Renowned singer and talk show host Sisaundra offered a glimpse of her country side ten years ago while competing on season 6 of The Voice when she chose country star Blake Shelton as her coach.
And now she’s embracing her roots once again with the new country and gospel single “YOU REMAIN,” which she released in March.
“I grew up in Florida in the South. I grew up on a farm,” she says. “I’m a sharecropper’s daughter so having both feet sinking deep into the ground is just where I come from. My family were migrant workers and so we lived in the country, we toiled in the soil and picked the produce of what we sowed into the ground. I grew up in pickup trucks, that’s what my dad drove all my life. There’s definitely country in my soul.”
As Sisaundra sees it, her gospel background––she grew up singing in her father’s church––and country music aligns “so beautifully.” The beauty of country music, she says, is the stories the songs tell, and it’s the same in gospel music.
“I love to share a message and between country and gospel it allows me to share positive messages, uplifting messages or just the truth and the truth hurts sometimes,” she says.
Sisaundra scored a number one on the U.S. BillBoard Hot Dance Club Play chart with her debut single “Shout” in 2005 and then released an album of the same name in 2006. She was also invited by singer and songwriter Peabo Bryson to join him as a backing vocalist and duet partner on an international tour, and Sisaundra was also a backing vocalist, vocal director and choreographer with Céline Dion. She has shared the stage with notable artists including Michael Bolton, George Duke, Sheila E., Gloria Estefan, Enrique Iglesias, Patti LaBelle and Najee.
“Country has always been something that’s been in my heart,” she says. “When I was on The Voice I was on team Blake and that was not by happenstance. It was something I think was supposed to happen. It was a divine appointment. It got me to dig a little deeper and understand from another level how it’s done.”
Shelton also gifted her a pair of boots––“my first pair of real cowgirl boots,” she says––and a year or so ago they caught her eye and she decided to wear them to work. They had an immediate effect.
“For some reason I just started dancing and singing and yodeling and by the time I got to the studio where my band was I was like guys I have this idea, we have to do this,” she says. “They said, ‘We love the idea but we’re not yodeling.’ They came up with the arrangement you hear for ‘YOU REMAIN’ and we wrote all of the lyrics together and recorded.”
The resulting single, Sisaundra’s first release of 2024, is a tapestry of genres, with the singer adding some soulful gospel tones to the mix.
“We just hope it will warm people’s hearts and lift up their spirits,” she says. “I think it’s the perfect song to be released right now because it’s speaking of something that’s constant in our lives and that’s God. He is a constant and Easter is coming up.
“It’s such a powerful song in the sense of declaring that during this season He is risen and He remains the same. We can count on Him.”
Sisaundra and her band have written about 14 songs and plan to release another two or three this year––each of them in some way uplifting and motivating, “music from our heart,” she says. They’ve also got plans to release a full album later this year.
Sisaundra hosts The Sisaundra show, a daytime talk show, and live music performance show AFROJams on AFRO TV. Her band is called For The Culture, and the group works together five days a week on television in addition to the recording studio.
“We just wanted to tap into our roots,” she says. “Tap into a genre that Black people are not seen in very much and it’s so ironic that Beyonce released her country album and she has kicked open doors and reminded us that country has been a part of our history, a part of our culture for a long time.
“It was really natural for us. It’s really just paying homage to something that is a part of who I am. I don’t know if that will lead me to do more country songs, but I know it led me to do this one.”
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