Sunny War is American folk-punk musician Sydney Lyndella Ward. Born in Nashville, she is currently based in LA.
While clearly the product of a very young woman, War has the sob and throb of Billie Holiday — if Lady Day had emerged in Mississippi and not Harlem during the Depression. As if Bukka White, not Lester Young… Sunny War is American folk-punk musician Sydney Lyndella Ward. Born in Nashville, she is currently based in LA.
While clearly the product of a very young woman, War has the sob and throb of Billie Holiday — if Lady Day had emerged in Mississippi and not Harlem during the Depression. As if Bukka White, not Lester Young, were her mentor. Like Billie, War undersings. She doesn’t push the notes — the notes push her. “Her voice is like an open wound,” observes Moira Smiley of vocal group VOCO, “as if she has a physical need to sing.”
Most of the songs are originals, some (like “Police State”) political, others chronicle, as it turns out, her wayfaring, chaotic biography. “I’m the man of my house/To take care of my mother/Ain’t no father/Ain’t no brother,” she sings in “Man of My House.”
While the blues is her foundation, the singer is by no means a revivalist. Some tunes have the staccato chord structure of punk rock, others are utterly idiosyncratic. Peter Stampfel, co-founder of the legendary Holy Modal Rounders, is a fan: “I really like how her songs don’t fit in the standard blues forms, which I began getting tired of about 40 years ago. I like irregular forms and blues approaches to non-blues songs. I’m extremely gratified to see a young blues person breaking out of that straitjacket.”
She can’t pinpoint where she picked up her startling Delta authenticity but credits Nashville and says, “My mom’s boyfriends listened to blues.” War began playing guitar around age 7, is largely self-taught (“I have tricks that I do and my own system for every chord”) and began fingerpicking while mimicking the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” (“Before that I was just playing basic blues chords.”) I mention that the Beatles learned fingerpicking from Donovan, to which she guilelessly queries: “Who’s Donovan?” She attributes the sob in her voice to the fact that “I smoke a lot” — a typical self-effacing Sunnyism — but there’s a genetic thread that reaches back through time.
- Michael Simmons, LA Weekly Read moreShow less
