Morley

-Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. These are the empowering words that inspire Morley as she dives deep though with her collection of 14 original songs featured on her new album, SEEN, offering an energizing elixir for personal, social and political change. Morley breathes sensuality into activism with her unabashed love songs, humorous takes on love life, and outspoken lyricism. A former dance and yoga teacher in New York City’s public school system, shelters and community centers, Morley grew up absorbing the sights, sounds and scents of the multi-ethnic community of Jamaica Queens, NY. Morley won a full scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre in NYC. After a knee injury derailed her career as a professional dancer, and a brief stint as a fashion model in England, Morley took up choreography in NYC and formed her own company, Undercurrents Dance Theater with dancers from Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. Her work as a choreographer culminated in a collaboration with the late jazz legend and civil rights activist Max Roach, Cassandra Wilson, Baba Olatunji and Ossie Davis for the Anniversary of the protest album, “We Insist!”. Morley eventually stepped away from her initial artistic calling of dance and theater, and recorded her debut album, Sun Machine (Sony/WORK), which featured Jeff Buckley, Steve Jordon, Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman), Amp Fiddler and producers Hod David (Maxwell) and Chris Dowd (ex-Fishbone). Over the course of her career as an emerging songwriter, Morley has steadily found her place as a burgeoning artist. Since February 2008, Morley’s sultry voice graced the TV commercial for Ralph Lauren’s “My Romance” fragrance (Carly Simon and son Ben Taylor previously sang a duet for the ad campaign). She has had the distinct honor of performing for such distinguished world leaders as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and has toured with Dave Matthews, Raul Midon, Amadou & Miriam, Neil Finn and Lilith Fair (along w/ Sheryl Crow & Queen Latifah). She appeared as a featured artist at the 60th Anniversary of the UN with the Children of Agape, participated in the Tribute to Joni Mitchell at Symphony Space (NYC), collaborated with Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon on the soundtrack for the HBO special, Beah Richards: A Black Woman Speaks, and placed several of her original songs on popular TV shows like General Hospital, Dawson’s Creek and Felicity. Morley’s sophomore release, Days Like These (self, 2006), was produced by Morley and Ken Rich and distributed by Universal France. Due to the international success of Days Like These, Morley became acquainted with her Co-producers on SEEN: Patrick Brown of Brown Bottle Records, Jay Newland and Jean-Philippe Allard. Her latest album, Seen, features a stellar cast of top musicians including pedal steel maestro Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Lizz Wright), whose contribution lends a widescreen Americana feel to Morley’s sophisticated pop, Adult Contemporary, R&B, soul songs. Toshi Reagon also appears on her track “Women Of Hope.” As an introspective force encouraging thought-provoking dialogue with her progressive lyrics, a gentle urgency exists within this chanteuse’s compositions. Along with her sensual and humorous songs of change, Morley discloses the too-often forgotten stories of human strife, political stagnation, and outright injustices that many leave by the wayside. The title of her new release, Seen, means “understood” in Jamaican patios, and over the course of the album, Morley explores and contextualizes its many meanings. From songs inspirited by the actions of passionate women such as Aung San Suu Kyi and Cindy Sheehan, to her personal experiences, along with the many diverse political issues she discusses (i.e. environment, U.S. military actions, false patriotism, etc.), Seen is as reflective as it is generous. If music can be a mirror, then this album is “a patient look into myself and a not-so-patient look into my country at this time,” Morley explains. “To be looked at is one thing, but to be seen is an experience.” “With no religious connotation, there’s a mix of the spiritual and the sensual in my music”, muses Morley, “I join them together because I believe them to be from the same source: love”.