Home is as much a place as it is a feeling passed down through generations of laughter, tragedy and song. Its vessel is people, and for Robin Barnes, “The Songbird of New Orleans,” its creation is a pure act of love and reclamation. A multi–award-winning vocalist and child of the Lower Ninth Ward, Barnes’ ache to write music was marrow deep from before she could even remember, something she equates as much to experiencing the emotional intentionality of churchgoers mid-revelation as it is the idiosyncratic need of a child to articulate a world that is larger and more grand than they can understand. In that cross-section of the purposeful and the chaotic, is where Barnes’ music finds purchase; the sense that the words she conjures have always been there and offer a metaphysical comfort as bracing as a hug from a loved one thought lost. This feeling, this “note of a memory,” is made tangibly manifest in her debut album “Louisiana Love.”
“This music is supposed to make you feel warm and at home,” Barnes said. “Being a New Orleanian, with all the things we have gone through, from disaster to disaster, people say we are resilient, but I think we are simply seeking hope and to celebrate life day after day. With my health, I’m almost the poster child of not taking any day for granted.”
It was amidst the aftermath of tragedy twice over that Robin found the inspiration for her three-year journey to craft “Louisiana Love.” The first was the decimation of her family’s treasured photos and items, which were almost entirely eradicated by the flood swells of Katrina, followed by the death of her beloved grandmother soon after. The second came as Barnes was finalizing what was supposed to be her debut album, when a diagnosis of kidney cancer forced her to face not just her own mortality but a future where her own daughters might find themselves absent not just a mother but another crucial link to the lifeblood of who they are.
“I said that if God allowed me to live, I was going to create a multi-media love letter to my daughters, to the future generations in a way that won’t get lost,” Barnes said. “That’s why the focus was on the storytelling and finally accepting who I am, which is a native daughter of Louisiana. I saw firsthand what happens when you don’t preserve that storytelling, so I wanted to make sure that if this was going to be the end for me, at least I was leaving something behind for my children.”
Invigorated but trepidatious about the scope that this album was calling for, Barnes had to reach beyond her comfort zone into the wilds of Acadiana, where culture bearers have been preserving the Creole and Cajun sound. She found herself in the company of musicians and collaborators eager to fulfill her vision for an album that encompassed the whole of Louisiana, including Drake LeBlanc, Jordan Thibodeaux, Cedric Watson, Rusty McGuire and Drake LeBlon. From the album’s first moments, with the voice of Big Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes serenading along the gentle rhythm of a slithering tambourine amid the screech of early morning cicadas, Barnes’ thesis blooms into life. Yet, her greatest collaborators were those for whom the album was created: her daughters, whose voices can be heard harmonizing with their mother’s on the album’s most achingly personal and affecting track, “Dey Say Run.”
“That is my favorite song, and it was the most difficult to record because I kept crying. It’s one thing to set out to do something and another thing to share it with the person it was meant for. When I hear my daughter’s voice, I hear my voice. That’s why I’m giving my all to this. It’s not because I’m driven by ambition. I’m driven by my ancestors. I’m driven by my children. I’m driven by the people that I’m trying to be part of preserving this beautiful culture.”
With the release of “Louisiana Love” in May, alongside hosting a companion three-part docuseries presenting the state’s rich cultural history in July called “Discovering Home with Robin Barnes,” Barnes has willed into life an heirloom meant not only for herself and her daughters, but for anyone with ears to hear; a call through time that comforts with the promise that even when the darkness closes in around us, it’s never too late to come back home.
Must-see performances this month
June 10 | Jon Cleary, 8 p.m. at Chickie Wah Wah, chickiwahwah.com.
June 13 | Lost Bayou Ramblers, 8 p.m. at Tipitina’s, tipitinas.com.
June 16 | Kevin Morby, 7 p.m. at Tipitina’s, tipitinas.com.
June 19 | Strange Roux, 11 p.m. at Le Bon Temps Roulé, lbtrnola.com.
June 19 | Sister Hazel, 8 p.m. at House of Blues, neworleans.houseofblues.com.
June 27 | Grace, a Jeff Buckley Tribute, 8 p.m. at House of Blues, neworleans.houseofblues.com.
