It seems like a while ago, maybe last year at this time, a song by an unknown artist was delivered to music writers and radio stations and started to generate a buzz of excitement. “Between Us” has everything you could want from an Progressive A/C hit song. Literate, emotive lyrics, a captivating arrangement and a vocal that has both beauty and warmth. It took a while but it has become a hit. How could it not.  This album was not a one song wonder. Every song is striking and original.

"Who is Nyee Moses?" we all asked, as we fired up our search engines to find that she did not have the pages of credentials you'd think a singer/songwriter of this quality would have. She didn't do session vocals or play in the clubs. She wrote songs, gathered friends, went into the studio and created this work. I wish this was an audio interview so you could hear how engaging she is in conversation. The warmth and sense of knowing that is present when she sings is equally present when she speaks.


SV: You appeared out of nowhere. People started talking about the song but nobody knew where it came from. It was just had this purity about it and this irresistible groove.
NM: It's hard to say where that came from other than from our hearts and from our heads and from this beautiful group of musicians. People are responding to it in such an incredible way, we're so happy about it.

SV: We were chatting before the kind of "official" interview part about another subject entirely and  you mentioned that you felt like you and your manager, producer, songwriting partner and friend, Susan Youngblood, had an agreement on kind of a destiny level to come together to create something. Like maybe this album at this time?
NM: Sure. I really do feel that way. We met because we were supposed to deliver this music that people are just responding to in such a special way. It feels much bigger than just saying that we were going to write something or put something together. It really had a special being to it. A very deep place. The place the whole project came from and developed was very spiritually important and the response to it really affirms that, like "wow, we really were supposed to do it."

SV: How did it start? I heard that you started working on it several years ago.
NM: I had been writing poetry and songs my whole life. While I was growing up I wrote to help me get through situations and understand things. I was adopted.  I was swimming a little bit trying to figure out where I came from, what's my purpose, why am I here, as we all do. I think the whole adoption thing really affects you when you are growing up and trying to figure things out, especially if you are not told what's going on. I used poetry and music to help me through. It was my outlet, as it is for a lot of artists, poets, musicians...it's a beautiful outlet. I studied music - violin and guitar and I studied classical music. I didn't start as a vocalist but then I started singing to really voice the music as opposed to just playing music. Susan is an incredible musician and producer, she's worked with a lot of people and we have a partner, Marquis “Hami” Dair, who is the same way. When Susan and I met we started talking about music and talking about doing something together. We started working and little magic things started to happen.  We never did a demo. We went in and made the CD as if all that stuff was already in place and taken care of so we could just put it out.

SV: How did you and Susan meet.
NM: We had a mutual friend, although we didn't know it at the time, who said that we needed to meet each other and we literally met and hit it off. That was about eight years ago. We didn't start doing the music right away though.

SV: Were you performing at the time.
NM: I was doing music privately, but I wasn't singing in clubs or doing background vocals or sessions or anything. I am not a singer in the sense that I have to sing. I'm not the kind of performer who is motivated in that way. I'm more of an artist and I'm very song-driven so I didn't just want to go out there and sing top 40 or jazz in clubs. I wanted to really create something and make something new and original. So I was writing privately.

SV: At the time did you have any idea it was going to feed into this project?
NM: After a while I did. When it really started to gel. The music that the musicians were coming up with when we started coming together was like in my wildest dreams in my head. The way I would envision wanting it to sound was what it was sounding like. But getting through that process is so hit and miss. Sometimes you never get there. So every time we came together and started creating one of these pieces I would be really happy with it and say "let's attack the next one."

SV: You used a group of musicians whose names aren't on the credits of 90% of a smooth jazz CD collection.
NM: We came to them by way of Susan, who knew most of them from when she toured Latin America. We had Rene Toledo and Ramon Stagnaro on guitar, Lenny Castro and Kevin Ricard did percussion, Otmaro Ruiz on keyboards. They became friends and when they heard about the project they joined us, which was an incredible gift because they are just amazing and some of the sweetest guys you'd ever want to meet.

SV: There's a real sense of originality in these songs and the way they come together - the production and different effects. There are little touchstones of familiarity like maybe a song has a Sade influence or a chill groove going on but they don't sound like anything else. They sound like youere is so much pressure now to sound like something that has already been done. How do you stay off that path.
NM: I think just being honest with it and not trying too hard and just letting it out in your own way. I have to say also that I didn't listen to a lot of music for a number of years. There's a lot of great stuff out there and you can't help but be influenced by it so so I completely turned my ears off to it for a while. I actually missed some really wonderful albums and it was kind of nice to go back and listen and really love some new stuff. It wasn't that I didn't listen because I didn't want to be influenced as much as because it was a distraction when you're trying to get something going on your own.

