Canadian music sensation Divine Brown is an award winning singer and songwriter.  Signing with Warner Music in 2000 she has continued to record and perform throughout Canada and the U.S. .

Her most recent U.S. performance was at this year’s Long Beach Gay Pride Festival where she entertained an enthusiastic Long Beach crowd with her high energy stage performance and her amazing vocals.  She is a blend of 70’s funk and R and B.

We were fortunate enough to catch up with Ms. Brown and ask her a few questions after her main stage performance.

Shout LB:  Is this your first Gay Pride performance?

Divine Brown:  My first here in Long Beach, but my very first Gay Pride performance was last year in Toronto.

Shout LB:   Your music has a seventies sound.

Divine Brown:  Most of the material I performed is off of the album I won a Juno award for and was originally a reflection of that time period, that era the fifties, sixties and seventies.

Shout LB:  For which album did you win the Juno award?

Divine Brown:  The Love Chronicles.

Shout LB: Is that the current album you have out now?

Divine Brown:  Yes, I’m working on a new one but it’s taking me a while because I’m such a versatile artist and I want to reel it in a bit and tailor it to a specific sound but it’s hard for me because I’m so diverse.

Shout LB:   Yes, listening to your music it has many influences and would be hard to pin down and go in one direction.  How would you describe your style?

Divine Brown:  My style is a mixture of different things. That is what makes me unique.  The market place now is geared one way and I don’t believe in that and that’s not me.

Shout LB:  The marketplace does want to put artists in a category, you are either country, hip-hop or pop but if you look at the average person’s iPod it has a variety of artists from Etta James to the back street boys.  No one has just one genre on their iPod.

Divine Brown: Exactly. That’s the interesting factor. What are you really marketing when you look at the market place and who are you marketing to? I guarantee it that people today who go and buy music or down load it does not listen to just one style.   I’m here to cater to people who like a little bit of everything. Gospel to rock, to R and B, to country.

Shout LB:  Have you thought about putting an album out specific to the different genres, country, r and b or rock?

Divine Brown:  My first record was more geared towards an R and B soul pop record which was more acceptable back then.   I would describe it as a retrospective of different time periods.

Shout LB: Who initially pushed you in that musical direction?

Divine Brown:  That was all me.  I wanted to do a soul record because there was something about that sound and at the time is was expected.   I was coming off of the heels of neo-soul  and that sound.   It was early 2000.  That fist record was still unique with elements of funk.  I then evolved into wanting to be more diverse and doing a retrospective of sounds that I grew up listening to that influenced me. Like I said, the range is diverse from Denise Williams to Skeeter Davis.

Shout LB:  Why do you think there is this need to put artists in a box, one category, when everyone listens to a variety of genres?

Divine Brown: Marketing.  It’s what is out there.  People expect that. They don’t expect anything different because that is what they are being fed.

Shout LB:  You are coming from a theater background.  Is that a hard transition?

Divine Brown: No, it absolutely helps me. I can’t just look at one person. It’s about allowing my big energy to get out there.   It allows me to see and speak to everybody.  I enjoy performing. I had an amazing time tonight.

Ms. Brown was whisked away to do a signing and take pictures with her fans.  To find out the latest news on Divine Brown including release dates of upcoming albums and performance dates please check out her Facebook fan page.

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