The Buffalo Stance singer’s joyous memoir of growing up in a bohemian family between Sweden, New York and London
Whenever I think of Neneh Cherry I remember the opening lines to Bristol band Maximum Joy’s 1981 single Stretch: “Don’t say maybe / Tell me yes! / Stay positive, stay strong / Hold safe, hold straight / Don’t terminate, no end.” Cherry’s Buffalo Stance, released in the winter of 1988, was a combustion engine, cackle and attitude, fusing the energies of punk funk, hip-hop and UK street soul. It helped usher into the pop charts a new wave of black British club culture – think Soul II Soul and Massive Attack. But it was made by a mixed-race woman, one born in Sweden, one who had the nerve – and verve – to perform it on Top of the Pops while eight months pregnant.
After the worldwide success of her first LP, Raw Like Sushi, Cherry’s recording career has been a stop-start affair, long silences punctuated by eye-catching collaborations with the likes of the Avalanches and Scandinavian noisenik jazz trio the Thing. Admirably, she marches to the beat of her own drum. It’s a sensibility, her memoir makes clear, that runs in the family. She spends less time talking about her records or even the bands she fronted (among them the wonderful, mostly-forgotten Float Up CP) than she does recalling dinners she cooked with her mother, or her stepfather’s fingers.