SV: I remember a long time ago reading that one of my favorites, it might have been Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro, didn't listen to other people's music when they were working on their own albums because of the distraction and not wanting to be vulnerable to influences.
NM: I think that probably happens for a lot of artists, not just musicians but writers and visual artists too.

SV: I may be reading too much into the way the songs are sequenced but I heard it as two cycles of songs that intersect with the first part goes from the initial fluttering of the heart into the dissolution of a love affair and then a spiritual search that takes you from childhood to the end, which is kind of a personal meets political theme.
NM: That's actually correct. There's the love affair that starts with "Between Us," "Call Me," and ends with "Vanilla" (laughs) which is a true story. When you're absolutely in love and think something incredible is happening - and it was happening - then you find out that person is seeing somebody else and you find out not from them, but by accident, because of a scent that they were wearing. But stuff like that happens.

SV: But to jump back to the part before the fall, "Between Us," so beautifully summed up that buzz and that hope that you get when you meet someone you feel like you absolutely click with.
NM: "My love for you it flows so everlasting, oh you know this, you star in all my dreams"  is just how it feels in perfect love situations where you have that feeling that time moves in slow motion because you're in that hypnotic love state. You feel it in your heart and you just get intoxicated and washed over in the waves of this beautiful love affair.

SV: And then in the ones that fall between that song and "Vanilla" you were able to convey eroticism and vulnerability without the kind of self effacing thing that most women come from when they are going through those situations.
NM: I think it comes from not getting bitter and from being able to maintain a sense of who you are when something happens. Like the situation that turned happened with "Vanilla." It happened. When something like that happens you go through the pain but you can come back to this innocent sensuality about love itself, just plain love. If you just stick to what love really is, go with that, and kind of keep it simple you can get past that place where you come to love with this sense of putting yourself down.

SV:"Vanilla" comes from such a different place than most lost love songs. It just makes a statement - "I'm onto you, I know what's going on and that's just how it is." When you basically get cosmically kicked in the teeth like that how do you not get bitter?
NM: You just have to go "OK, I don't know how I got into that one but I'm glad I dug out of it and let them go their way and just keep moving forward." When you keep moving forward other things come into your life that remind you that maybe you weren't supposed to be in that relationship in the first place, or if you were then you got the lesson you needed  from it and this is the perfect exit strategy. It helps keep you from getting caught up in the drama, because getting caught up in the drama is what feeds the bitterness and keeps us repeating these patterns over and over. You have to remove yourself. That's where songs come from, because you can't really make that stuff up. You can try but it just doesn't come out the same as when you've been through it yourself.

SV: If you look at the sequence of this album it started to turn inward after that. Toward the spiritual, toward ancestors and heritage and a young girl growing into her own strength.
NM: That's the process of trying to understand where I came from, and in the same way provide that for everybody because we are all trying to figure out who we are and where we are from. We had a lot of fun with that. Ali Baba, who does the African voices on two of those songs, comes from a line of Shamans and when he is speaking on the different songs he's calling to his mom. He's talking about the things his mother told him about loving children and staying in the spirit, and family. I think just hearing his voice during "The Journey," which speaks of my specific journey and his voice comes in talking about mothers and children and that wish and that blessing, and then "Acacia Tree" which speaks of where we come from. It's so magical the way he delivers that. We had no idea what it was going to sound like until he opened his mouth and we all stood there stunned, tears coming out of our eyes. Even if you don't know literally what he's saying your heart knows and you can feel this stuff. It was a really peaceful experience for him to come in and be on the project.

SV: When you listen to the CD and the totally original way that some of these arrangements come together it feels like that type of spontaneity and magic was happening pretty often.
NM: You're right. Literally every time a musician came in, because these people are so talented, these things would happen. It was so much fun making this album. There was so much magic, Really every piece of it, from the writing to the players coming together. For example on "Vanilla," it sat the way it was without that vocal part that goes "she knows your story." Then one day I came up with it and we put it in. That was the first take. I put the headphones on and just said "She knows your story, she knows your story" and that was it.

SV: That line sounds like you're channeling every woman who has had what she already knew confirmed and faced it and moved on.
NM: Those moments like that were so magical because you just don't know when they're going to happen. There are things that I go back to today and think of ways we could have done a little something different because you're always evolving and changing but part of the magic is knowing when to stop.

