get to that right now?” So I’m still sussing that creative question out.

FEMMUSIC: Sounds like you’re very much in transition.

LS: Well I think you’re always in transition if you’re an artist who intends on surviving. You know, every project-I don’t know how other people feel, but I know that my work is not determined by….let’s say the pressure on me to create is determined by me, not by the pressure that I allow anyone else to do to me. And so every project for me is a project by which I’m hoping to get to another level of excellence, or you know, a stretch of excellence, right? A place I haven’t been before, as a thinking feeling, you know, creative person. So I feel like I’m always in a state of transition, cause I’m always reaching into, I don’t know, I’m reaching through the clouds somewhere to go, “OK, where are you?” (laughs) “The next project-what am I supposed to be doing here?” Otherwise you can just, you just keep doing the same thing over and over. Now some people do the same thing over and over very well. You know, take the Rolling Stones, you know? They’ve done many records of so much stuff over and over, and they continuously do it well, and that really works for them. And you’ll have other people who need to be chameleon-type creators. You know, for instance, in a way you think of a guy like, um, a guy like Sting. You know, he came from the Police and he went into doing his own solo thing, and then he went and sort of explored the jazz thing, and then he went over here a little bit and explored that, and um…he seems to me to be a guy that is always kind of looking to shift something. And I guess I would into the category of the chameleon. (laughs)

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

LS: Oh, that’s a good question. Are you prepared for that answer? (laughs) Well, I…personally myself, I think one of the most frustrating things about the music business is that the people that often are supposed to be the deliverers of the music are obviously the business people. They’re supposed to deliver your product to the audience. And I’ve come across so many situations both with myself and with so many of the artists that I know who are musicians, where the one thing that stands between you and the audience is often the business. (laughs) And there’s a real irony in that to me. I think the priority system is so, so wrong, and I think that audiences are capable of handling so much more than we give them credit for. And we as artists know that, because they’re the ones who write us the letters and say, “Thank you so much for continuing to do this.” I think it’s really bizarre that the industry is on a hierarchical level, very much like a class system. You know, you’ve got your working class, your middle class and your upper class, and it’s so weird. The upper class is, you know, the top 10 people, and the rest of us are all middle or working class. And that’s so bizarre, cause there’s are so many of us. So what would I change? I would change the structure. I would make sure that the power was actually not in the hands of the business people but was in fact in the hands of the creators. Because no matter how you cut the cake, anyway you look at the business, the people who do the work are the artists and the people who get the money are the business people. The people who don’t benefit from that the most is the audience. So that’s what I would change, the structure. The power needs to be shifted back to the people. I think the audience knows EXACTLY what it wants. And it’s the ones that will tell us, “Your last record stunk!” (laughs) Not the critics, and not the music business.

FEMMUSIC: I agree a great deal.

LS: Well maybe you can help us make that change.

FEMMUSIC: I’m trying slowly. As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

LS: Yes. Plain and simple, I guess. I was a woman in the music business in the late 70s when there was no kind of woman in the business but a woman wearing spandex pants. Or a woman sort of trying to mock playing the guitar like a guy would. And back then there were so many women who were trying to bust into being considered serious instrumentalists and stuff like that. I can say, yeah, unequivocally for sure I’ve been discriminated against, but not because it’s ever been really overt and said to my face, “Well you’re a woman and you’re not good enough” or anything. But I look at the women I know and I look at the work that I’ve done, and I look at my track record and I say this, because I know it’s hard to translate on a tape, I say this with all sincerity, I do NOT feel bitterness around this, but I look at the track record that I have and the track record of many of the women artists that I know, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that we would be in a completely different economic sphere if we were men. You know, it’s that simple. There’s a different code that exists for women than exists for men. Like for instance, you know, you look at a woman like…You look at so many of the performers like Ray Charles, the older performers, who are still around-BB King-who are still around, performing. Nobody says to them, “You look fat. You’re balding. How can we sell you? What are we gonna do with you?” Right? You know, one of the few exceptions to that rule is someone like Aretha Franklin, you know, who’s still working and still so highly regarded. You look at so many of the jazz women and you say, “Oh, it’s in THAT category that you can continue to be a woman in your 60s and continue to do viable, really incredible work.” Because you know what, it’s a true and simple scientific fact, scientifically proven, that women sing better in their 40s. But you look at the way the business is set up now, and it’s set up for us as performers and singers to QUIT what we’re doing by the time we’re 33. (laughs) Does it make sense to you that we’re gonna be wiser when we’re older, or when we’re younger? (laughs) So have we? Yeah, of course. And it continues to be so, in a very obsequious way, you know, not in a way that’s ever said to your face, but certainly in the ways that the business is set up. I mean, let’s face it, when I was in my 20s I had a belly like Brittany Spears. (laughs) But I don’t anymore. It’s a different kind of belly! (laughs) And you know, it works against me. But I say that with, you know, genuine laughter.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

LS: Well, my answer to that is “1 of A and 1 of B”. Know thyself. And I really mean know EXACTLY what it is you want to accomplish and what you want to do. And know thy business. Put the same amount of equal emphasis on knowledge of your craft as you do on knowledge of our business. Because one will protect you from the other. One will be your protector when the other one isn’t, you know? Your craft is going to protect you from the business. Knowing your business is going to protect you from being ripped off in your craft. And knowing yourself and what you really want to do means that you can find the tools and the people around you to support that singular dream. A lot of people know they want to do music, but they don’t know what they want to be. Most of us are still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up. (laughs) Anyways, that’s what I would say.

FEMMUSIC: That one I definitely agree with across the board

LS: Yeah, for sure. And I think part of the reason why we get ripped off a million times is because we don’t know the business. I mean, the group that I was in, in the 80s, was the number one group across this country and in certain parts of Europe We had Top 10 hits all the time and we lost gargantuan amounts of money. We were ripped off a million times over and didn’t even know it until it all happened, right? We were so naïve, and there’s a million stories like ours. The thing is that, you know, getting ripped off like that can really kill your spirit. I feel really lucky in that it didn’t kill mine. It made me ANGRY and FEISTY! (laughs) But I’ve certainly seen it kill a lot of people, you know, killed their desire to want to do stuff. So if you’re getting to know the business…knowing the business is really, really important. We didn’t think, you know , when the record company was in a different state of mind, a different stage of its growth as a child, right? We didn’t need to know what we know now. Because everybody was learning stuff at the same time. We didn’t know when you wanted to be a musician and a songwriter that we would have to know about publishing, that we would have to know about our image, and we would have to know about videos. Videos didn’t even exist when we all started out, you know? (laughs) So there’s so many things we didn’t know about. And certainly who would have seen the advent of the internet and how that would affect the music business too? So you know, we got away with being more, I guess, naïve then. But now you can’t.