SV: Most artists go into the studio with a producer and a preordained agenda of what they are going to do. How did you escape that process.
NM: That's kind of hard to pin down. I think it was just by not being so calculated. By really being honest about it and reaching for what was true. When you write something that is not honest you know it. You go for something then keep going back and it just doesn't work. And there are some days when you know it's just not the day. You can't force the art. It just has to come, which is frustrating because it may take longer than you want it to but you just have to let it work itself out.

SV: What made you decide to release this yourself instead of shopping for a label deal.
NM: At first we tried. We did a little bit of shopping it around but people would hear it and respond to it, then they would sit on it because there is so much going on. There are so many distractions and things are changing so fast. There is so much out there that it's hard for the people at the labels to focus on something that is new and not proven, that hasn't got a guarantee. We decided to make it simple and do it ourselves, to not focus on the label and music business part of it and just go for it. To trust it and see how it works. And to give it time to work.

SV: I just think the angels were on your side, and our side as listeners because this song came completely from left field, didn't fit a formula, and it took a while but it is getting airplay at stations that rarely touch new artists, new songs, or vocals that haven't hit first in another format.
NM: Angels, absolutely. We keep pinching ourselves daily because when do vocals ever break in this format unless you have several albums under your belt, or a Grammy?

SV: If you've been around that long they say you're too old, though. There are artists out there doing brilliant work that isn't commercially successful because the label doesn't know how to market them or they don't know how to get their feet in the digital world. It's like the Luther Vandross quote that Jason Miles shared with us where he said "I make the best pizza in town but the delivery system is getting it to the customer cold."  If at all.
NM: It is that. That's why we had to do it ourselves. The distractions, all the different stops they have to make before the pizza gets delivered, it's gonna be cold. You can't trust somebody else with it. Susan and I say it almost every day that we have to do it ourselves. It is painful and joyful at the same time. We go through times that are just so oh, wow, tough...but if you do it, then it is going to get there the way you want it.

SV: You didn't do much live performance until this album came out did you?
NM: No, I didn't do much live at all. I did sing with a jazz band doing standards for a while but it just wasn't satisfying. I wasn't the jazz singer only. I wanted to do more original stuff. I've been a costume designer. I really stayed out of the traditional music path of performing.

SV: You got to open for Chris Botti at a big concert in Chicago, which was quite a leap for someone who hasn't spent much time onstage and I saw in your blog that it went really well.
NM: It was beautiful. It was unbelievable. But, yes, it was the first big concert. I didn't know what to expect. Unbelievably gorgeous theater, it has 5,000 seats. It went amazing. I had a great band. The music director had worked with Seal, some of the rhythm section players had worked with Madonna.

SV: What was it like walking out there.
NM: I had about 5-10 seconds of jitters but seeing friends and smiles on the front rows was so incredible. What was great was that Barbara Gueno from WUNA was sitting on the front row. She's a fan and made us feel so welcome when we stopped by the station earlier that day. Jason Gorov, who had such a commitment to promoting the song at radio, flew in for the concert,  It was great having people like that there, and feeling the audience get into the music.

SV: It's hard to be the opening act for a star but the audience dug you didn't they?
NM: They kinda liked it a lot. At first they weren't sure but they got into it. I even had a couple who said they had traveled two hours to see me. Which is mind boggling, to know someone traveled that far to see you..

SV: Are you going to be doing any more shows anytime soon.
NM: I'm doing the Seabreeze Jazz Festival in Florida with Rafe Gomez. Then we are opening for Chris Botti in Cleveland and for Rick Braun in Atlanta.

SV: You'll have to get used to the performance part because the more word gets out, the more you are going to be invited to play.
NM: One of the wonderful things about "Between Us" getting this kind of success is that it's become a vehicle for meeting incredible people. That alone is wonderful. Forget the business part. These people that hear the song and go "wow" then want to meet me, and they are so wonderful. That is the power of the technology now too, because people can hear the music, then some of them write about it on websites or MySpace and sites like that. Then more people hear it because of that. And we can really keep in touch with people too.

SV: That's a beautiful thought. Music does bring people together, and it gives us something we can share even when it feels like we don't have much else in common. Thank you so much for creating music that has that effect.

Get in touch with Nyee Moses at www.nyeemoses.com or visit her MySpace page at www.myspace.com/nyeemoses to sample more tracks from her CD and some very tasty remixes.